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#797 - CoolIT Systems RAM Fan |
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Written by Zach Jeffers
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Friday, 30 March 2007 |
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Page 4 of 5
Installation and Testing:
When plugging in the CoolIT Systems RAM Fan, there are two blue LEDs located in the center hub of the fan. These two LEDs are very bright and are almost annoying when viewed straight on. With LEDs so cheap and the industry almost requiring lighted accessories for the PC, this was no big surprise, but the LEDs could have been better placed under the "I" logo or something. If you have a chassis with a window at eye level, be warned.
   
For testing the CoolIT RAM Fan, we used the following hardware:
Enclosure: Ultra
Aluminus (Noctua NF-S12 fans intake/exhaust)
Power Supply: Ultra
X-Connect X2 550watt
Processor: AMD 3800+ X2 (Socket AM2)
Motherboard: ECS
KA3 MVP
Memory: Crucial
Ballistix 2gig (2 x 1gig) DDR2 PC2-6400
Video: 2 x x1600Pro 256mb DDR2 in Crossfire
Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA2
Optical: Plextor PX-740UF PATA
We chose the Cooler Master Hyper TX cooler in this review for three reasons: 1) It is quiet, 2) It is a great cooler, and 3) The heat sink fan does not protrude very far from the standard retention bracket. To install the CoolIT RAM Fan onto our Crucial Ballistix memory, we had to force the arms open to grip over the memory. The aluminum is not very pliable so you will want to do this outside of the chassis if you happen to have a removable motherboard tray. As you can see below, the RAM Fan completely covers all four DIMM slots on our motherboard. We had to move our two modules to the DIMM3 and DIMM4 slots as centering the RAM Fan on the memory would be impossible due to the closeness to the Hyper TX. Note: you can install the RAM Fan when modules are installed into DIMM1 and DIMM2, but the strength of the connection is flaky and the unit could possible fall off or move during transport.
 
Speaking of moving; even when the RAM Fan was installed on DIMM3 and DIMM4, the unit still rocked back and forth a bit and never made a seating. This caused the area of aluminum near the fan to trespass into the path of the Hyper TX's fan path. This is easily corrected by moving the RAM Fan back where it was, but note, I would have to keep doing this if the chassis was constantly on the move like a LAN box.
 
From the front you can see the clearance of the fan from the memory modules and the slope of the CoolIT RAM Fan's cage.
Image 24
With a close up of the RAM Fan's arm, you can see how the unit keeps grip. It pinches itself onto the memory modules sides. After removal, we found that the unit had actually left grooves in the memory from being tilted and adjusted the correct way!
  
UPDATE: Since this review, CoolIT Systems has contacted us and the cooler (though not specifically instructed on the instructions) is supposed to be installed in that the arms clip into the same notches that the DIMM retaining clips snap into. This helps the tilting of the unit. This also brings the unit a couple millimeters closer to the memory modules though in our testing, did not improve the results to any full degree of difference.
The image below shows you the brightness of the two blue LEDs inside the center hub of the RAM Fan�s fan.
For testing temperatures, I stuck a bare thermal probe directly centered between the two Ballistix modules and then let the system sit idle with no work. Then I took 30+ cycles of Sandra Software memory burn-in and took a reading once the temps leveled off.
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