Introduction

From what I can remember, the first set of memory heat spreaders were designed for RDRAM (or RIMM) memory modules. For this type of RAM the uses of heat spreaders were twofold. The first reason being, that the RIMM ran hotter than the usual SDRAM, necessitating the use of heat spreaders for heat control. The second reason was that the frequency of the RDRAM coincided with a few household electronic devices, such as cordless phones, which could and would act up in the vicinity of the RDRAM; this lead to its second reasoning, to help eliminate any "noise" that emanated from the RAM itself. Today the usage is more for heat dissipation than any sort of interference and of course heat spreaders look way cooler than stock RAM with no spreaders.

Xigmatek, while being known for their very impressive CPU cooler line-up, has decided to break the mold and have branched into memory cooling as well. Xigmatek has made two variations of their new endeavor, one of which is a standard basic style heat spreader, while another, bit more ambitious version includes one, solo H.D.T heat pipe that actually runs across the IC's (actual memory chips). Xigmatek passed along for me to review the first style of the more basic heat spreader concept, with the Cuirassier-N002. The second H.D.T. design is called the Dragoon-N442, which I hope to receive and review as well.

The Cuirassiers from Xigmatek follow their line of naming, as the word "cuirassier", pronounced kwir-a-'sir and literally means a mounted soldier who wears a cuirass, which is essentially a breast plate of armor. The Cuirassier-N002 is sort of a breast plate for your RAM, which is then "mounted" to the motherboard, making the name fitting for the concept. At this point I have only two concerns with this line of naming. For one, usually armor is heavy, and for two, armor is to protect, not to vent, making the wearing of armor hot to the user. Enough with my pre-conceived notions of the product, it's time now to take some snapshots get down to testing.