Question about RAM

[Zatask]

I've been looking into upgrading the RAM for my rig. On most sites I find one of two kinds of sticks: The "gamer" styled sticks with RGB and stylish black casings and the more "barebones" looking ones that are just the bare PCB and the big RAM chips on it. I realize the RGB is just for aesthetics but is there a benefit to having my RAM have the bulky casings? I remember hearing Linus mention in a video that those also work as heatsinks but I honestly have no clue.

[bezza...]

nope apart from athetics no benafits at all

[HypixelBedwars]

unless the ram has a hefty heatsink and has rgb no performance increase. what were you thinking anyway.

[RONOTHAN##]

So the answer is a bit complicated.

 

The only things that affect RAM performance are the frequency and the timings, where if you have two kits that have the same timings and frequency they will perform identically regardless of the PCB, heatsink, RGB, etc. The reason it gets complicated is that those more gamer-y kits tend to have an XMP profile on them with more aggressive frequency and timings, therefore they perform better, but if those same settings were setup on an OEM kit by manually overclocking it they would still perform the same. 

 

That brings us to memory overclocking where those differences actually become apparent. There are three main parts to a memory kit, the memory ICs, the PCB, and the heatsink (with DDR5 there's also the PMIC, but I won't go into that so much). The main thing that affects the settings a memory kit can run is the memory ICs, which are those black RAM packages you see on those green PCBs. If you've ever heard of DDR4 referred to as Samsung B die based, that's because B die is generally considered the best memory IC for overclocking on DDR4 because it can run rather high settings at ridiculously low timings. The other part is the PCB, which better designed PCBs can usually run better memory settings. The amount this actually makes a difference depends on a few different factors like how sensitive the memory IC is (Samsung B die is pretty sensitive to the PCB, while something like Samsung 4Gb E die doesn't care in the slightest) and the motherboard's BIOS optimization, but all you need to know with this is that this can have an impact to some degree. The final part is the heatsink, which because most RAM is temperature sensitive can mean that a better designed heatsink can result in lower memory temps and therefore better settings. In practice though most heatsinks are very poorly designed and therefore aren't really a factor to this. 

 

So the TL;DR for this question:

27 minutes ago, Zatask said:

is there a benefit to having my RAM have the bulky casings?

Technically yes in some specific circumstances, but generally if you have to ask the answer is no. 

[Mark Kaine]

10 hours ago, Zatask said:

I've been looking into upgrading the RAM for my rig. On most sites I find one of two kinds of sticks: The "gamer" styled sticks with RGB and stylish black casings and the more "barebones" looking ones that are just the bare PCB and the big RAM chips on it. I realize the RGB is just for aesthetics but is there a benefit to having my RAM have the bulky casings? I remember hearing Linus mention in a video that those also work as heatsinks but I honestly have no clue.

no those don't act as "heatsinks" more like "heattraps" ...

 

shouldn't be an issue tho, "gamer ram" is also available without rgb btw, but still has the heattrap... (but as said, that's not an issue typically)