Workstations/servers have forced air cooling that drives a significant amount of airflow over the ram sticks. Gaming PCs don't. I don't think you can make the assumption that heat spreaders / sinks on ram don't help in them.
I thought the gaming PC airflow was front fans => cpu cooler => back (and top) exhaust fan(s) which puts the RAM sticks in the smack middle of the airflow.
> which puts the RAM sticks in the smack middle of the airflow
They're usually perpendicular to the air flow. Bonus points for there being a beefy ATX connector in front.
So maybe the first stick gets some air, but all the others are hidden behind it and don't get much. I think that's the theory why many heatsinks on ricing sticks tend to have a comb design.
I also wonder about M.2 drives, mounted flat to the motherboard with what seems like lip-service to cooling. One of my bug-bears with PC design has been as heat/power demands increase it seems like there's a lack of incentive to do more than the bare minimum on coordination to drastically improve layout, the GPU daughterboard growing into a brick you need to mount and cool is another. I don't entirely blame them when shiny lights keep on selling.
