Gadgetory

anyone who's purchased the mainstream processor in the last decade or so for me the AMD or Intel will know their bundle a basic cooling solution with their processors I say basic cooler because they're low-cost products now such features simplistic designs to be fair both companies are limited in what they can offer due to compatibility requirements large coolers won't suit all systems and the heavier a cooler the more complex the mounting hardware needs to be for most users the standard box cooler does a good enough job they aren't outrageously loud and they have proven to be very reliable enthusiasts on the other hand leave the Box cooler where it belongs in the Box given the chance they would probably throw it in the trash but the cooler is often required for warranty purposes anyway realizing that enthusiasts aren't going to use to stop cooler in Telus admitted it completely from their kei processor packages while AMD felt it unnecessary to include their stock cooler with the silicon melting base that is the FX 95 90 currently AMD equips its FX series processors excluding the FX 95 90 with a rather small air cooler known internally as the AMD d3 the d3 heatsink is made of aluminium and features four copper heat pipes on tops it's a 70 millimeter fan which can and will make itself well known under load the modest box cooler can dissipate up to 125 watts of heat though in order to do so it does make it uncomfortable hovercraft s51 deser bells given processors such as the FX 83 seventies boast a thermal design power rating of 125 watts they have no trouble pushing the d3 to its limits for this reason the bulk of AMD's FX customers look to alternative solutions and there's a wealth of options out there spending an additional $50 or so and a high performance air cooler isn't too much of a stretch when you're already dropping two hundred and forty dollars on an FX 95 90 however most of AMD's fans invest in the cheaper more cost-effective FX processors such as the $140 8320 which can be overclocked by at least 1,000 megahertz there are 30 to $40 options and pretty decent overclocks on the FX 8320 there is still this increases the total cost by 20 to 30 percent and that puts consumers within striking range of a Haswell core i5 some news that came out of AMD recently suggested that they're looking to solve this issue at least to some degree anyway the word is AMD plans to provide better quality coolers with their processes going forward and today on hand we have evidence of just this called the wraith which i have to say is a fair bit cooler than d3 this new thermal solution can be used on existing and future AMD processors like the d3 the wraith is only rated for 125 watts of heat but it does have some notable upgrades firstly the aluminium heatsink is much larger named he tells us the wraith features 24 percent more surface area in which to dissipate heat again there are four copper heat pipes but this time they're aided by a larger eighty millimeter fan which provides up to 34 percent more airflow or generating less than 1/10 the noise Andy claims the 80 millimeter fan moves 41.6 CFM aver with a maximum noise level of just 39 decibels it's important to note that while this is a huge improvement over the previous model it's still quite a bit louder than premium coolers from the likes of Noctor or thermal right for example the brace isn't being pushed as an out of the box overclocking solution by AMD and rather they're hoping to provide a cooler that can keep their FX series and future processes at an acceptable temperature without making your ears bleed evidently the plan isn't just to offer a quieter box cooler but also something that's a little more visually appealing placed on top of the raid there's a fan shroud complete with LED lighting exit into the shroud of the letters AMD with the company logo which appear only when the system is switched on when the system isn't running you can't see the logo at all the race will begin shipping with the FX 83 70 and then presumably with all FX processors while it could also end up getting paired with higher end apu which is really exciting so without wasting any more time let's clip it onto the am3+ socket and run a few tests it might seem silly to compare the Wraith of the northern one liquid cooler but there's a good reason why we've done this it's here to help put the performance games provided by the Wraith over the d3 into perspective the Intel RTS 2011 LC which was developed by a stack was intended for use with sandy bridge-e processors such as the core i7 39 70 X if we look at the idle temperatures the rate is just 4 degrees cooler than the d3 which might not seem like much of an improvement however the 32 degree idle temperature means the Wraiths allowed the FX 83-70 to run just a single degree warmer than a closed-loop liquid cooler so relatively the rate does extremely well here under load using the aida64 system stability test the old d3 cooler allowed the FX 83-70 to reach a toasty height 75 degrees is terribly high temperature of the d3 isn't even the worst part the noise the cooler generates in an effort to keep the processor operational is almost unbearable the race wasn't only much quieter but it kept the processor below 60 degrees right throughout the 20 minutes stress test the low temp of 59 degrees meant the race was 21% cooler than the d3 and incredibly just 13% warmer than the liquid cooler the Wraiths also compared well to the cooler master hyper to 1/2 X a cooler which we've used in the past to achieve impressive overclocks on the FX processors speaking of which I pushed the FX 83-70 to 4.7 gigahertz using 1.5 volts the load temperature never exceeded 72 degrees with the Wraiths taking care of business not a bad result and still cooler than the d3 at stock settings before wrapping up the testing portion of my video here are a few noise comparisons of the d3 and rates coolers the rate is certainly a much needed upgrade to the AMD package this new cooler should mean budget shoppers can pick up one of AMD's inexpensive 8 core FX processors and get to wherever clocking without any additional expenses saving 20 to 30 dollars on the CPU cooler might not seem like a big deal but does go a long way in improving the overall value of AMD's processors of course you aren't going to be pulling off any extreme overclock with the raid and a 4.7 gigahertz overclock does seem as though it's right on the limit that said being able to push an FX processor comfortably into around 4.4 to 4.6 gigahertz using the Box cool or something that was previously unthinkable now I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself with all this overclocking talk cuz AMD never actually mentioned overclocking at all when it came to the new Wraith cooler the intention was to deliver a new box cooler that was better equipped for the task so in that sense mission accomplished AMD - thumbs up thanks for watching another Hardware unbox release day review I'm your host Matt and I'd love to hear what you think is the race in the comments or an F for my Hardware on box comm don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you guys next time