Thermaltake reveals WaterRam RGB: liquid-cooled DDR4 memory

Thermaltake, a company with its fingers in many PC hardware pies, has seen fit to poke another one, announcing a move into the memory market at CES 2019 with DDR4 that’s not only RGB-illuminated but also ready for custom water-cooling.

Dubbed the WaterRam RGB (thankfully not ‘MemoryLeak RGB’), the new DDR4 offering comes in two kits, one dual-channel 16GB and one quad-channel 32GB, with both kits – as you’ve probably surmised – relying exclusively on 8GB modules. Both kits run at the same speed, 3,200MHz, and are certified for 16-18-18-38 timings running at 1.35V. Thermaltake is using SK Hynix C-die ICs exclusively and even has its logo etched into the individual packages. The modules support Intel XMP 2.0 for easy overclocking; no AMD compatibility is officially listed, but we’re told they should work just fine.

So far so standard, but the WaterRam RGB kits are looking to distinguish themselves in two ways, both given away by the name: Firstly they have RGB illumination, and secondly they support custom water-cooling out of the box.

However, rather than having the DIMMs themselves illuminate as we tend to see from other brands, Thermaltake is merging RGB and water-cooling functionality into a single water block that screws onto the top of the modules and cools all two or all four DIMMs at once. The modules do come fitted with their own individual heatsinks comprising 2mm aluminium on both sides with heat transfer achieved by thermal pads beneath the aluminium, but the water block is designed to reduce temperatures further still. It sports a CNC-cut copper base with nickel plating to which users will need to apply the supplied thermal pads, while a pair of standard G1/4” threads on the top allow for integration into custom water-cooling loops. The block is the same size (53.8mm wide, covering four standard DDR4 slots) regardless of the kit chosen.

Also incorporated into the water block is a set of 12 addressable RGB LED for illumination purposes, and these are controlled via a single cable that plugs into the block itself. You can connect the block directly to a 5V addressable RGB header on your motherboard (12V headers are not supported), allowing you to control the lighting via the appropriate software from either ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI – users should know, however, that the software from Asus and Gigabyte are known to be severe security risks. Alternatively, you can connect it to the supplied Molex-powered Thermaltake RGB controller, which allows the WaterRam RGB to tie into the existing Thermaltake ‘TT RGB Plus’ RGB ecosystem, which also includes Razer Chroma and Amazon Alexa.

The memory itself comes with a lifetime warranty, but the water block only carries a two-year warranty, with no reason given for the difference. The WaterRam RGB memory kits are on sale now for around £240 (16GB) or £410 (32GB) in the UK. More information is available on the official website.