Watercooled RAM is a Meme... But Why?

[Daharen]

So to start my RAM doesn't warrant it, it Hynix, and doesn't overclock exceptionally well, but I got an extra 100 Mhz out of it, and drastically reduced it's overall latency at 128 Mb packages to a maximum of 46 ns from the whopping 65 ns it shipped with. The differences in frame rates, boot times, access times, and general snappiness are measurable not only in day to day experience, but across the board in benchmarks for my CPU, GPU, general performance, rendering and countless other things. 

It's running stable, but I've used a thermal camera borrowed by my friend to check the temps between it's stable and unstable overclocks, and sure enough, where it starts getting unstable it's hitting around 60 c. Sooooo... Clearly temps have a performance impact, and stability is effected by max temps, and RAM effects general PC performance...

So why precisely do people scoff at the idea of water-cooling RAM so much? This downright confuses me? Is it just because people think it's to expensive to bother? The fact of the matter is if I add my RAM to the loop I can probably push this Hynix RAM to similar levels as some low end B-Die RAM, which is saying something. If I had a decent B-Die set I could definitely do better, but I'm happy just being in the 99th percentile with what I've got for now... The point is it matters, and the performance differences are real, so what am I missing here, this is like the weird opposite of elitists, snobbish level of intentional mediocrity for the sake of being average because sometimes gains are just "arbitrarily stupid." I can't help but project a dimwitted bully like voice onto the people scoffing about it now, and imagining them a slow lug-like neanderthals annoyed at progress and technology. Please prove me wrong. 

[Daniel Z.]

It just costs a fairly large amount for not a big increase in performance. The block and fittings cost around 70-100. RAM faster than 3000 basically doesn’t improve performance, and if you really want higher speeds, a very expensive ram kit is still more sensible.

[Daharen]

1 minute ago, Daniel Z. said:

It just costs a fairly large amount for not a big increase in performance. The block and fittings cost around 70-100. RAM faster than 3000 basically doesn’t improve performance, and if you really want higher speeds, a very expensive ram kit is still more sensible.

Fair enough, but there's still a use case then for a balls to the wall setup where you're already buying the best RAM like a $500 kit at 4000+ Mhz and looking to tighten the timings for example? 

I get that 'other' upgrades would be more sensible always before RAM, but there are a few people on the extreme end of enthusiast builds who really are pretty much using the best hardware available at each point, and if all you have left is RAM I see no reason to skimp on it and push all the other parts, the rig does benefit from it is my point, not that it should ever be first priority, but that it's not negligible enough to warrant zero consideration.

[paddy-stone]

19 minutes ago, Daharen said:

Fair enough, but there's still a use case then for a balls to the wall setup where you're already buying the best RAM like a $500 kit at 4000+ Mhz and looking to tighten the timings for example? 

I get that 'other' upgrades would be more sensible always before RAM, but there are a few people on the extreme end of enthusiast builds who really are pretty much using the best hardware available at each point, and if all you have left is RAM I see no reason to skimp on it and push all the other parts, the rig does benefit from it is my point, not that it should ever be first priority, but that it's not negligible enough to warrant zero consideration.

You pretty much answered your own question as to why it's a meme... simply put, it's because in 99.9% of builds it's not needed/warranted to watercool your RAM modules. Most time just the heatspreaders and a fairly good airflow over the ram would keep it cool, even overclocked a fair deal.

With DDR5 on the horizon too, only people with money to burn, and/or that absoloutely NEEDS faster ram to help with their workload would buy the expensive faster ram, or watercool it right now IMO. As you said, there's way better things to spend your hard earned cash on. For most people faster than 3200 ram isn't needed, as their use case might not see any benefit, or will be negligible.

[Daharen]

2 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

You pretty much answered your own question as to why it's a meme... simply put, it's because in 99.9% of builds it's not needed/warranted to watercool your RAM modules. Most time just the heatspreaders and a fairly good airflow over the ram would keep it cool, even overclocked a fair deal.

With DDR5 on the horizon too, only people with money to burn, and/or that absoloutely NEEDS faster ram to help with their workload would buy the expensive faster ram, or watercool it right now IMO. As you said, there's way better things to spend your hard earned cash on. For most people faster than 3200 ram isn't needed, as their use case might not see any benefit, or will be negligible.

I guess fair enough... I feel like 'most' of the overclocking community is operating at the same level though then. Like??? For the money how much 'extra' performance does that watercooling on the GPU for the difference between a high end aircooler and a full coverage water block REALLY offer? An extra 100 Mhz? Is it worth it? What about the difference in the temps on the CPU to push it from 4.8 Ghz which can be done without delidding and without watercooling on a good air cooler, up to 5.1 Ghz much less 5.3-5.4 with a chiller or high end watercooling, lapping, delidding, direct die cooling, and liquid metal tim? I mean, the RAM OC is really just as ridiculous as the rest of the content on just about all these threads. Are there 'slightly' greater gains to be had? Maybe, but still it borders on negligible next to the performance offered by the chip itself. In net if you add up ALL of the performance gains from ALL of the overclocking you do across your entire system it might be reasonable, maybe 20% or something if you take it all in conjunction... But I guess for me it just seems weird that it's even a meme among those who already are doing pretty stupid and ridiculous things for marginal gains, they really don't have much ground to stand on with regards to making fun of things for being impractical. 

[paddy-stone]

22 minutes ago, Daharen said:

I guess fair enough... I feel like 'most' of the overclocking community is operating at the same level though then. Like??? For the money how much 'extra' performance does that watercooling on the GPU for the difference between a high end aircooler and a full coverage water block REALLY offer? An extra 100 Mhz? Is it worth it? What about the difference in the temps on the CPU to push it from 4.8 Ghz which can be done without delidding and without watercooling on a good air cooler, up to 5.1 Ghz much less 5.3-5.4 with a chiller or high end watercooling, lapping, delidding, direct die cooling, and liquid metal tim? I mean, the RAM OC is really just as ridiculous as the rest of the content on just about all these threads. Are there 'slightly' greater gains to be had? Maybe, but still it borders on negligible next to the performance offered by the chip itself. In net if you add up ALL of the performance gains from ALL of the overclocking you do across your entire system it might be reasonable, maybe 20% or something if you take it all in conjunction... But I guess for me it just seems weird that it's even a meme among those who already are doing pretty stupid and ridiculous things for marginal gains, they really don't have much ground to stand on with regards to making fun of things for being impractical. 

When it comes to overclocking/water cooling the CPU and GPU, that's not negligible at all.. take my Ryzen 1700 for example, it's base clock is only 3.0 Ghz and it's now overclocked to 3.9Ghz on all cores, so instead of leaving it stock config and getting only single core speeds up to 3.7 Ghz, they are all Oc'd by 900Mhz.... which is a HUGE amount at approx 33% OC. Yes you can OC on air to around those speeds too with massive air coolers, but I got a 240 AIO for only £43, and for that I got my idle and max temps down a fair bit, even with the OC being slightly higher than I could get with the stock cooler at 200Mhz approx difference. The GPU is another matter IMO, as everyone's use case and speciifcs will be different, such as chassis used, amount and position of fans etc etc. For me, I left my GPU on air, as  I tend to buy good airflow chassis, so my max temps are low enough for what I use it for. Still got a fairly decent OC on it though with the stock fans.

If people want to spend their money on water cooling everything they can, then that's up to them... I just don't count RAm as one of the parts that NEEDS to be water cooled. I'm more practical personally, and only cool enough to get decent OCs from my parts. And also, I then have money to put towards my next upgrade or whatever.