AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X review

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Ryzen Master Software

 

What about cooling surface coverage?

Threadripper is a big chip, the heatspreader will be bigger than the contact surface area your copper cooling block offers. We looked, tested and felt it. I physically placed my finger on the visible heatspreader and did not burn it.
 
 
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The physical contact surface area is not an issue.
Lukewarm at best is what it is. The location of the two dies sits under the cooling block, these are soldered to the heatspreader, ergo heat doesn't leak away towards the visible sides.
 

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Looking a little deeper; so, above you can see a Threadripper, the processor is in full stress with the AIDA stress test on CPU/FPU and memory channels. The thermal image above is a little arbitrary but merely demonstrates that heat or, more specifically, heat leaking away from the water-block is a nonexistent thing. I already told you that when I touch the outer edge of the heatspreader with my finger, it gets lukewarm at best. This is confirmed with the thermal image, M1 would be that precise spot where you can see a bit of that heatspreader. The hottest measured spot is the SP3 socket retention to the left on M5, reaching 47 Degrees C. We used the Corsair Hydro 105 LCS kit here.

AMD Ryzen Master Utility

Tweaking and overclocking can be managed in two ways. Standard traditional tweaking can be managed in the BIOS of course. I assume 99% of you guys will do just that. However, AMD will be updating their Ryzen Master Utility as well. You might recognize the design as the tool is styled in the very same way as Radeon Crimson drivers, it works the same and feels the same. The tool has been designed to tweak and overclock the basics like your clock frequency, voltages, memory and core parking. Once you OC above 3.7 GHz, the protection will switch off and stuff like XFR2 is automatically disabled for you to gain maximum performance. 
  

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You may expect that an ALLcore overclock on Threadripper processors (all models) is the same as on Ryzen, that's from 8 up-to up to 32 (!) cores at ~4 GHz (or better). AMD uses the best-binned dies (Threadripper is a selection of the company's 5% best binned dies placed onto the package) and, as such, all cores can reach 4 GHz. We'll talk a bit more about this in the overclocking segment of course.

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