I'm trying to decide between two one gig ram sticks, both from the same company G.Skill. The only difference is that one has heatspreaders and one doesn't. The price difference is around $10. Do you think the extar $10 is worth the heatspreaders or not? Thanks
It really depends on what you are planning to do. Heatspreader will help anyway, to prolong your RAM's life. However, if your system is not performing strenuous tasks and is well ventilated, or if you are not planning to do any overclocking, the spreaders would be a bit of over caution. If you can afford the $10 I would say go for it. It will only do good, again, as long as the system is having fresh air circulating. But if like me you are tight then you go for the cheapest option....
If you don't mind shelling out another $10 for them, then go for it. They're not essential for most things, but if you ever want to overclock your RAM, or just keep it cooler then they're quite useful.
Yup. Those are the benefits. It's highly unlikely that heatspreaders will benefit you in overclocking the RAM any further. It will help disappate heat, but since IC's have a limit to how fast they can go, if you do overclock, realize that this will not increase the OC. If you do, 1-2MHz is about the most you can hope for. All things being equal between the sticks themselves, $10 for heatspreaders isn't a bad price.
I agree in that they wont help your overclocking. Ive always dismissed heatsinks for RAM but if they can help prevent static damage they are well worth considering. I dont quite know how they could help but if its true its a definite bonus.
