Thermalright HR-07 "Heatpipe Ram Cooler" Quick Review.

[Kunaak]

I like gadgets, I have fun trying new things, and its not often I get to really try a completly new type of hardware.
a active heat pipe cooling system for ram, is definatly a new one for me.
when I first heard about it, I was pretty excited by the idea of having more then a simple fan blowing over my ram, cause I have always believed in direct contact cooling, I am not much a fan of passive cooling in any real form, and for me, while a fan over my ram is better then nothing. its not much...
so when I saw these, I was definatly curious.
but more to my surprise, was how quickly it was showing up instock at various places around the net, and the price was definatly something I could live with, at $25 a piece and a few bucks for shipping.
so I made my order with "the heatsink factory" and I am glad to say my first order there went well. no problems, and the item arrived in a few days.

so here it is.

the Thermalright HR-07.



And the Heatsink itself.



The Hardware You Get.



And the Instructions.

[Kunaak]

Mounting the Heatsinks.

In total, mounting the heatsinks took me about a hour total.
its definatly alittle harder then it seems and I will explain why later with the conclusion.

The Hardware Used.

This is my D9GMH. 2 Gigs of it.



and this is how I personally chose to use the Thermal Pads.
I didn't like how the pads were nearly twice as big as the D9 chips, which is why I cut them down to fit alittle better. Whether or not this is recommended, isnt mentioned in the instructions, and I still dont know if this was a good idea, but I did it anyways, cause I didn't want the thermal pads just "blanketed" over the ram chips.



My First Problem.

The Thermal Pad used, are pretty thin, and easily removable, which is a very good thing, should you deciede this item wasnt for you, or you wanted to remount it, or use a different cooling option.
however, it also means, the thermal pads dont really "stick" into place all the time, which is what you can see in the pics here.

see, the HR-07 slides onto the ram, and is held in place with tension.
but while sliding the HR into place, the thermal pads might have a tendency to wanna move around too.... which you can see here.



And a side view to show just how much it really slid off the ram chips.
The bottom pad stayed in place just fine, but the top pad, slid quite far outta place.



However, once I realized how easily these pads move around, I simply took alittle more time putting them on, and didnt try to rush through it, and then I got both heatsinks on both ram sticks with no trouble at all.

so basically... dont rush this, do it right, and take your time and make sure the thermal pads didnt slide around as you were mounting the HR-07 and you will be fine.

[Kunaak]

Installed.

once the HR-07's are on the ram themself, it's actually quite tricky gettin the ram in place, and getting the fan mounted to the ram...

see, theres something thats not really explained in the instructions...

80mm fans are actually "small" for these heatsinks.
a 93mm fan has a near perfect fit, as thats what the mounting brackets adjust to fit the best.
getting a 80mm fan on there, took about 10 minutes of trial and error, and few times almost losing the screws too, while trying to line up holes, that are mounted on something that has a tendency to want to move around on its own...

in my case, I chose my 80mm Tornado fan.
I figured... my first time having a real cooling system for my ram... why bother with some boring quiet fan, I want results damn it.

so 80mm tornado fan it is.



its actually a pretty slick little system once its all mounted and solid in place.
wish I had more room to show some other views, but I am tight on space as you can see.

[Kunaak]

And Results.

this D9 here, has always been a great set of ram.
I can easily get it to cas 3-3-3 at 1 Ghz... when pushing 3 volts into it.
but I find, this HR-07 probably isnt a good choice for something so extreme like that, and I will explain why in a moment.

I've always tried to keep my ram at 2.3 volts or less for day to day speed.
lately I been trying to get 1.1 ghz stable... however, with my P5B Deluxe here, the 4:5 ratio is the least stable ratio there is, and 1.1 ghz at 4:5 hasnt been easy to get stable yet.

however, where the ram use to Error pretty fast at 1.1 ghz, with HR-07, I can now get 1.125 ghz stable, and up to 1.15 ghz unstable, but benchmarkable.

remember, this is only 2.3 volts.
I wanted something I could use for day to day speeds, not just suicide speeds.
at 1.1+ ghz, I always used cas 5-4-4-10 or close.
cas 5, seems to be the sweet spot for high mhz, and low voltage for my D9 and thats why most of my benchmarks tend to be cas 5 and not cas 4, for me, cas 4 takes about 2.5 volts when pushing above 1.1 ghz, and I only do that when I get into a serious benchmark session, which for this, this wasnt a "xtreme" session, just some testing.

First Test.

Hardware used.

8 x 452 with the 4:5 ratio, Quad Core Xeon 3210.
Mushkin PC6400.
8800 GTX.
2 x 150 gig raptors.
400 gig slave.
750 watt PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 main PSU.
250 watt Thermaltake VGA PSU on the GTX.
Creative X-fi.
P5B Deluxe, all mods, Bios 0910.

108 Mhz PCIE speed.
1.4 volt CPU.
1.4 volt VFSB.
1.45 chipset voltage.
1.2 volt MCH.
2.3 volt Ram.

this is a personal favorite for quick stability testing.
Test 5 of Memtest 86 tends to be rather unforgiving, and will always error at 98% if there is any errors.

45 minutes of Test 5. No Errors at 1130 Mhz.
Previously with no HR-07, 1100 mhz was the best.



And a program that I been using for awhile now, Rightmark Memory Analyzer.
it doesnt take too much time to run this default test, but this program has one thing I really like, being able to visually see exactly when and where errors happen.
previously whenever I would try 1.1 ghz, I would get instant errors... or "little red boxs" when in windows, unless I boosted the voltage to 2.45 volts... which I really didnt want to have to do for a daily speed.

with the HR-07, I am able to not only pass 1.1 ghz stable, I am able to be able to use 2.3 volts to do it, which definatly falls in my "comfort zone" for voltage on a daily basis.

1.130 ghz stable, no errors, and passes the whole default test.

so all in all, this seems to have been a very solid little product.
but the real test, for me, came in my gaming last night.



in the past, whenever I tried to get 1.125 ghz stable for gaming, I would get violent crashes happening in oblivion, where my speakers would just go nuts making a crazy high pitch sound then the game would freeze.

and in Titan Quest, I would constantly get game crashes after a few minutes of game play.

basically, unless I boosted the voltage past 2.4 volts, I wasnt gonna get 1.125 or 1.13 ghz stable for my gaming, and for me, I just dont want to run 2.4 volts on a daily basis.

well, I am glad to say, last night I played Titan Quest for the First time, at 1.125 Ghz, at 2.3 volts... for about 4-5 hours... and not a single crash/error or freeze happend.

so I am definatly Happy with the HR-07 so far.

[Kunaak]

Conclusion.

The HR-07 isn't without its faults.

it's time consuming to install, and can be alittle tiresome trying to get a fan hooked to it once installed on the board.
I definatly dont like that the entire thing is held in place, by tension alone.
it definatly would have been better to have some sort of way to make a more solid "fit" onto the ram, by some sort of screw or something.
the fact that it uses tension to be mounted into place, might make it easy to forget that the heatsink isnt solidly mounted onto the ram, so if you should be one day removing the ram, you might just pull off the heatsink instead.... I can see that happening to someone sometime.

and theres one observation I think I need to mention.

while I had great luck with my overclock at 2.5 volts, and less.
I had a sharp fall in OC's when I went above 2.7 volts....
basically, I dont think this thing is suited for extreme overclocking, if your running alot of voltage through your ram, cause this thing seemed to actually make things worse, then better.

it would seem theres a limit on where it begins to lose effectiveness, and it seems to be once you begin passing 2.65 volts, the HR-07 just can't cool things fast enough to really help and actually began holding me back.

however, this is a small thing, as I doubt anyones gonna be looking to run 2.7+ volts into thier ram on a daily basis.

so for average to high end daily overclockers, this is definatly a tool worth looking into.

if you were hoping to use this for some 3.0+ volt overclocking, this is not the tool for you, as it seems to lose effectiveness quickly at that kinda voltage.

so think about that, and what kinda uses you have for your ram.

in my case, I will gladly settle for 2.3 volts and 1.125 Ghz thats game stable.
and like I said earlier, this thing would be rather easy to remove... so if I ever get the urge to do some high voltage overclocking again, I can always remove this heatsink rather easily.

Overall, I'd give this item a 8 outta 10.

great little item for daily use, and definatly does a good job cooling and ram, and the price isn't bad at all.

-Kunaak-

[alexio]

Nicely reviewed
Can you measure temperatures or don't you have a thermometer at hand?

The conclusion is pretty much as I expected to be honest. The heatpipes don't stretch far enough to the right in the 2nd picture, which is really nasty for that last 2 ICs. Also the bond between the heatpipes and base doesn't seem very good. And the base is pretty thin while the chips are relatively large compared to the heatpipes. And then you also have those pads (with crappy performance compared to TIM) and difficult installation.

Again I say heatpipes are overrated. They are only good when you need to transfer large amount of heat from a very tiny surface, like a CPU core. When a heatpipe isn't necessary it only adds to the deltaT between the air and chip.

Geek factor: 5/5
Performance: 2.5/5

[SaII]

Nicely reviewed

Geek factor: 5/5

QFT

[Omastar]

I'll stick with a fan.

[bofors]

Nicely reviewed
...
And then you also have those pads (with crappy performance compared to TIM) and difficult installation.

Again I say heatpipes are overrated. They are only good when you need to transfer large amount of heat from a very tiny surface, like a CPU core. When a heatpipe isn't necessary it only adds to the deltaT between the air and chip.

Ditto.

I would really like to see how this compares to Hipro5's work: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...8&postcount=55

[Blknoel]

So in order to enjoy a big leap like you do, people would need to stick some crazy spinning 80mm fan like a Tornado on it?

That's where reviews are misleading sometimes, you could have used a normal 2000rpm 25-30dBa first and see how your Ram's stability improves. Then move onto the xtreme part, which is obviously this forum's signature.

But at consumer level, who would want to game with a storm roaring inside their case? I myself as hell would love to run it a few Mhz less but acceptably audible, not deafening.

Just a heads up, but I'm glad you as a reviewer liked it, any chance of updating with some Passive and Low-spinning fan tests?

[Kunaak]

haha...

I dont use the tornado at max speed for daily use.
I dont like tornado fans anymore then others do.
they are a short term solution for when I want the best chance at a high OC.

[Vapor]

Kunaak, any possibility of testing this in a low airflow environment? See how much it gains there....

[Poodle]

Kunaak, any possibility of testing this in a low airflow environment? See how much it gains there....

The High riser series have lots of space between the fins and are thus made for low air flow. The Hr-01 is even better than the Ninja at ultra low air flow. And the fins are short so it won't take much pressure to move air through them.

[xs64]

Nice review Kunaak

And Thermaltake copycat too

[eva2000]

nice.. next revision ....what about replacing TIM pad with dabs of ceramique and screw through or clips to hold heatsink contact to modules ?? heh

[ranger1234]

Cool !~~~.. and I know there is an link show this Cooling
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2908&p=3
ha ha .

[Revv23]

nice.. next revision ....what about replacing TIM pad with dabs of ceramique and screw through or clips to hold heatsink contact to modules ?? heh

this is a good point... i bet they would handle voltage ALOT better if contact was better. as the volts increase i bet you are reaching the thermal pads heat transfer limit.

[Jimmer411]

Is there any spot where you could actually screw threw for a more firm fitting?

You could possibly use the same clips that come with aftermarket heat spreaders along with AS5 or Ceramique. I couldnt imagine using any kind of thermal adhesive on these.

Could you try them with more pressure and better TIM?

[metro.cl]

i dont like them because:

there is a big chance that when someone is removing factory heatspreaders they damage their ram. That isnt covered on your review and might be usefull to mention.

[PanteraGSTK]

But at consumer level, who would want to game with a storm roaring inside their case? I myself as hell would love to run it a few Mhz less but acceptably audible, not deafening.

This is why I have loud speakers. Seriously though, I had an 80mm delta that will make you go crazy. High pitched whining all the time.....

I'd like to see them with a 50cfm 92mm fan on there. That and with the pressure mods others suggested. Seems like pressure would make these babies shine

[Kunaak]

i dont like them because:

there is a big chance that when someone is removing factory heatspreaders they damage their ram. That isnt covered on your review and might be usefull to mention.

dont you think thats kinda obvious to people around here?

plus, theres tons of other ram products that require removal of heatspreaders... do you put all them products down too?

[ineedaname]

Yea i agree that it seems like the thermal pads are limiting the cooling.

From my experience thermal pads have horrible heat transfer.

Would be neat if you could cut the heat spreaders into two parts then just put a clamp over it or something so you could have the best contact.

[Poki]

Kunaak great review! I really like your (well)formed opinion pushing this device. You really went above and beyond for a user such as myself which never likely would touch something like this with a 10 foot pole. You've defined a threshold it works well to which is beyond (i hope) most folks are willing to push their gear to. I liked it alot :P

[hipro5]

They look good and I would buy them IF the "body" of them was made by cooper and not aluminum so to absorve the temp faster.....

[Lancer33]

I have them and am happy so far at 2.6v.