Are you talking about the crab-like things or the heatspreaders? Unless you're running over 3V on the RAM, heatspreaders and active cooling really aren't necessary. If your RAM has heatspreaders, leave them on, but if you're running stock speeds I wouldn't bother getting them. Conversely, if they do have them on, leave them there, as you could void your warrantly. The heatspreaders can help a little more against ESD, but really don't do a lot for heat disappation. If you are running high voltage through your RAM (3V+), active cooling of some sort is required. If you don't expect your RAM to keel over.
right mine are only standard but was mainly curious why they would need cooling, obvious now that ram can be tweaked a little too!
been thinking about this? why would you increase the voltage supply to the ram? i'm presuming there is some sort of a speed thing going off here, and can any ram be tweaked?
Well, some RAM needs a certain voltage to work under. The default JEDEC standard for DDR is 2.5-2.6, however, not all memory chips are designed or are able to properly operate under that voltage. Both my Patriot PC3200+XBL and Crucial BallistiX need 2.8V to really work right. It's not a design flaw, it's just a certain requirement of this RAM. Some RAM will work at lower voltages, but if you start to overclock, then you'll need to bump up the RAM. Windbond BH-5 and CH-5 RAM chips pretty much require 3V or higher to really 'clock. However, as I've said before, they also need cooling because the voltage going through the RAM adds extra heat needing to be dissipated. Any RAM can be tweaked and overclocked, however some RAM will do this 'better' than others. Besides the Patriot +XBL and Crucial Ballistix I mentioned, there's Corsair XMS, OCZ's VX, Platinum, Gold, and XTC, Kingston HyperX and G.Skill HZ lines. These are produced for tweaking and overclocking. This isn't to say if you got some ValueRAM from Kingston or Corsair, you've bought crap. ValueRAM is made for systems that most people are going to use: surfing the internet, burning CD's, playing music, word processing...the basics. Tweaking isn't a big deal in these cases. Until last year, I didn't use any high-performance RAM, but my DFI NF4 Ultra-D happens to require high-performance RAM for best results.
might be buying some kingston ram off my brother, not quiet sure what type it is, even if it is the the value ram stuff is it possible to improve it a little bit or isn't it worth bothering with.
You can give it a shot, but if it's the ValueRAM, the odds aren't as good as if it were HyperX. Also, if it's PC3200 and you've got a system that's topping out with PC2100, you should be able to tighten the timings pretty well and/or have a fair OC headroom.
