Date: February 11th, 2003
Article by: Burt Carver (Hardware Reviewer & Newsposter)
Products was donated by: Tweakmonster.com (Ramsinks) & OneCoolPC (Crystal Orb)

Overclocking is the poor man's upgrade, and many people have turned overclocking of various computer components into an art. As anyone who has ventured into the complex world of overclocking, the principal enemy of overclockers is HEAT. Up until a generation or two of graphics cards back, even the graphics processor only needed passive cooling, if any cooling at all. With the advent of the GeForce line of cards, active cooling was born. I would personally argue active cooling was necessary on the TNT line of cards as well, as anyone who touched that smoking heatsink would probably attest to. Ahh… the good ol' days.

Now, we have super fast graphics processors running at breakneck speeds, and a multitude of tweaking utilities to make 'em go FAST. Just about every aftermarket card available now has some sort of tweaking utility either shipped with the card or available as freeware online. Depending on your card and the quality of the components, significant gains can be realized through overclocking. However, one of the most overlooked components that requires heat control on an overclocked video card is the RAM. Many of today's premiere cards are shipped with ramsinks, and browsing around the net you will probably find that most of the stuff attached at the factory is eyecandy, and nothing more.

The focus of the review today will be some beautiful RamSinks provided by Tweakmonster.com. As a result of the design of my graphics card, I will also be attaching a Thermaltake Crystal Orb (OneCoolPC). I will outline the trials and tribulations of the installation, stock temperature numbers and modded temperature numbers.

On with the review!