Exclusive: Sandy Bridge-E to ship without cooler

[Final8y]

How many of you rely on aftermarket coolers for your CPU? We don't know anyone that thinks Intel's stock coolers are great and when details reached us of Intel not shipping coolers with its upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processors we were at first surprised, but considering the target market it makes a lot of sense.

How many of you rely on aftermarket coolers for your CPU? We don't know anyone that thinks Intel's stock coolers are great and when details reached us of Intel not shipping coolers with its upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processors we were at first surprised, but considering the target market it makes a lot of sense.

The upcoming Core i7 processor from Intel, the 3820, 3930K and the 3960X will all ship without a cooler in the box. That said, Intel has decided to offer own brand coolers for the platform, it's just that they won't come in the box with the CPU. We can't really see why anyone would buy an Intel cooler over a third party cooler as not even Intel's high-end heatpipe cooler for its current and past Extreme Edition models were all that great. Some of the third party cooler makers will have products ready at launch, but worst case scenario, we might be looking at a cooler shortage at launch.

On top of this, we're hearing that although the rated TDP is 130W these beasts are consuming closer to 180W and that's without even overclocking them. In fact, according to PSU design guidance we've seen, Intel is telling power supply makers to make sure their Sandy Bridge-E PSUs can cope with a peak current of 23A on the 12V2 rail and based on an 80 percent or better efficiency rating of the PSU.

As such it might be a very good idea to invest in a water cooling kit if you're planning on going Sandy Bridge-E, especially if you're planning on pushing the boat out and overclock. The bad news for LN2 crowd is that at least early samples of Sandy Bridge-E is suffering from the dreaded cold bug, although this might have been fixed in later revisions of the processor.

On top of all that it looks like the quad core 3820 model has been delayed and will arrive later than the 3930K and 3960X, although we don't know exactly when Intel intends to release it to the market. Intel is currently working on the C1 stepping and this should be what ships in the end unless there are any unforeseen issues with the latest stepping. So in other words, good news all around…

http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusive-sandy-bridge-e-to-ship-without-cooler/13296.html#ixzz1V1J5nadt

 

[nate922]

Wow, that's a big move.

Intel should be offering the new chips at a cheaper price to compensate.

 

[Surveyor]

Wow, that's a big move.

Intel should be offering the new chips at a cheaper price to compensate.

If what the OP posted is what the released processors end up like I'd be more worried about the power consumption and cooling requirements of these chips.

You'll need a Thermalright Silver Arrow or Noctua NH-D14 just to run them at stock speeds with reasonable temperatures

 

[Mollari]

You'll need a Thermalright Silver Arrow or Noctua NH-D14 just to run them at stock speeds with reasonable temperatures

If this is the case we will be seeing even more bigger and better CPU coolers lol and even bigger cases to accommodate 'em

 

[N19h7m4r3]

We don't need bigger, we need smaller efficient ones for m-itx systems.

 

[Gashman]

yeah this is just going the wrong direction, we don't need bigger coolers, more heat and what not, we need cooler, more efficient chips or else the advancing of micro-processors won't be sustainable, eventually we'll need cooling towers to keep our PCs cool!

 

[nate922]

These CPUs may be hot on initial release as they are not I.B.
One can only imagine I.B will run a lot cooler with the new manufacturing process.

 

[Reaper 392]

hmm, my cooler says it can cope with up to a 300W TDP. guess zalman are gonna have to put their money where their mouth is soon

 

[scrlk]

Not surprised really, I'd say these chips are closer to the Xeon range in terms of price/performance (which don't ship with a heatsink) than any other chip.

 

[Indy500]

180W TDP? I'm reminded of the disastrous P4 Prescott saga. Not to mention Smithfield..

 

[bru]

I really don't believe 180w TDP at stock speeds, that just seems ridiculous, unless their coming in at 5GHz stock or something equally daft.
f their rated at 130w TDP then their very unlikely to be coming in at 40% over budget power wise, even more so if Intel are planning them without coolers.

 

[James J]

I really don't believe 180w TDP at stock speeds, that just seems ridiculous, unless their coming in at 5GHz stock or something equally daft.
f their rated at 130w TDP then their very unlikely to be coming in at 40% over budget power wise, even more so if Intel are planning them without coolers.

Agree, seems insanely high compared to the sandybridge cpus at the moment. 180TDP would be pretty difficult and ultimately expensive to try and keep cool and the PSU requirements being revised for just a CPU are worrying also. Usually its graphics cards which push the PSU companies to release newer and better products, not CPU companies!

 

[drunkenmaster]

Remember that memory controller's take a LOT of power and adding two extra channels and the "normal" TDP isn't the max TDP hence the difference.

I would think the normal and max TDP would be even further apart on Sandy-e than dual channel sandy as normal use will very very rarely completely max out the bandwidth available to it.


Anyway, following the logic in the Bulldozer thread, AMD might ship some high end models for overclocking with watercooling, therefore it must be crazy hot.

I guess that means Sandybridge-e's that don't come with a cooler run ultra cool?

The TDP game is getting a bit ridiculous in all honesty, AMD, Nvidia and Intel all essentially make up their TDP's as various averages or, whatever the heck they want, AMD I think were the last to move from "real max TDP" values a few years ago, which is fair enough, if everyone else is doing average use TDP and you advertise max TDP, you'll look very poor in comparison.

Would be nice if they sold "both" versions, just so you could see the non heatsink version was £5-10 less.

 

[PermaBanned]

Not really a bad move as long as they actually take the cost of it off the price and don't just pocket the difference. I would like to see them do something about heatspreaders on higher end models though - as in, make them from copper and pre-lap them.

 

[pmc25]

These CPUs may be hot on initial release as they are not I.B.
One can only imagine I.B will run a lot cooler with the new manufacturing process.

It has been confirmed that the 2011 socket platform will not get 22nm in 2012. It only comes in 2013. 22nm will only be seen on the 1155 platform, for the forseeable future.

 

[Evoss]

Yay, now we wont see people with an awesome gaming rig and a stock cooler stuck in the middle xD

 

[Sin_Chase]

Not really a bad move as long as they actually take the cost of it off the price and don't just pocket the difference. I would like to see them do something about heatspreaders on higher end models though - as in, make them from copper and pre-lap them.

At the kind of quantity Intel buy in/make stock HSF units the actual cost price of one of them is not going to be much? Yeah it should reflect in the price but if it does I would likely expect less than £10!

 

[psychas]

i dont think they can get hotter then 980 990 i7 ? sure thermal capacity should improve generation to generation also it is 32nm. maybe if they clocked already at 4ghz out the box.

or i have wrong idea?

 

[dafadau]

The stock coolers on Sandy Bridge are fine. I use one after trying a few more expensive coolers - there isn't a lot of difference if you're not going for a mental overclock.

Of course, I will be in about 6 months time...

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

I buy with a stock HSF so that I can test the chip works before I put it all under water :/