Sandy Bridge-E CPUs Too Hot For Intel?

MrSeb writes "Intel's next consumer CPUs — the Sandy Bridge-E — will ship without a heatsink and fan. These new chips, which will feature up to 15MB of L3 cache and integrated four-channel DDR3 and 32x PCI 3.0 controllers will run very hot — potentially up to 180W TDP. Is Intel unable to cool these extreme chips, or is there another reason for the shift? Curiously, Intel will still offer 'sold separately' own-brand cooling solutions for the new chips — so is this merely Intel trying to cut costs for enthusiasts who don't need a stock cooler — or is this the beginnings of Intel branching out into the cooling business?"

Comments

Warranty

[Anonymous Coward]

It is so they can blame customers if the chip dies of overheating.
If they offer OEM solutions, and the chip overheats, they need to replace it under warranty, guess these chips may have a high chance of dying due to heat

Re:Warranty

[Alex Zepeda]

Two words: installation error.

Re:Warranty

[moonbender]

Huh? Installation error also applies to the "boxed" coolers. It's not like they sold them already mounted on the mainboard. However, damaging a CPU when installing the HSF has been fairly rare for a while now, since the advent of improved mounting mechanisms, integrated heat spreaders and CPUs with thermal throttles.

Re:Warranty

[Lord Byron II]

Is this really such a big deal? I've used third-party high end cooling solutions for over a decade now and I always buy tray-only CPUs. I buy AMD and I can usually find the processor I want without the heatsink and fan. Are things that different from Intel?

I say it's a great change. How many stock fans and heatsinks will be saved from gathering dust because of this? How much waste will this reduce? Plus it will put $10-15 in someone's pocket (probably Intel's).

Re:Warranty

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that Intel chips have had thermal throttling protections since the P4(the effect makes for a cool demo: spin up something CPU intensive, pop the cooler off, and watch the slideshow start, pop the cooler back on, watch the FPS shoot back up...) chip death from pure overheating should be pretty rare(OEMs selling expensive chips with coolers that never actually allow them to run at full speed, on the other hand...)

The best way to cook a chip is found when you start fucking around with the supply voltage in order to get higher stable clock speeds. That can kill your CPU good and hard if done in excess, and in a way that not even a liquid-nitrogen immersion cooler can prevent.

Unless intel wants to incorporate some sort of voltage watchdog(either some tiny voltmeter, or a bunch of carefully calibrated fused/resistive elements that are tuned to blow at specific voltage steps to show the max voltage to which the chip was subjected over its operating life, or something of that nature), they probably won't be able to detect most of the real customer-error kills, and won't face too many purely thermal replacements.

Re:Warranty

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Intel heatsinks NEVER DID come attached to the CPU. It was ALWAYS on the system builder to install the heatsink, even on Intel motherboards. The real issue is that 1) Intel makes really crappy heatsinks, and 2) including a decent (copper and/or heatpipe) cooler would move them out of the performance price-point they've been occupying for many years now.

Re:Warranty

[discord5]

And how is that "blame" issue negated by selling the chips and coolers separately?

First and foremost : the distributor/consumer now has to install the cooling device, which shifts the problem to "Did you install the cooler correctly? Because we don't cover improper assembly". That give enough leverage for them to claim that the problem lies with the installer in most cases. While this is less of an issue for the average consumer who will buy a computer from retail, it is for the retailers and distributors (think : Dell). If chips start overheating, clearly Dell isn't correctly installing the cooling fans and heatsinks.

Second : hobbyists still assemble their own gear and will most likely buy different cooling gear than Intel has to offer. There's been a wide variety in products for years now, going from Ultra-cool-but-noisy, to Cool-but-silent, to Ultra-Cool-And-Silent-But-Expensive. Again, these are most likely not the kind of people who will improperly their CPU, but accidents do happen and it's nice to be able to not have to refund that (relatively) rather expensive part.

A measure like this has two purposes :

• Reduce costs in warranty claims
• Increase revenue by selling a separate cooling part which most distributors will buy from Intel anyway. You don't think the chips will be cheaper without the cooler now, do you?

If Intel sells a cooler claiming to be sufficient to cool their CPU and it destroys the CPU in the process, are they not to blame?

You see, the cooler is quite up to spec. Are you sure you are installing it properly? Have you left enough ventilation area in your design? Did you apply the cooling paste properly? Did you actually read the instructions that came with the cooler? How about the disclaimer that came with the cooler?

I'm sure they've done the math and tests and have minimized the failure rate to a number that won't generate too much of a fuss. But a few thousand failing chips here and there all soon add up to real money, even in a pool millions. Finding a way to save on that saves on costs.

Anyway, that's the angle I see... I've been known to be wrong on economics before. I've always found it wise to steer clear of the latest and greatest models of CPUs until there's enough complaints on the internet to know what you're getting into.

On a sidenote, I've been having this feeling for a while now that the CPU arms race has slowed down quite considerably. Oh yes, there's new features every now and then and the number of cores goes up, but for the home consumer the upgrade pressure is far less than a decade ago. Even for modern videogames the CPU demands have stayed pretty much the same in the last couple of years, but I guess the GPU race makes up for that in that respect.

Re:Warranty

[networkBoy]

On a sidenote, I've been having this feeling for a while now that the CPU arms race has slowed down quite considerably.

For what it's worth I've felt that way for a while too. I recently got a new Core i7 system and *wow*.
I've been working on a 1080p video project (was on a Core2 Quad Extreem) and the wait time for render operations is waaaay lower on the core i7.

As to the heatsink issue, I think this CPU is being targeted at high end desktop users and such who usually just toss the OEM cooler in the bin. Since at 180W the OEM cooler would be rather expensive, I think this is mostly a way for Intel to keep the price about $25-$50 lower than it would be with the cooler included. Naturally, breaking the bundle will make the combined cost higher (part of that is justifiable based on seperate packaging, parts that have to be tracked/shipped/etc.) but yeah, I'll bet that you see maybe an overall increase of about $20/unit over the bundle price.
-nB

Re:Warranty

[ByOhTek]

Ha! I actually ran into something similar with a 80mm case fan that an old heatsink supported. The CPU fan power on the mobo wouldn't run it. So the CPU fan was plugged into a case fan plug on the mobo, and put a 50mm fan somewhere in the case, on the CPU fan plug.

You'd still have to buy the craptacular overpriced fan in your scenario, but nobody would know you weren't running it on the CPU cooler.

Re:Warranty

[Lehk228]

or just buy an AMD, you can still buy them with pretty nice OEM coolers and i have never in my live had an AMD CPU go tits up on me, even when i did fuck up the fan install and had heat alarm events and shutdowns, never damaged anything.

Re:Warranty

[mossr]

Not meaning to be ignorant here, but what performance price-point do they occupy? It's my understanding that AMD offers better bang-for-buck at the budget end of the scale, and Intel trumps their mid-to-high range offerings. So how would this affect customers who've chosen to buy Intel, since they're already committing themselves to the mid-range or higher?

Re:Warranty

[moonbender]

Again, this is something they could have done already. I'm not sure what kind of refunds they're supposed to deny, though. Lots of people buy boxed CPUs and then use after market coolers (because the boxed HSF sucks). I have a few Intel HSFs lying around because I couldn't get a "bulk" CPU without a cooler; I'd prefer it if Intel stopped bundling a useless heat sink.

Getting into the desktop enthusiast heatsink/fan market right now would be a fairly bizarre move for Intel to make. Even if they used some sort of DRM to force people to use their stuff, I doubt there is a lot of money in it and it'll result in a lot of anger and hate among the people you're trying to sell to. If they're that sure of their own position, they could simply jack up prices for new CPUs.

Re:Warranty

[robthebloke]

How many stock fans and heatsinks will be saved from gathering dust because of this?

None. The HSFs installed in a PC gather more dust than those still in their boxes :p

Re:Warranty

[ifiwereasculptor]

Anedoctal too, but I had a Thunderbird 1.3GHz and when its fan died, the computer just froze and shut down, waiting patiently for a replacement cooler. As it was Sunday, I refused to wait for stores to open and just pointed a big, humen-cooling fan at the exposed enthrails of my box and it worked just fine. The same 1.3GHz later received a copper heatsink with two fans and it took about a year for them to get deformed and misaligned due to heat. Funny thing is me and my friends remember it being ludicrously hot, but its TDP was only about 70W, quite a bit lower than my current Athlon II.

Re:Warranty

[arkane1234]

Funny, I've never had an Intel processor go 'tits up' on me either, and I've had at least 2000 servers through my hands.
This doesn't include the 10+ desktops I've had through the years which have worked as servers as well.

But then again, if an AMD processor doesn't die, then it must be better than Intel right?

Disclaimer: I'm a fan of AMD, but I love competition to keep things rolling.

Re:Warranty

[CynicTheHedgehog]

As much as I like AMD, the stock cooler that came with my Phenom II X6 was garbage. It was incredibly loud and while CPU temps were acceptable they were borderline high/critical. Contrast with the Zyman I replaced it with, which ran silently and dropped temps by 12 degrees on average. Having gone through that, I'd definitely take a discount on a high-end CPU without a heatsink and provide my own aftermarket cooling solution--I don't think I'll plan on using stock coolers anymore...

Re:Warranty

[Retron]

Quite right - there were dire warnings at the time of what would happen if your Thunderbird's fan died. It was always nagging at the back of mine when I built my 1.3GHz Thunderbird machine back in 2001 - although thankfully the fan worked for the best part of 8 years in daily use and although it's now in retirement in a local school (the machine is used for "take a PC to pieces" lessons) it still works fine.

The more annoying thing was the rubbish VIA chipset that motherboard (KT133A-RAID) contained, which caused distortion every time I played an MP3 in WinAmp on my SB Live.

Re:Warranty

[Moryath]

AMD's gotten my money every time because their midrange chips beat the pants off Intel's performance, dollar for dollar, every time. If I spend $2-300 on my chip, I get more performance from the AMD.

As for why they'd do this, though, I'd think it's simple. Why sell the customer a $200 chip with a fan included, when you can ship a lot more chips in smaller packaging, still sell for $200, and get the customer to pay $30 for the formerly "stock" heatsink on top of it?

Re:Warranty

[Mal-2]

As much as I like AMD, the stock cooler that came with my Phenom II X6 was garbage. It was incredibly loud and while CPU temps were acceptable they were borderline high/critical. Contrast with the Zyman I replaced it with, which ran silently and dropped temps by 12 degrees on average. Having gone through that, I'd definitely take a discount on a high-end CPU without a heatsink and provide my own aftermarket cooling solution--I don't think I'll plan on using stock coolers anymore...

I used the stock cooler that came with my 1090T Black Edition (3.2 GHz) for a while. As you pointed out, it was loud and only marginally acceptable, but it DID do the job at stock speed and voltage. Surprisingly, it almost did the job at 3.6 GHz (the "turbo core" speed, although only with three or fewer cores in use), and was sufficient to show 3.8 was stable. I have since replaced it with a Cooler Master Hyper212 and added the second fan.

Even with both fans going 100% at all times (which makes very little noise), the CPU will STILL heat up and throttle itself when running Prime95 on all six cores at once when running at 4 GHz (which also necessitates a voltage bump, it'll only go to 3.8 at stock voltage). Importantly though, it neither fries nor crashes when it starts to overload. Still, while I was able to lower noise and increase clock speed with the Hyper212, it's not IMMENSELY faster. This is probably why AMD considers its stock cooler adequate. It is, if you stick to the specs. (But why would you buy a Black Edition and NOT overclock it?)

Re:Warranty

[level_headed_midwest]

The bandwidth between the CPU and memory *has* been increasing pretty noticeably recently. Your "8-core, 3 GHz machine with lots-o-ram and a wide, fast main memory bus" sounds like a dual Xeon X5365, E5450/X5450, or X5472. The 5000X or 5400 chipset used with those CPUs does have a wide memory bus, but that quad-channel DDR2-667 or -800 FB-DIMM bus generally results in a pretty paltry 6-9 GB/sec when it's all said and done, along with significant latency in both the FSB and FB-DIMMs, especially since you have multiple DIMMs per channel ("lots-o-RAM") and two dies per FSB with those quad-core chips. That's beaten by a good margin by a typical dual-channel desktop CPU, let alone a modern server with 6 or 8 DDR3-1333 channels. My dual 8-core 2.0 GHz Opteron 6128 workstation with 8 channels of DDR3-1333 has an actual memory bandwidth north of 50 GB/sec, by comparison.

P4 again?

[Alex Belits]

Prescott 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Re:Taco, could you explain this

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel will offer Intel-branded cooling solutions for the new chips, they just won't package them with the chips.

no

[circletimessquare]

this is the beginnings of Intel branching out into the HEATING business

Re:no

[Hsien-Ko]

Beginnings?

1993's Pentium 60 says otherwise.

Just to save a few bucks..

[Ross R. Smith]

This is just Intel trying to increase their profit margins even more.
Most custom builders/modders don't even contemplate using the Intel stock cooler so it just sits there doing nothing.

If most, if not all, of the intended market will use an aftermarket air cooler/watercooling loop is there really any reason to include the stock heatsink/fan?

The 'Extreme' chips are very high end and generally not intended for Joe Public to just pick up - more of an enthusiast chip, Intel is just cashing in on this by not shipping with the stock cooling but keeping the price the same. It's also been said on the grapevine that Intel intend on releasing some of their own cooling solutions in the not so distant future.

Cost Cutting?

[BlakLanner]

It is possible that this is a cost cutting measure. I think that a lot of people who buy standalone CPUs use third party cooling solutions. It would save Intel a lot of money in materials and packaging if they don't ship the heatsinks and fans that people just throw away anyways.

Stock coolers are a waste anyway

[algorimancer]

Stock coolers are a waste -- there are much nicer (quieter) alternatives available, and at minimal expense. I never use the stock coolers. It's long seemed a bit silly to me that you couldn't buy the CPU without getting the cooler along with it, so I'm pleased that they're leaving the choice to those building the systems.

Re:Stock coolers are a waste anyway

[eddy]

I thought you'd always been able to buy 'tray' (aka OEM) variants (without the cooler), it's just that lately the tray has cost the same or even less than the retail (aka "boxed") package, so there haven't really been a point to it.

Re:Stock coolers are a waste anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an enthusiast. I build with stock coolers if they're available at the same price(and frequently they are). No particular reason other than they work. I don't overclock, though. Going from 100 to 105fps or slightly dropping the time it takes to encode something doesn't really interest me.

Re:Taco, could you explain this

[TheRaven64]

Is illiteracy somehow fashionable in Slashdot now? Or is it a new form of trolling to take a valid sentence and say that you don't understand it? Look in the current poll for a lot of other examples...

Seems logical enough to me...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This seems reasonable enough to me...

Particularly for high end or "extreme" CPUs, homebuilders virtually never stick with the stock cooler anyway. If they buy the retail box at all, rather than the OEM one, the cooler just goes in the trash/on ebay/cooling something else. Big OEM builders, on the other hand, frequently want a custom cooler that integrates with their toolless or minimal-tool easy maintenance cases, to cut repair costs. For everybody else, Intel is still offering a badged "official" cooler.

This really just seems like a sensible recognition that there really isn't much point investing in chasing the high-end cooler market(which isn't an enormous R&D burden or anything; by Intel standards; but churns pretty fast and is at least partially driven by aesthetics, which aren't Intel's strong suit.) and there also isn't much point in shoving a chunk of finned aluminum in every box if it is just going to get tossed out(also, with the increasingly large number of enthusiast CPUs that are probably being purchased online, or from locked cases at retail, making the packaging a lot smaller will make everybody happier. CPUs are tiny, CPU+Cooler+retaining plastic tray is a decent size box.

The only place where the Intel stock cooler ever made much sense was for lower-end homebuilders or OEMs too cheap to do their own case designs. Those segments can still buy the Intel-blessed coolers if they want, and everybody else can go with what they were already using anyway.

Re:Made to torpedo Bulldozer

[eddy]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but most sensible people will compare CPUs at a similar price, and the Intel 'extreme' CPUs typically slot in at $999 and beyond. Hopefully Bulldozer isn't trying to compete in that segment.

Granted, sensible people don't buy these sorts of CPUs at all and are waiting for Ivy Bridge....

I know we love slagging off intel, but...

[itsdapead]

Is Intel unable to cool these extreme chips?

Er... let me think...

Curiously, Intel will still offer 'sold separately' own-brand cooling solutions for the new chips

So, I'm guessing "yes".

Seriously. Maybe, just maybe they did some checking and found that a large proportion of their bundled coolers were ending up in the spare parts bin. Its not exactly surprising that the same people who buy the "extreme" chips would also go in for high bling-to-noise ratio heatsinks and water cooling systems. Not everything is a money-grabbing conspiracy.

Re:Taco, could you explain this

[iamhassi]

Intel will offer Intel-branded cooling solutions for the new chips, they just won't package them with the chips.

^----- This has been confirmed: "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."

So Intel will offer coolers, they're just sold separately, probably because these are cpus designed for enthusiast ("The E range (which stands for ‘enthusiast’") so they're meant for people that overclock and buy separate coolers rather than use the "stock" cooler that comes with the cpu.

Pricing of the CPUs has also been released:
_name__core__threads__freq__turbo freq__L3__TDP__price_
Core i7-3820 4 8 3.6 GHz 3.9 GHz 10 MB 130 Watt $294
Core i7-3930K 6 12 3.2 GHz 3.8 GHz 12 MB 130 Watt $583
Core i7-3960X 6 12 3.3 GHz 3.9 GHz 15 MB 130 Watt $999

Not needed

[Sniper98G]

The sandy bridge "Extreme" is aimed at the ultra high end enthusiast market. If you are building one of these rigs you are not going to use the stock cooler. I think this is a good move, it will keep Intel's useless stock coolers from sitting in my closet for a couple of years.

Pure FUD

[ArchieBunker]

Intel chips overheat? I don't think so

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSGcnRanYMM

So many of these comments are outright lies. Intel sells OEM chips without a heatsink and retail kits with a pretty decent stock heatsink. Here is a stock intel heatsink for a P3 cpu.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-1U-Socket-370-P3-Heatsink-Fan-Sanyo-Denki-/310132647048

So Whatcher Wanna Do...

[Greyfox]

Is get yerself a big potroast see? Now yew wanna make yereslf a dry rub with some cumin and... Ok... 'ere's my secret ingredient, don't tell anyone... dark cocoa powder. Salt that potroast and rub it with yer dry rub! Now yew wanna wrap that fucker up with some tinfoil, an' go ahead and chuck some raisins and a bit o' tomato sauce in there! Wrap it good now, don't wanna leak that all over the place! Now park that fucker in yew computer and fire up counterstrike fer about 6 hours! Shoot some goddamn hippies yeehaw! After 6 hours yer roast she oughta' be fork tender and just fallin' apart! Nothing better than shooting hippies and computer-cooked potroast nosireee!

Re:Businesses still buy Intel

[Lumpy]

Building your own business General office machine machine hasn't made sense for a long time now, IMHO.

The powerhouse 8 core workstations here for the Graphics department and Video department are well worth it building them instead of buying Dell crap.

Their pricing on high end workstations are not competitive and their parts and BIOS are sub par in that realm.

Re:Businesses still buy Intel

[mrchaotica]

[Dell's] pricing on high end workstations are not competitive

Indeed; that's a segment where it makes sense to buy Apple (compared to buying Dell).

(Note: I tried my damnedest to phrase this as neutrally as possible. Nobody start a flame war, please.)

Re:And the people who buy the E chips want better

[bemymonkey]

Also it is easy to find current socket 1155/1156/1136 coolers that can handle more than that. Arctic Cooling, my preferred brand of aftermarket coolers, makes one rated to 300 watts. They've made ones rated to 200 watts for years now.

Up to 300W... before melting? Before critical mass? Before the PC lifts off?

WTF are you cooling? There are ovens that use less power than that...

Pricing lies

[BitZtream]

This just allows them to make more profit when they sell you the chip.

The price you pay for a CPU isn't going down, its going up, and you're just being too ignorant to notice.

You'll still pay the same price for a the CPU as you did when it came with a fan, except now you'll also have to buy the fan seperately.

This is exactly like the whole 'new CPUs must use this slotted connection due to some mystical magical BS we're making up about interference that is clearly a lie for multiple reasons'.

Intel is once again bending you over and not using lube, but you're too busy looking for a technical reason that you're missing the obvious and real reason. Money. This isn't the first or even second time they've done something like this.