How AMD's Wraith Cooler Came To Be

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Over the last few months, AMD has been designing a new flagship stock CPU cooler. We have the inside story on how it came to be.

How AMD's Wraith Cooler Came To Be : Read more

 

[toddybody]

Very glad to see stock AMD coolers improve so much...but with most things, the natural question is "why did it take this long"?

I think AMD could create a great value statement by really upping the game on their stock coolers...making their cost argument against intel (~$30.00 entry point of decent aftermarket coolers) that much better.

 

[rolli59]

Great new Cooler! New CPU's????

 

[TechyInAZ]

Now that's cool!! Intel, learn from this!

That's soo cool that a ex-TH editor is actually onboard with amd on this, sweet!

 

[pjc6281]

Great, AMD can cool their overheated processors. Leave the cooling to the aftermarket and spend the R&D on a new performance chipset/Socket/processor. Get in the GAME AMD, we need you to compete.

 

[Hatemode]

+3db's is twice as loud to the human ears.. not +10dbs...

 

[thor220]

AMD's really re-inventing everything for Zen, isn't it? I think it's great that they can sit down in a meeting and push things forward like this. They aren't as big as Intel so it's much easier to do things like this and it definitely bodes well for them.

If this new cooler is good it would be very bad news for Intel, who haven't changed their design in a long time. Anyone buying low-to midrange CPUs would consider a quieter, cooler PC a large advantage.

 

[falchard]

AMD has had good coolers since Phenom II. So it's not surprising they continue to improve their cooler. Intel doesn't even try on their coolers, and frankly they don't need to.

 

[quilciri]

Great, AMD can cool their overheated processors. Leave the cooling to the aftermarket and spend the R&D on a new performance chipset/Socket/processor. Get in the GAME AMD, we need you to compete.

I'd love to see Zen processors outperform Skylake, but I've huge respect for AMD regardless.

With 10% of Intel's budget and personnel, AMD has developed x86 CPU's, ARM CPU's, GPU"s APU's, adaptive sync that does not require additional hardware, their own memory modules (not to mention HBM integration), and an entirely new graphics API that has become the basis of DirectX12.

But of course, no one cares that they only have 1/10th of Intel's money to spread between both their CPU and GPU divisions. They want AMD CPU's to outperform Intel's and cost less.

AMD is very much "in the game", imho.

 

[Onijin]

If it can cool an FX series CPU it's definitely not a piece of kit to sneeze at.

Just please, AMD, use it well with Zen so we can have competition again. I miss blow-for-blow performance wars like we got in the early 2000s.

 

[CaedenV]

So, this is cool, but really? The finance guys at a company in fiscal difficulty thought that was 'cool' rather than 'wasteful'? And one wonders why they have problems.

Still, it is cool... but OEMs are going to have their own coolers, and most of their customer base will replace it with an aftermarket cooler... wouldn't it make more sense to just have the simple quiet redesigned cooler built as cheap as possible, and then have a few larger fancy aftermarket options (with higher markup) to let the AMD enthusiasts (of which there are many) help support the company with a few extra purchases.

 

[madmatt30]

^ I'm with the guy above - they're patting themselves on the back at reinventing the wheel.

Its hardly a new design anyway (apart from the fans laser etched led)

Remember the phenom 2 coolers??

I could have designed them a cooler for £1 .

Take the current 8350 triple pipe cooler - stick a 92mm fan on it with a small centre spindle - job done - make that the default for any chip regardless of tdp & they would have saved themselves probably a 6 figure sum.

The fx stock heatsinks with the pipes fitted have never been a problem - they're fairly decent.
What's never been decent is the 65mm 4000rpm fan that sits on top of them.

 

[ern88]

Let's hope AMD's Polaris and Zen products will be just as good if not better then their new cooler.

 

[f-14]

Great, AMD can cool their overheated processors. Leave the cooling to the aftermarket and spend the R&D on a new performance chipset/Socket/processor. Get in the GAME AMD, we need you to compete.

idk who thumbs downed you, but you're dead on right. rip those _ _ _ppy fans out of there and replace them with better fans and you have a better heat sink. 90% of the folly in all these coolers is the damn cheap _ _ _ tty fans 51 to 40 dbs can be done by just replacing the stock fan. throw in a coolermaster sickle flow you can drop the db, increase the cfm by 30% hard to beat a fan that makes 21db in noise and 65cfm and only for $8-10 a pop.
as far as amd's breakfast skillet cpus it's nothing a die shrink won't fix.
get on the ball amd execs or quit because you suck. your gpus just took a massive dump the same way intel i-core memory controllers knocked your socks off , and you are about to go cyrix in both markets if you don't sock more punch into your processors

 

[pjc6281]

Great, AMD can cool their overheated processors. Leave the cooling to the aftermarket and spend the R&D on a new performance chipset/Socket/processor. Get in the GAME AMD, we need you to compete.

I'd love to see Zen processors outperform Skylake, but I've huge respect for AMD regardless.

With 10% of Intel's budget and personnel, AMD has developed x86 CPU's, ARM CPU's, GPU"s APU's, adaptive sync that does not require additional hardware, their own memory modules (not to mention HBM integration), and an entirely new graphics API that has become the basis of DirectX12.

But of course, no one cares that they only have 1/10th of Intel's money to spread between both their CPU and GPU divisions. They want AMD CPU's to outperform Intel's and cost less.

AMD is very much "in the game", imho.

They are not making money on much out side of their GPU's. No one is expecting them to out perform but at least make progress with their products. Their APU's are good but they can be better or at least more efficient. With Samsung moving forward with their fab process we hope they can get there. Don't let your love for AMD blind you. Focus what you are good at. GPU's, CPU's and APU's. We don't need more memory vendors.

 

[razor512]

It looks like the cooler from their older socket 939 opteron CPUs

http://i.imgur.com/qpVaGVR.jpg

Pic of bottom of the heatsink: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2350/2242193537_5272beb745_o.jpg

I had one with my opteron 170 and it cooled pretty well, even allowed for a decent overclock.

The only issue was the small fan that was able to reach a crazy high RPM, and generate a ton of noise.

 

[koss64]

Glad to see a stock fan that probably wont sound like a blow dryer under load and it has a LED to boot.

 

[madmatt30]

razor512 - that's the image I tried to post earlier but it didn't show up.

What's with the down votes from members who CBA to actually comment on the post - I find that incredibly rude.
I love amd with a passion , without them Intel would have free reign but the marketing & management execs there honestly I don't think really have a clue when it comes to what the consumer wants.

They lost a fair bit of respect from me when it came to the release of the 300 series gpu's - rehashed/repackaged mostly apart from the fury & nano , Ultimately there was no need & it must have cost millions upon millions of $.
They could have disregarded the 380/380x /390/390x release s entirely , kept the d 280x /290/290x & dropped retail prices $20-30 .
& the 370 which is a rehashed 265 !

 

[Lutfij]

I for one am eager to see this new stock cooler from AMD see release date and availability of the Wraith.

Sure I can get an aftermarket cooler but one with a backlit AMD logo nah it's just news to us since a bundled stock cooler that outperforms its predecessor is definitely good news for budget builders.

 

[SpAwNtoHell]

Thumb up AMD.... Hope that this will force intel to change the stock as... As far as i concerned is good only for browsing.

I asume this will be just the start for AMD, and will carry on improving.. or at least i hope. I barely can wait to be released together with the new cpus...

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Well it probably doesn't cost much more and it seems okay, and it is quiet. Seems like an okay use of time since they are pretty much waiting for Zen to be tested and scaled up.

 

[g-unit1111]

Good to see that AMD has taken some steps to improve its' stock cooler, definitely a step in the right direction for AMD.

 

[jerm1027]

Very glad to see stock AMD coolers improve so much...but with most things, the natural question is "why did it take this long"?

I think AMD could create a great value statement by really upping the game on their stock coolers...making their cost argument against intel (~$30.00 entry point of decent aftermarket coolers) that much better.

If the wraith cooler has enough performance to overclock on stock voltage settings while still being quiet, this could be a very lethal combination for the value-oriented enthusiast, especially if Zen makes a significant performance jump from the Bulldozer (/Vishera) architecture and introduced at an aggressive price point. I see a bright future for AMD if they keep it up.

 

[quilciri]

They are not making money on much out side of their GPU's. No one is expecting them to out perform but at least make progress with their products. Their APU's are good but they can be better or at least more efficient. With Samsung moving forward with their fab process we hope they can get there. Don't let your love for AMD blind you. Focus what you are good at. GPU's, CPU's and APU's. We don't need more memory vendors.

Don't let my love blind me to what?

Exactly how much progress are you expecting on 10% on Intel's budget?

Even if AMD only made CPU's we've seen, their performance/budget ratio would be impressive. The fact that they do anything else at all, much less all the things they have done with their resources is even more so.

hyperbole-filled analogy because this is the internet: Someone builds a car with $10. Someone else has $1 and built a car, a motorcycle, a home stereo system, and a refrigerator. People complain because the latter car isn't quite as good as the $10 car.

FYI: memory is something AMD has been historically good at.

 

[Johnpombrio]

By putting this "cool looking" LED logo-ed shroud on the fan, AMD is also preventing ANY cooling of the components like the voltage regulators, the back of the graphics card, the heat pipe from other components on some mobos, and the memory modules. The heat instead is being pumped directly towards the side of the case where the graphics card is and the where the front and rear fans have the least effect on getting rid of the heat.
But boy that laser etched LED logo sure looks cool! Too bad the rest of the computer isn't as cool.