recently I was eventually successful to upgrade my Supermicro M12SWA-TF board to 1 TB RAM (8 x 128 Micron 3200 LR-DIMMs). It is equipped with a 32 core 5975WX Threadripper Pro CPU.
The temperatures have gone up quite abit, and I have the feeling that the system is throttling althogh the fans are running at full mode (2800 rpm).
The system has a Fractal Design 2 XL case with high vent 4x 140 mm (270 m3/h) fans (3 in front, 1out rear). The CPU is cooled by a 360 mm Cooler MasterLiquid ML360R TR4 RGB AiO on the top in exhaust mode, which seems to do its job well. The CPU reaches 73 deg C max.
I am considering heat sinks on the memory. Probably
better might be a fan blowing air directly on the RAM
from the side panel. For this I would cut a hole in the side panel to mount a 140 mm fan (high static pressure), which would pretty cover the whole RAM area. The temperatures below are for closed side panels. I will check the temperatures with an open case also and try an external fan. In the end I would rather prefer a closed case though.
What do you think? Have you encountered similar problems?
That is too hot for the ram; most DDR4 memory is alittle more temperature tolerant than DDR5, but 65-70C is usually the top end of what you want to run for memory.
Agree! Even the airflow from something like a Be Quiet 80 mm fan blowing across the dimma will make a big difference.
I recently did a fan mod on sone of my Lenovo machines using 3m tape and twist ties. Lowered temps by 25 degrees on some of the components i wanted to cool.
Today, I tried to place a fan on top of the RAMs using a fan header from the motherboard.
Probably pure conincindence, but after reswitching on the board, it would not boot. After alot of trials and CMOS resets the board could detect 7 out of 8 DIMMs, i.e. 896 GB RAM but performance is terrible - memory bandwidth is down to 20 GB/sec which I take as sign that memory interleaving is not working with 7 DIMMs. With 6 128 GB DiMMs (768 GB) it was running better albeit with a slightly reduced memory bandwidth.
Temperatures are better though (see below). I will have to check with my 8x 64 GB DIMMs whether something is wrong with the board. But maybe the 128 GB DIMMs have suffered from the high temperatures.
Eventually, all 8 128 GB DIMMs are running again. I tried an external 120 mm fan blowing directly on top the RAM, which lowered temperatures to 55 deg C. Since cutting a hole in the (glass) side panel to mount the fan is not an option, I asked my vendor. They will sell me 2x 3D printed custom made fan holders, which carry two 40 mm fans (each) for 100 Euros total. They cIaim lowering of the DIMM temperatures by 30-40 deg C. I will order these parts and will report after installation.