AMD's "Black Box" Athlon 64 X2 6400+
MojoKid writes "Rumors of a new high-end AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip circulated in July, but availability and specifics of the chip were unconfirmed at the time. Now AMD has officially taken the wraps off their new Athlon 64 X2 6400+, a 3.2GHz dual-core chipset to compete with Intel's Core 2 E6750 and E6850 series. HotHardware notes that the new 6400+ is still built on AMD's 90nm fab process and has a single 2-GHz HyperTransport link and 2 MB of on-chip L2 cache (1 MB per core), just like its predecessor the 6000+. The new processor is said to be a 'channel only' offering and will retail at $239 or so, in a black retail box (picture here) without a heatsink."
Keeps the CPU somewhere in the 30-45C range, and can barely be heard (the rest of the fans (all two of them!) are 120mm, and quite quiet. There is a variable speed 120mm fan in my PS as well (Thermaltake Modular 500w).
I think people who go out and buy gigantic, noisy-assed, obnoxious HSF's are just wasting their money. But who does actually use the boxed coolers? Well, maybe those who run semperons or similar but I do hardly believe that those who are buying that kind of processor will use the boxed cooler.
bork bork bork!