january 2016 -

 

both amd and intel bundle cooling solutions with their microprocessors. such coolers are inexpensive, they are rather reliable and they do their job. they are not supposed to enable great overclocking results, or be utterly quiet, unlike premium thermal solutions from the third parties. the two cpu developers are gradually working to improve their own coolers and this week amd unveiled its new “wraith” cooling system for its current and future chips.

at present, amd equips its boxed fx-series central processing units (cpus) with a rather small air cooler called the amd d3. the latter is made of aluminum, is equipped with four heat-pipes as well as a 70-mm fan. the thermal solution can remove up to 125w of heat, but at the cost of a lot of noise (up to 51 dba, according to amd). the vast majority of enthusiasts, who buy amd fx cpus, usually obtain their thermal solutions from companies like corsair, noctua or scythe. however, certain pc makers utilize bundled coolers, which may not be a very optimal decision since they get rather loud when cpus get hot. amd’s high-end accelerated processing units (apus) can dissipate up to 95w, but their boxed versions are also equipped with rather tiny and noisy coolers, which is not a problem for power users (who use third-party solutions anyway), but is not exactly good for pc makers.

while enthusiasts will continue to use third-party coolers with amd’s current and future central processing units, for many pc makers new thermal solutions will mean that amd-based systems will get considerably quieter (which means generally more competitive). since the wraith is not large, it will fit into small form-factor systems. as a result, it will soon be possible to build an inexpensive sff pc based on a high-performance amd apu that will be relatively quiet.

amd did not reveal when exactly it plans to start bundling the wraith cooler with its chips, but expect the new thermal solution to show up in the coming months.