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AMD Hardware IT Technology

AMD Ships Heavy Duty Cooling With Latest Processor 63

Posted by Hemos from the keep-it-cool dept.
jmke writes "With the increasing heat output of recent processors both Intel and AMD are shipping larger and heavier heatsink/fan combo's to cool them down. AMD has now incorporated heat pipe technology, which is usually only found in more expensive third party CPU cooling solutions. This test compares the new heatsink to a popular 3rd party product and it turns out that the new AMD unit is very impressive: high performance and silent operation from a free CPU cooler? AMD has done it! Now if only Intel would follow."
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AMD Ships Heavy Duty Cooling With Latest Processor More

AMD Ships Heavy Duty Cooling With Latest Processor

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  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by war3rd ( 650566 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:09PM (#14548755) Homepage
    That's cool (sorry).
    • Firstly, you suck. :) Secondly, it is a pretty sweet solution. For a stock cooler, according to the tests performed, it's nearly perfect for temperature and noise control. The article makes an interesting prediction about these coolers and ebay...we'll see. I'd like one of these when I build my replacement system at the end of the year, but not neccessarily with the CPU they got it with.
      • I can only assume that puns are over your head, you silly person.
        • No no, I got the pun, that's why I said "you suck." You made me groan audibly. That's a good thing in a pun and I enjoyed it, but still...
          • My apologies, then... You made me think you were arguing, and that I had poo-pood the development. Such is the lot of those who type instead of speak. It is pretty cool tho :)
      • I'd be a little woried about the fin spacing, though. The last time they released a CPU cooler like that they were quite prone to dust clogging them up and frying chips.

  • Oblig. slashdot whine (Score:4, Funny)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:14PM (#14548810)
    Yes, but I like using my pc as a space heater.

  • Nice, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:16PM (#14548821)

    ...when do we hit the hit wall. I know that we can got for liquid cooling etc etc but we must surely be approaching the point where processors can't get much fast simply because the cooling solutions are becoming impractical.

    Fair enough there will be some people that will be happy to have cryo units strapped to the side of their boxen but I think most computers are already a little on the large side considering what's in them.

    I suppose one thing that hasn't been done on a large scale yet is ducted inputs and outputs. I imagine having the ability to draw in cooler air from outside the case would make for a fair advantage but this would require a redesign of the basic case which manufacturers are loathed to do.

    I would be interested to know if anyone has studied this problem and come to any conculsions about whether will will hit the limit of Moore's law first or just be unable to cool a processor first.

    • For quite some time, Dell has used ducts on their CPU heatsinks, either to bring cool air directly to the processor, or exhaust the hot air immediately out of the case. It's not a complete ducted input and output, but it's a start.

      It's worth mentioning that Intel made an attempt at it with the BTX form factor. They were driven by the increasingly hard-to-manage heat output of their processors (Presscott). Since they are changing direction and abandoning the GHz-at-any-cost approach, they will be using c
      • I would describe five years as a bit more than quite some time. The standard Dell practice is to duct air from a large case fan over the processor. Of course if they keep this arrangement with the new processors (and they have just introduce a new BTX caseline up in the Optiplex range) it should mean nice quite machines.

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by faloi ( 738831 )
      I imagine having the ability to draw in cooler air from outside the case would make for a fair advantage but this would require a redesign of the basic case which manufacturers are loathed to do.

      Intel has a spec for TAC (Thermally Advantaged Chassis) that a lot of vendors are conforming to. It's basically a design guide that offers recomendations to ensure good air flow.

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:32PM (#14548972) Homepage
      Unless I am mistaken there is no intention to hit the wall as far as AMD is concerned.

      AMD has not increased the heat output for quite a while. Their CPUs still produce the same heat. IIRC it is 65, 85 or 110 depending on the submodel for Athlon and Opteron. If their CTO is to be believed they do not intend to change any of these values anytime soon. They will ship 110 for people who do not care, 85 for ones who kind'a care and 65 for blades and small form factor. They intend to increase the performance while keeping to one of these "sweet spots" for all three types.

      Simply the market has demanded quieter and quieter PCs lately. As a result Intel went the BTX route which provides lower noise and better cooling due to a new case design. AMD dropped the noise on their coolers by changing the cooler design at least twice over the last 2 years. Possibly more times. This is from looking at upgrade leftovers I have left which are not that many so they do not make a statistically significant sample.

      • Re:Nice, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by freidog ( 706941 )
        Well, the dual core parts are the first to use the 110W TDP, the older FX S939 parts were 104W so it's not a major increase but a creeping power usage.
        AMD has been trying to retail compatability with all S939 boards, including the early NF3 and K8T800 Pro boards. I don't know AMD's original requirements for the current the motherboard should be able to supply to the CPU, but I do know the dual core parts can draw about 10A more than the original highest power parts on S939. That may be one factor that's d
    • I don't think there will be a wall soon, even if we hit it eventually.

      While processors have been increasing in heat recently, over time, cooling has become better. Early computers were the size of whole, air conditioned rooms!

      I know that we're talking 20-30 years ago, but the idea is the same; for the most part, technology has become smaller and previous solutions are still suitable. One example is the cell phone. And computers have been getting more powerful and smaller as well; laptops as thin as yo
    • ". . .the cooling solutions are becoming impractical"

      What do you mean? Cooling your PC with cooking oil [tomshardware.com] is completely practical ;P

      • What do you mean? Cooling your PC with cooking oil is completely practical.
        It gets a bit messy when you want fries for lunch.
    • In a lot of cases the hardware has exceeded the performance of the software. We see that in poorly written games, un-optimized hardware drivers and that company in Redmond who gets slammed here all the time.. What's their name again? Micro-something?

      AMD and Intel both have reached the point where speed doesn't matter so much. You can have as many Gigahertz as you want, the software is still going to constrain the performance. Add in networking bottlenecks and people who have no problem with using dial-up a
  • This test compares the new heatsink to a popular 3rd party product and it turns out that the new AMD unit is very impressive: high performance and silent operation from a free CPU cooler?

    So I take it this person has never looked at the price difference between retail package and oem(bare) processors. You're definitely paying for the packaging and the heatsink/fan, though maybe not as much as a nice 3rd party unit.

    • Well, considering the fact that you also get a 3 year warranty with the retail boxes, as opposed to the OEM warranty, which MUST be supported by the company you bought them from, you get a little more than just a box and a fan.

      • Re:Free? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nmos ( 25822 )
        Well, considering the fact that you also get a 3 year warranty with the retail boxes

        That's not much of a risk since cpus pretty much never die from any cause that would be covered under warranty.
    • the article doesn't say much about which retail packs are shipping with this new hsf, 'cept for the opteron 165. I have a san diego 4k retail pack en route from newegg.. i wonder if i get the new hsf.
      • You did, just got mine from newegg. However you will have a problem if you bought the asus a8n32 deluxe sli board to go with it. The bios doesn't support the processor and you will need to get asus to send you a new one - the board won't post, and is impossible to flash even with the EZ Flash bios util (because it won't post).

    • It is. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ichigo 2.0 ( 900288 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:46PM (#14549144)
      With AMD banning [anandtech.com] retail sale of OEM processors, they're getting harder and more expensive to find. Most places here sell retail at or below OEM prices, so I think it is correct to say that the cooler is essentially free.
  • Just go down to your local discount retailer and buy one of those cheap mini-refrigerators. Stick your CPU in there.
    • Uh, better hope the moisture doesn't build up in there when your cheap freezer hits the defrost part of the cycle. Moisture is not our computers friend, senior.
  • Many things are not available at WalMart simply because the producers cannot make the minimum quantity required. Likewise for heatpipes. IMHO, Intel still sells more boxed CPUs than AMD (although the difference is much smaller than total retail systems). I suspect Intel has trouble finding suppliers who can sell them enough.

    Many thing are similarly affected by unseen factors. What appears irrational is usually just ignorance of factors.

  • Wonder why AMD would do this (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:38PM (#14549057)
    I have a bit of experience building AMD socket939 systems and I always thought even the old heatsinks were a bit overkill. Athlon 64's are so damn efficient that the stock heatsink is always cool to the touch. Frankly, the stock fan runs much faster than it needs to. I imagine that the point of this fancier heatsink, which comes with an RPM regulator, is to make a quieter system. I wholeheartedly support that. But it really should be Intel that's making fancy retail heatsinks, with the insane temperatures generated by their Prescotts and Xeons!

    I'm sure Newegg will soon be full of reviews about how high you can overclock an Athlon using this retail heatsink. It almost seems like AMD is encouraging them... and I wouldn't be surprised if the Athlon's widespread fame as an excellent overclocker contributes to the increased market share that AMD is enjoying. But I also wouldn't be surprised if overclocking eats into the sales AMD's higher-margin models.

    Maybe the solution is to bundle these fancy heatsinks only with their upmarket processors ($350 and up) so as to allow even them to run at a substantial overclock.

    • My Opteron 165 with one of the aforementioned coolers runs at 2375 MHz on the stock cooling. I think my motherboard and memory are the limiting factors, too, not the CPU. 2x1.8 GHz to 2x2.375 GHz is a pretty nice jump for a processor, let alone with the retail CPU cooler and thermal interface material (which appears to be wax-based on the Opteron 165).
    • But I also wouldn't be surprised if overclocking eats into the sales AMD's higher-margin models.

      I don't really think it eats into it that much. The people that can afford the $1,000 FX chips either have money to burn and could care less about overclocking, or they are the type of person that seriously cares about getting that last 2 frames per second in their favorite FPS game... which means they will happily overclock it so they can get 3 instead of 2. The kind of person that thinks in terms of "best
    • A decent motherboard will let you run the fans slower than max speed if the temperature is low (PWM).
    • Thinking my new Athlon64 3200+ system would run as hot as the Pentium 3 and P4 lines, I went ahead and bought the XP-120 ( http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_x p120.htm [thermalright.com]) and a nice, quiet 120mm Panaflo fan (model FBA12G12L1A, the one recommended for use w/ the XP-120) along with all the other parts.

      Imagine my annoyance/glee when I discovered that, not only do I not need the XP-120/120mm fan, but I am *unable* to get the CPU to go above 100F, even when running at a 145-155%% overclock (I have PC4
  • I bought an x2 4400+ a couple months ago and it came with this heat sink. This is nothing new.
    • it is new as previous A64 did not ship with this ;)
    • Built a gamer for a customer last March and the FX 55 had one of these. It was the best oem heatsink I have ever seen. With the motherboard controlling the fan it was quieter than my Athlon XP 3000, and hang on to your shorts fast.
    • I purchased the parts to build a new system based around the X2 4600+ and it came with the same cooler, too. This was in June '05.

      The system I put the CPU into was a Shuttle SN25P. It uses it's own cooling solution which, ironically, uses the mounts for a Socket 478 P4. It works beautifully in a push-pull configuration, but it feels really odd specifying an Intel socket when looking for potential water-cooling parts.

      The problem I find with the stock AMD heatsink with the heat-pipes is that most motherboa
  • It has a 5,200 RPM fan on top of it. It's not silent, unless you're already deaf.
    • Replace the stock fan with an aftermarket solution like a Vantec stealth for 5$. A fan is a lot cheaper than an entire aftermarket heatsink. For even better performance hook the fan to a fan speed controller and adjust to your ears content.
    • read the link, then come back, no crack here baby ;-)

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