4.0 volts on OCZ VX Gold -- need active cooling?

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CaptRingold

Limp Gawd
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Feb 12, 2005
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I'm in the process of ordering the final parts for this comp, and was wondering; this new OCZ VX Gold seems to be pretty good stuff according to Anandtech, but eats up 4v, and noticed in the Epox article that Morry recommended 'active cooling' (i assume by that case fans) at just 3.1v for DIMMs. This stuff has a heatsink on the sticks, but I'm putting a waterblock on the CPU and GPU powered by a Zalman Reserator, and specifically ordered a quiet PSU as well (Seasonic S12 500). With just the DIMMs, chipset fan, and two SATA drives, will I be needing more airflow you guys think then what the Seasonic PSU will pull out the top, considering 4v on the DIMMs?
 
well...voltage always means heat...I think that 4v might warrant the pointing of a case fan at them or something
 
FIrst... You should NOT have to go all the way to 4v.

Second... Regardless... You WILL need some cooling on that memory.
 
Um yeah, that ram is rated at DDR500 Cas 2-2-2-6-1T @ 3.3Volts...



You should NOT have to go up to 4 volts....

And If you have Goood Circulation, I would say you dont have to worry. I have a bunch of fans and myy system is loud so its all good. I really dont care about noise, i have my headphones on anyway.
 
You're all right, I'm sorry, my mistake; rated at 3.3v. Don't know where I pulled 4.0 from; perhaps thats what the DFI NF4 can provide instead.

Thanks for the advice though, sounds like a 120mm fan may be in order. I'll order one, shouldn't make too much noise anywho.

Thanks again guys :D
 
I have heat issues with my CH-5 at 3.2v at their max speed. A fan makes all the difference in getting stablity at 255MHz. Yeah this stuff likes voltage but, voltage has diminishing returns. past... 3.7 or 3.8, you'll probably LOSE speed.
 
Bah, you guys saying he doesnt need to go up to 4.0V, do you even know what VX is?

Either wawy, ill clear up the issue. OCZ VX consists of Windbond UTT IC's, which are very similar to BH-5 ICs. Like BH-5, UTT can scale to rather high FSB at ultra tight 2-2-2-5 timings, but you need lots of voltage to do so. So while its rater for 3.1v, going up to 4v CAN help. However, most UTT, as BH-5 did, hits a wall around 3.6v, where nothing after that does much. You will just have to play with your ram a bit and see how much it takes. I've had BH-5 that doentt respond well to over 3.4v and other BH-5 that I put 3.9v thru, put it owuldnt post at 4v.

As far as heat goes, yes you should have a fan on it, and there a few good ways to do it. 1 way would be to get an 80mm fan, put 4 screws in it, and wrap rubberbands around said screws. attach the other ends to the tabs on your dimm's. It will say on nicley, and it makes for great direct active cooling. Another way, if you have any 3.5 ---> 5.25 HD converters lying round, is to hot glue a fan to one of those and mount it in a CD rom bay. I have used both methods, and both work fine. It is worth mentioning that UTT does not get as hot as BH-5 does, so its doesnt need quite and hefty cooling, but when it gets hot it can shorten the life of the ram. Also, another practice that many people are unaware of, UTT and BH5 like burn-in. Running a few 24-hour memtest sessions at high speeds to really stress your ram breaks it in, and allows for higher clocks.

Another concern you shoudl have though, is how are you going to supply your memory with voltage? Most boards dont let you go over 2.8v to 2.85. On ram like VX, this is pointless, you would be better off with TCCD if this is waht your board limits you to. High vdimm is becoming popular on enthusiast boards, such as DFI which has 4.0V on all there newer boards, as does the upcoming Sapphire boards. Most boards still dont have this feature though, I would certainly doubt epox does. In that case, you need to invest in a DDR Booster. I dont like DDR Boosters, becuase they are flakey and the voltage jumps around alot of them, but its your only other option to gertting a ram that allows for high vdimm.

Hopefully I answered all your questions here, but feel free to hit me back with more if I missed something.
 
Impaqt said:
Yes, As A Matter a fact, I do know what Vx is..... And so does Steve from OCZ
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=164143

Telling someone who doesnt even know if he should cool his UTT at high voltages to Throw 4v at it is wreckless and silly. Especially because the Vast Majority of chips dont respond to greater than 3.5-3.6v
Click to expand...


Sorry if I sounded like an ass with the comment on knowing what UTT is....I wasnt really aiming it at anyone, im not looking to start a flamewar.

Also, I did state that going over 3.6v is usually pointless, but there are epections to that rule. I would say as long as he does it properly, that giving the ram 4v is nothing to get to worked up over. Im not saying just set it to 4v and let it fly, I thought I made it pretty clear to play around with it a bit and see what works best. As I am sure you know, you cant just tell someone how their hardware is going to respond. You can make a best guess, based on others results, and assuming theirs will be the same, but that doesnt always hold true. Logic says 3.6v shoudl be all he needs, but there have been people getting better results with higher voltages. He could get the two sticks of ram that do...only one way to find out.

Viper87227 said:
However, most UTT, as BH-5 did, hits a wall around 3.6v, where nothing after that does much.
Click to expand...

Also, just because he doesnt know if he should cool the ram or not doesnt me he doesnt know how to overclock. If he didnt, he probably wouldnt be looking at that ram in the first place. If hes never used BH5 or UTT, its a very valid question, and in now way can it be used as a mesure of how much he knows about overclocking.
 
nothing to do w/ vx, but the wall is there, it might be closer to 4v on the vx but the wall sucks. my OCZ performance ram can hit the same speeds/timings anywhere from 2.55(lowest in bios) to 3.3(highest w/ volt mod). so i guess my wall is 2.55 volts....
 
I thought the thread had flickered out, so only checked again now, but thanks Viper and everyone for responding.

I based my question mostly off Anandtech's review of the stuff. I've overclocked before, but I'd never thrown that much voltage at RAM like that, they took it to 267 @ 3.5 volts, with the DFI board I've got (which is waiting for some Venice or San Diego lovin') able to go to 4.0.

Considering the other RAM I was looking at, PDP's XBLK stuff, started off stock at 2.6 and I imagine wouldn't do much with more than 2.8 volts (I'm just guessing), I was worried if I got the VX ram and fed it 3.5 volts I'd need additional cooling.

Thanks for the ideas for cooling it too; I was scratching my head over how to get a fan aimed right at the stuff if I do get it ;)
 
Well, there are a few ways I have cooled ram. one of them is mounting it in your hard drive bays. I did it by hot glueing a fan to a 3.5 --> 5.25 HD converter, and that worked. Another method that worked very well was putting 4 screws in a fan, and wrapping a rubber band around 2 on each side, then hooking the other end of the rubberband to the tabs on your ram slots. As long as teh rubberbands are tight, they will easly hold the fan right over your memory.

But, since you brought up the PDP memory, if you dont have vx yet, I reccomend the PDP. Its cheap, and very good TCCD. It should do 275-300mhz 2.5-3-3-7. TCCD is much more flexibale, allowing for both low fsb tight timing and high fsb loose timing overclocks, and it does it all at very low voltage, so no need for engineering any cooling, nor having to have special hardware to get its full potential out of it.
 
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