I got the memory cooling components back from plating and they look great:
Properly torqued the water block screws to 1Nm using fancy screwdriver:
The bad news is I cannot get the two spreader plates to compress enough using a 0.5mm thermal pad on one side of the DIMM and a 2mm thick thermal pad on the PMIC side of the DIMM. The inductors stick up about 1.2mm above the dram chips on the PMIC side of the DIMM so the extra thick pad seems to be required. the spreaders have a 0.5mm deep PMIC pocket which isn’t enough for the inductors on these modules.
Inductor height:
PMIC pocket:
Heat spreaders not coming together:
I think I am going to need to mill out a deeper pocket for the inductors to go into or perhaps holes, and then use 0.5mm pads on both sides.