Neccessity of cooling for RAM

[Retired Account]

I have an HP z800 workstation.  Inside the case there are 2 fans situated on top of the 12 gigabytes of memory installed in my system.

 

It is my understanding these fans are necessary for the computer's maximum capacity of 192 gigabytes of memory.  This number of modules creates considerable heat and thus the fans are there to cool it.

 

But what about in my system with only a fraction of the heat generated.  Are the fans still necessary?  Most PCs don't run fans just for the memory. 

 

My PC generates considerable noise when running.  I think removing these fans may reduce my noise level by a few decibels. 

 

How about this idea?

 

[pwn_intended]

As long as that black box in front (right in the pic) of the ram has an intake fan, you should be ok with removing the ram fans. That being said, those CPU fans are likely creating more noise than the ram fans.

[W-L]

 

-SNIP-

 

It mainly doesn't require cooling but on that system it looks to be a workstation if you have say all the RAM slots populated together maxed out doing rendering or work it can get very toasty where some incidental airflow wouldn't hurt. CHeck using something like HW monitor what temps your RAM or components are at with and without the fan, as long as they aren't super hot you will be fine.

[Razarza]

Regular consumer PCs like most of us on this forum would have don't need extra cooling as long as there is some airflow in the case.

 

In you situation you probably don't need those extra fans if you only have 12GB installed.

[Retired Account]

Alright I'm going to remove the fans and see what difference I get in temperature. 

[Retired Account]

As long as that black box in front (right in the pic) of the ram has an intake fan, you should be ok with removing the ram fans. That being said, those CPU fans are likely creating more noise than the ram fans.

There is no intake fan in front of the box directly to the right of the RAM.  But there is one in the lower right section of the PC behind the hard drive cage. 

 

Additionally, I have noticed an issue when you brought this to attention.  There is a shroud attached to the RAM fan cooling unit which has separator for the two CPUs.  I do not want to remove this shroud. 

 

Without air blowing directly across the RAM I suppose I should leave well enough as it is and leave the RAM unit intact. I do some video rendering and encoding from time to time. However, could there be a software solution for controlling the speed of these fans? 

 

[Thorium19]

I think with 12GB of ram installed you're unlikely to have any heat issues, ram produces very little heat compared to the rest of the stuff in a computer and standard case circulation is usually enough unless there's a lot of fast ram closely populated together, or you're overclocking the shit out of it.

[Coaxialgamer]

usually ram doesn't need more than passive cooling , so if it's noisy i would remove them.