Thinkpads Forum

I just ordered an X61 (hasn't arrived yet) and want to buy more memory for it. Should I have any trouble installing memory that contains a heat shield?

Something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231124

Based on the reviews for this product, the heat shield sometimes causes the memory to not fit into a tight slot. Does anyone have any experience with this for the X60 or X61?

The X61 doesn't have a heat shield as far as I know.

Thanks for the response. To clarify, I understand the memory that comes with the X61 doesn't come with a heat shield. But would there be any problem installing memory that does have a heat shield? Thanks.

It may depend on how thick the heat shield is. If it's anything like Elpida DDR, it should not be a problem.

i ordered some ram with "heat shields" installed too:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820144063

but all i had to do was slide them off... it turns out those are actually built to protect the chips from static during shipping

atarimaster wrote:<snip>... it turns out those are actually built to protect the chips from static during shipping

Kind of doubtful. Generally the place to protect the modules from static would be along the edge of the board that has the "fingers" which connect to the motherboard. While it's possible that the heat shield does in some small way protect the individual memory ICs from static, that would only be true if those memory chips were in packages with exposed leads, typically called SOIC (small outline IC like this) or TSOP (thin small outline package; essentially an SOIC but with the leads on the short ends). If they are in BGA (ball grid array, like this), then there's no way that the heat shields are there for static protection simply because the leads are not even exposed in that area.

And it's really not a heat "shield" in the sense if it being there to protect the memory from getting hot. Rather, it's a heat sink, whose purpose is to draw the heat out of the device and allow the silicon chip to run stay as cool as possible. Much like a heat sink on top of a CPU is there to extract and dissipate the heat.