When we think of cooling our PC components, we tend to focus in on the CPU and the GPU. Some of the other components that can be cooled to improve performance and preserve life expectancy include the hard drives and memory. Recently, I reviewed the Ultra Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler with Heatpipes which helps keep the hard drive cool and quiet.

Today, we will be looking at a new product from Scythe, the Kama-Wing, a passive cooler for PC memory. This heatspreader is unique in its appearance which features a set of wings that come off at an 80 degree angle from the memory area of the spreaders. Lets see if the Kama-Wing actually improves the temperature of our memory.

Scythe KAMA WING SILVER Aluminum Memory Heatsink

Reviewed by: Tomas Ratas

Sponsor: Scythe

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Scythe KAMA WING SILVER Aluminum Memory Heatsink 

Features:

Original Designed with Angled Shape
Original designed memory cooler with angled shape (80 degree) to increase the cooling area as well as to minimize the interference with the components installed on the motherboard.

Single and double-sided memory support
Compatible to single and double-sided memory with thermal sheets included!

Specs:
Model Name: KAMA WING SILVER
Model #: SCKW-1000SL
Manufacturer: Scythe Co., Ltd. Japan
Dimensions: 125 x 39 x 10 mm (W x D x T)

*Thickness with extended fin portion is measured as 31mm
Weight: 25 g
Compatibility: SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3,

* Ready for Single/Double Sided Memory
Material: Aluminum

Price: $9.80

{mospagebreak title=A Better Look at things}

A Better Look at Things

:

The Kama-Wing comes in a clear plastic casing which sits against a black cardboard sleeve with Kama-Wing printed on the top. There is English and Japanese writing on the front and back of the cardboard.

On the back, the instructions for attaching the Kama-Wing on both single and double sided memory sticks can be found.

In the package, one finds four heat spreader pieces, six thermal sheets and four clips. Four of the thermal sheets are thin for application onto double sided memory and two of the sheets are thicker for the single sided memory sticks.

The Scythe Kama-Wing is designed to be used on SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 or DDR3 memory sticks.

There are two Kama-Wings for up to two separate memory sticks. For each set there is a front and back heat spreader. They are composed of a shiny silver aluminum.

On the top of the front heat spreader is the Scythe logo. The top of each heat spreader is angled at 80 degrees away from the portion that sits on the memory.

The angled portion features seven slits on the left and right side, for what I would assume is for ventilation. The two fins do not touch and have about a millimeter of space in between.

Installation, Testing and Comparison

Attaching the Kama-Wing to a stick of memory is akin to making a sandwich. The front and back heat spreaders hold the memory which needs a thermal sheet attached to each side. Once the edges of the heat spreaders are brought together, then the clips are attached to seal the Kama-Wing closed.

The Kama-Wing is a unique looking heat spreader. With its wing at 80 degrees from the actual memory stick, this provides a nice vector for release excess heat.

For testing, I installed the Kama-Wing onto a pair of Corsair Value-Ram 512MB sticks on the following system:

CPU: AMD Opteron 165

Motherboard: DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra (Bios – 704-2BTA) Socket 939

Storage: 200GB Maxtor 7200 PATA

Video card: eVGA 7600GT

PSU: OCZ Powerstream 520 Watt SLI

As long as you pay attention to the direction of the wings, the Kama-Wing seems to fit even underneath the large ThermalTake MaxOrb that was sitting on the Opteron CPU.

To measure temperatures, I used the JetArt ThermoEye DT2000. The ambient room temperature was 68F. For stress the ram, I used Orthos Beta on Mixed settings.

As you can see, there is a slight reduction in temperature, but nothing jaw dropping.

Summary:

The temperature drop is not incredibly dramatic and there is some debate whether heat spreaders truly make a difference in terms of memory performance. The Scythe Kama-Wing is simple to install and can be removed very easily.

For the price, this is a nice option to help decrease the temperatures of value types of memory. Since higher end memory sticks come with heat spreaders already attached, this makes the Kama-Wing unnecessary.

DragonSteelMods gives the Scythe Kama Wing a 3.5 out of 5 score.

Pros:

-Cool Design

-Easy Installation

-Low Price

Cons:

-Questionable Performance Benefit

I would like to thank Scythe for the chance to review the Kama Wing and for their continued support of DSM.

review#326