u/Educational-King3987

Hey OC peeps,

I'm trying to OC my DDR4 to 4200mhz, I'm stress testing with 1usmus v3 atm to try and iron out a few things. Something I've noticed is on test 15/16 so test 11 before 15, just before 11 ends it starts to refresh the RAM which usually happens on test 15.

Does anyone know why it does this or ran into this before? I'm guessing one or more of my timings is off and causing the test to refresh the RAM early but I'm a bit confused as to which ones. Anyone fixed this before and can explain why as I'm still trying to wrap my head around the software 6 months in, granted I'm on a newer system now (10900k same RAM, system before was 7700k and 6700k before that). I'd be incredibly grateful to anyone who can shine light on this issue.

TLDR: Air is fine if you don't mind noise, if noise isn't the goal of your system, get a block or direct cooling for your RAM. If you're not overclocking your RAM then neither is needed.

So I'm a few days into seeing what watercooling RAM is like. Before I built this rig in the NV9 I had a 120 and a 140 fan over my RAM at separate times to see what air vs water would be like for several months.

Unfortunately summer is fast approaching and temps in my room are climbing so it won't be a 1:1, but I think I've witnesses enough data to make my conclusion. So my findings are the following:

If you're on a budget and overclocking your RAM, air is fine, it won't cool as well unless you have good RPM/airflow, My fan had to be 60% load in order to stop heat rising at idle and under load while stress testing it needed to be 100% or temps would cause errors.

Water is better by a few degrees at idle, but under prolonged load I noticed a few degrees higher than air by about 2.5c, but my setup isn't direct die like on DDR5, I have DDR4 using the Alphacool kit. The DIMM covers are Aluminium so that's not really helping much, but it works. I plan on getting the Bartx copper covers in the future, because they're copper and DDR4 & DDR5. Water is silent, and for me, that is the biggest pro there is, the 120 and 140mm fans spinning way faster than all my other fans was driving me insane. I don't regret using a waterblock for the RAM at all.

So if you wondered should you go water or air when cooling your RAM, that should help you out. Water will always win for me, silence and cooling potential will always win vs air.