Today, we have a competition. We have the industry veteran ThermalTake going against a hot new little company by the name of VIZO in a RAM cooling battle royale.  ThermalTake brings their "Cyclo" while VIZO brings the whole "Armada".  Can VIZO's Armada take down ThermalTake's Cyclo? Let's find out!

Before We Start, A Word on RAM Cooling...

As you get up to the higher memory speeds, you'll often find that the memory module makes use of some form of heatsink or heat spreader to dissipate the heat. But wait! What's the difference between a heatsink and a heat spreader?

A heat spreader is really a type of heatsink in that it transfers heat away from a target. The only problem is that it is more or less a block of metal; once the heat capacity of the metal has been reached, it is very difficult to get rid of the heat. A "real" heatsink is one that not only gets rid of the heat but also does so in a more efficient manner. In other words, it should have a lot of surface area exposed to air and it should have fins.

So why bother with heat spreaders? Well, for RAM sticks, the physical space surrounding them is not quite ideal in all cases to just stick on a heatsink like you would for a CPU or GPU, especially with dual channel setups. There is always the chance that you'll have memory modules sitting less than a few millimetres away from the next stick of RAM, so the only logical place to have those fins would be from the top (sticking out horizontally from the memory chip itself). You can already see this starting to happen with Corsair's Dominator series for instance.

In the past, it would have been easier to stick on a metal jacket that encases the memory modules all at once and be done with it. An example of this are the Corsair's 4000PT DDR500 Dual Channel Kit that we just happen to have lying around. Heat spreaders might not have been the greatest solution, but they are better than nothing.

As mentioned before, the problem with heat spreaders is getting rid of that heat from the immediate apparatus. For instance, try blowing onto a tea kettle after you poured in a litre or so of boiling water and see how fast you'll get to cooling it down. Now add a few hundred fins to the surface of this tea kettle and then do the same. The situation is nearly identical in the case of RAM: more surface area equals more cooling.

In the end airflow is better than now airflow, so without further adieu, we bring you the battle between the VIZO Armada and the ThermalTake Cyclo. Let's get to it!