Have these heat pipes/fins been proven to be useful in any way since the DDR/DDR2 era ended? I can't find much in the way of evidence to support the need for this beyond appearance. It seems like an obnoxious waste of space and material, like a 3-foot tall spoiler on a Honda Civic (different strokes...). You can still make aesthetically pleasing modules with low-profile RAM without adding cost with extra aluminum and copper. You can always add cooling options if you need it, but it's very difficult (often impossible) to remove the fins and pipes.
It would be nice to have more options in that area.
These memory heatsinks are actually the opposite in principle of those huge 3-foot spoilers. The huge spoilers, while ugly, are functional because they actually provide some downforce on the car. These memory modules are more like the 2-inch spoilers you see on "sports" cars - they look nice but they're designed without aerodynamic function in mind and are too small to have any real effect. If you made these memory module heatsinks obnoxiously large akin to the 3 foot spoiler, then you might see some improved performance, but then they also would not fit under a CPU heatsink, which is a consideration more important to most buyers.
Perhaps I should have clarified - Honda Civics that are not modified, all-wheel-drive, 600hp hillclimbers. The only function those 3-foot spoilers offer on normal, everyday Civics is downforce on the back to "help" lift the front tires (steering/power) off the pavement. It's idiotic. :-P
They look good, but the pricing is ridiculous on the Corsair dominator Platinum.. Regardless of the speed.. They just don't offer performance to justify the higher costs. All u pay for is the looks. Kingston have lifetime warranty on most of their RAM but their not charging 1000$ for them
Absolute top speed DIMMs are always insanely priced; and probably always will be. You're looking at 1 chip in a thousand level binning, so there can only ever be a tiny number of them on the market total. Since that's the case, the only way to constrict demand down until it's as limited as the supply is to set prices high enough that the only people who buy them are money is no object suckers and competitive overclockers who need 1:1000 binned parts to have a shot at the top of the leaderboard.
Halo products like this are seen as important for marketing purposes by the manufacturers, so they'll always be around. Fortunately for the rest of us, 1:10 binned chips aren't that much more expensive than the commodity chips that go into dells/etc and can give us a good OC without breaking the bank.
Good luck setting a record for the highest stable DDR4 clock rate, or any synthetic benchmark with a strong ram throughput dependency with a set of low end DIMMs. Otherwise, I called the people buying crazy expensive ram suckers for a reason.
OTOH there are some workloads that do benefit from high performance ram. I don't have the URL handy, but a few weeks ago I came across some test results for the Einstien@Home distributed computing project (grav wave search app) that showed a 3770k @ 4.1 ghz getting a 10% reduction in task runtime from an upgrade from DDR3-1950 to DDR3-2400. It's possible that that behavior will change in the future (the app is being re-written in the hope of getting an OpenCL version to work on GPUs); but the codebase used since at least 2006 is notorious for putting the ram subsystem under heavy strain from randomish IO.
It's been known for a long time that Samsung ICs were the best, bar none for DDR3 overclocking. They could pull the tightest timings at the highest speeds. Every long standing DDR3 record ever set was done with Samsung ICs. Cheap, cheap 1x2GB Samsung ICs. Put EK Dominator heatspreaders on so you can put on a RAM pot. And you have world record potential.
According to a few known users on the RoG users in the forums, it looks like Hynix (or was it Micron?) ICs are the best of the DDR4 batch.
4x4GBs is not OCing RAM. Too much strain on the memory controller. This is just a fancy kit for people who want to show off.
I figure eventually the technology will trickle down and maybe in a year we will see reasonably priced (similar to DDR3 price level) modules around 3000 MHz which should have a performance margin over DDR3.
Since i've heard about hmb either ddr3/ ddr4 are no longer an option. How long do you guys think will take until we start seeing motherboards with hmb?
IIRC *all* of the post DDR4 techs on the drawing board now are package on package type as opposed to stand alone memory modules.
If true, I hope all the companies currently involved in packaging and selling dimms have exit plans; because when the time comes Intel/AMD will almost certainly only buy direct from the dram manufacturers completely cutting out the middle men.
because the technologies in question are all ones where the ram and CPU are integrated onto the same package similar to how the soc in your phone/tablet has a ram chip attached on top or some of Intel's low power laptop chips have the CPU and Southbridge on a single package. When you're sticking chips together like that the tolerances are far too tight, and the connection points too fragile, for the assembly to take place after leaving the factory.
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Gunbuster - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
I dig the orange but $1000 for maybe 7% more performance? Nope.semyon95 - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
More like 0,7% morenathanddrews - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Have these heat pipes/fins been proven to be useful in any way since the DDR/DDR2 era ended? I can't find much in the way of evidence to support the need for this beyond appearance. It seems like an obnoxious waste of space and material, like a 3-foot tall spoiler on a Honda Civic (different strokes...). You can still make aesthetically pleasing modules with low-profile RAM without adding cost with extra aluminum and copper. You can always add cooling options if you need it, but it's very difficult (often impossible) to remove the fins and pipes.It would be nice to have more options in that area.
The Von Matrices - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
These memory heatsinks are actually the opposite in principle of those huge 3-foot spoilers. The huge spoilers, while ugly, are functional because they actually provide some downforce on the car. These memory modules are more like the 2-inch spoilers you see on "sports" cars - they look nice but they're designed without aerodynamic function in mind and are too small to have any real effect. If you made these memory module heatsinks obnoxiously large akin to the 3 foot spoiler, then you might see some improved performance, but then they also would not fit under a CPU heatsink, which is a consideration more important to most buyers.nathanddrews - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Perhaps I should have clarified - Honda Civics that are not modified, all-wheel-drive, 600hp hillclimbers. The only function those 3-foot spoilers offer on normal, everyday Civics is downforce on the back to "help" lift the front tires (steering/power) off the pavement. It's idiotic. :-PSn3akr - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
They look good, but the pricing is ridiculous on the Corsair dominator Platinum.. Regardless of the speed.. They just don't offer performance to justify the higher costs. All u pay for is the looks. Kingston have lifetime warranty on most of their RAM but their not charging 1000$ for themDanNeely - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Absolute top speed DIMMs are always insanely priced; and probably always will be. You're looking at 1 chip in a thousand level binning, so there can only ever be a tiny number of them on the market total. Since that's the case, the only way to constrict demand down until it's as limited as the supply is to set prices high enough that the only people who buy them are money is no object suckers and competitive overclockers who need 1:1000 binned parts to have a shot at the top of the leaderboard.Halo products like this are seen as important for marketing purposes by the manufacturers, so they'll always be around. Fortunately for the rest of us, 1:10 binned chips aren't that much more expensive than the commodity chips that go into dells/etc and can give us a good OC without breaking the bank.
RaistlinZ - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
They're still a complete waste of money. Anandtech's own review show PC2666 CL15 giving equal if not better performance in most cases.http://www.anandtech.com/show/8959/ddr4-haswell-e-...
DanNeely - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Good luck setting a record for the highest stable DDR4 clock rate, or any synthetic benchmark with a strong ram throughput dependency with a set of low end DIMMs. Otherwise, I called the people buying crazy expensive ram suckers for a reason.OTOH there are some workloads that do benefit from high performance ram. I don't have the URL handy, but a few weeks ago I came across some test results for the Einstien@Home distributed computing project (grav wave search app) that showed a 3770k @ 4.1 ghz getting a 10% reduction in task runtime from an upgrade from DDR3-1950 to DDR3-2400. It's possible that that behavior will change in the future (the app is being re-written in the hope of getting an OpenCL version to work on GPUs); but the codebase used since at least 2006 is notorious for putting the ram subsystem under heavy strain from randomish IO.
Antronman - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
It's been known for a long time that Samsung ICs were the best, bar none for DDR3 overclocking. They could pull the tightest timings at the highest speeds. Every long standing DDR3 record ever set was done with Samsung ICs. Cheap, cheap 1x2GB Samsung ICs. Put EK Dominator heatspreaders on so you can put on a RAM pot. And you have world record potential.According to a few known users on the RoG users in the forums, it looks like Hynix (or was it Micron?) ICs are the best of the DDR4 batch.
4x4GBs is not OCing RAM. Too much strain on the memory controller. This is just a fancy kit for people who want to show off.
drgigolo - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Don't you need 4x4 memory modules to get quad channel?Antronman - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
You need at least 4 sticks for OCing.So a proper OC kit would be 4x1GBs.
This is why memory OCing has been done on the Zx7 platform for a while. 1x2GBs and 2x1GBs and 2x2GBs kits. For minimal strain on the IMC.
vred - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
I figure eventually the technology will trickle down and maybe in a year we will see reasonably priced (similar to DDR3 price level) modules around 3000 MHz which should have a performance margin over DDR3.H3ld3r - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Since i've heard about hmb either ddr3/ ddr4 are no longer an option. How long do you guys think will take until we start seeing motherboards with hmb?svan1971 - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Considering it is explicitly designed for graphics the answer is never.DanNeely - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
IIRC *all* of the post DDR4 techs on the drawing board now are package on package type as opposed to stand alone memory modules.If true, I hope all the companies currently involved in packaging and selling dimms have exit plans; because when the time comes Intel/AMD will almost certainly only buy direct from the dram manufacturers completely cutting out the middle men.
Mikemk - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Why would Intel and AMD buy the RAM?DanNeely - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
because the technologies in question are all ones where the ram and CPU are integrated onto the same package similar to how the soc in your phone/tablet has a ram chip attached on top or some of Intel's low power laptop chips have the CPU and Southbridge on a single package. When you're sticking chips together like that the tolerances are far too tight, and the connection points too fragile, for the assembly to take place after leaving the factory.Antronman - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Do you guys have a different X99 board from another manufacturer you can test the DIMMs on?I'd be interested in seeing them work right now, without official validation.
D. Lister - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
For the price, I would say it is for the enthusiast who's got everything else. Only, what enthusiast would want to settle with just a 4x4 kit?Mikemk - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
You can buy 2