DDR5, It’s So Hot Right Now

Testing DDR5 Thermal Performance

DDR5 frequencies continue to increase, with 8800MHz kits becoming fairly common and comparatively affordable.  That has inspired TechPowerUp to test a DDR5-5600 kit from KLEVV at a variety of frequencies to see what the thermals actually look like; with and without a heatspreader.  They also tested the different temperatures reached when running the DIMM at 1.25V through 1.50V to see what effect that has on RAM temperatures.  They measured the temperature of the DIMM in four separate places, to get an accurate idea of what kind of temperatures the memory reaches.

The temperatures increase as frequencies and voltage are raised, as you would expect, and there is a hard ceiling for being able to passively cool the DIMMs.  For higher voltages and frequencies you won’t see stable performance with passive cooling, as TPU demonstrates in their testing.  Take a look through the results to get an idea what kind of cooling you are going to need to tame those DDR5 thermals.