Installing the cooler on the memory module

After our little handy work with the hairdryer, we're presented with the naked memory stick:



First thing you've got to do now is clean the surface of the memory sticks a little bit, as there is a lot of glue residue still present. You could use some pure alcohol for example. After the cleaning we can move forward to the actual installation. First of all we have to apply the thermal pads to the memory sticks. Since our memory is double sided, we apply the two thin thermal pads of 0,3mm thick:



After that it's simply a case of sliding the HR-07 over the thermal pads. Thermalright designed their memory cooler just so that it would fit right over the memory chips with the thermal pads applied, while applying just a little pressure on the memory chips so the cooler wouldn't slide off, and maintain a good thermal transfer from the chips to the cooler.

So this is what the HR-07 looks like when installed onto an OCZ memory module:





Test setup

For the testing of the Thermalright HR-07, we put together a test system around the latest Intel CPU and motherboard:

Test Setup
CPU	Intel QX6700 Core 2 Quad Cooled byAlphacool xtreme pro H20 set
Mainboard	Intel D975XBX2 (Bad Axe 2, stock)
Memory	2x 1024Mb OCZ PC6400 "ATi Certified" (4-4-4-15) cooled by Thermalright HR-07
Graphics	Connect3D X1900XT CF cooled by Alphacool NV-XP3 H20 block
Enclosure	Lian-Li PC70 Case cooling : four 80mm SilenX iXtrema fans
Other	2x 120Gb Maxtor S-ata RAID0 Nec DVD-RW drive Silverstone Zeus 750W PSU

Our test system was slightly overclocked from the stock 2.66Ghz (266x10) to 3.3Ghz (330x10) on the Quad Core, while the graphics card was overclocked a little as well. The memory is running synchronous to the front side bus, and runs at 4-4-4-12 timings at 330Mhz. This system is sure to produce some heat, and by water-cooling it we made sure the impact on the memory cooler is as small as possible. The airflow inside the case is only influenced by the case fans, and not, as would be usual, by the processor cooler. The performance of the memory cooler can thus be expected to be slightly lower than they normally would be when air cooling for the CPU is applied.

The installation inside the case of the memory modules with the HR-07 applied was not very difficult, especially because the PC70 is a very large case. Much depends on the layout of your motherboard as well, as I had to install the coolers with the heatpipe directed upwards. The other way round was not possible, because the graphics card slot of the Intel D975XBX motherboards is directly adjacent to the memory slots, and therefore the spacing between memory and graphics card is almost non existing. The Intel "Bad Axe" board is in that respect one of the worst boards, so you should be able to install the HR-07 on almost all motherboards.

As you can see on the picture of the setup, and in the thumbnails below, dual channel installation poses no problem as well. The coolers are narrow enough to allow installation in slots 1 and 3, or 2 and 4. Installation of 4 coolers next to each other is obviously not possible. The only real problem that could arise installation wise is the presence of a large cpu-cooler, which could interfere with the HR-07. Especially big, flat round cpu coolers like the Zalman 7000 series could pose a problem.


some close-ups of the installed HR-07 on our test setup

Head over to the next page to see how they did in our test session ->