Cooler Master ARC-U01 Aluminum Ramsinks Review

 

 

     

           The CoolerMaster Aluminum ramsinks are one of the latest additions to Coolermaster's retail lineup. These come in two flavors, Aluminum and Copper. They are meant to be used in RAM, Video SGRAM, Northbridges & Southbridges, Video Card Chipsets,  Voltage Capacitors, or any other chip that heats up.

Reducing heat out of computer components lengthens the life of them. You could even add a fan in in top of the ramsinks if necessary, for example, if you need active cooling in the northbridge, you can put 2-3 chips and place a 40 mm fan, although most people would never do that.

 

 

 

Nicely packaged box for the Ramsinks

 

       The Ramsinks come in a nice retail box, 8 ramsinks per package for the aluminum and the copper sinks.

These ramsinks are "suitable for most chips" as the front cover says, people with BGA memory still can use these ramsinks, as the double sided tape is strong, so covering half the ramsink may be enough to keep it in place. On the back of the package, it says that you can use it in a variety of ways. They show, of course in a ram module, southbridge, raid controller, and what looks like a hardware monitoring chip. 

 

 

The back of the package.

 

            These ramsinks are small, they cover most of a RAM module. The dimensions are 22 x 8 x 5 mm. They use double sided Thermal conductive adhesive tape.

 

 

Heatsinks galore !

 

 

 Single Ramsink

 

Now we move to the practical part of the review. The installation process. These ramsinks are very easy to apply to most surfaces, although they are only one time use, so you you have to make sure you need it at the place you are applying it to.

 

      

The double sided tape is protected by a paper, which is being removed.

 

     So you take off the yellow paper and you carefully put it where you want, it's that simple.

 

 

Placing the sink in a memory module (Dane-Elec PC2700)

 

     These ramsinks are generally used for memory. I will be using Dane-Elec 256MB DDR333 @ 2.8v. With these Ramsinks, at 2.8v it's stable, that's an .3 overvolt, pretty good for overclocking. With the MSI K7N2G nforce2 (IGP, MCP-T chipset) motherboard, the memory was able to be overclocked to 180x2mhz= 360mhz at CL2. The nforce2 motherboards have some problems with overclocking modules, but because we were able to run this memory module at 2.8v, a CL2 could be achieved, this module runs at 166mhz CL2 T1 6-3-3-3. At 2.5v, without the ramsinks you can go to ~175-180mhz but without CL2. These modules did a good job with the Dane-Elec modules.

 

Dane-Elec module

 

 

Memory Module modified with a yellow cathode.

 

Ramsinks used in SGRAM, photo by CoolerMaster Inc.

 

Ramsinks used in 3.3v Voltage chips, which get hot and they may distort the power going through the motherboard, giving lower or higher readings (i.e. 3.1v instead of 3.3v)

 

Northbridge cooling for a KT133a based motherboard.

 

      These ramsinks can be used in a variety of chips, and they do reduce the temperature of the chi anywhere for 2-4 C., which may determine the overclocking ability. They might also help against a crashing computer system, if for example a southbridge chipset didn't come with a heatsink, like most of them, and some get really hot, like the nforce2 MCP. These Aluminum sinks are a good way to reduce heat stored in chip.

 

Pros:

 

- Inexpensive

- Easy to apply

- Reduces a good amount of heat out of the chips

- Enhances overclocking

- Lengthens the life of chips.

 

Cons:

 

- One time use tape

- May not serve in all types of memory modules (i.e. BGA modules)

 

 

I give these Ramsinks an 9/10.