Sandy Bridge-E to ship without CPU cooler

How many of you rely on aftermarket coolers for your CPU? We don't know anyone that thinks Intel's stock coolers are great and when details reached us of Intel not shipping coolers with its upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processors we were at first surprised, but considering the target market it makes a lot of sense.

The upcoming Core i7 processor from Intel, the 3820, 3930K and the 3960X will all ship without a cooler in the box. That said, 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. We can't really see why anyone would buy an Intel cooler over a third party cooler as not even Intel's high-end heatpipe cooler for its current and past Extreme Edition models were all that great. Some of the third party cooler makers will have products ready at launch, but worst case scenario, we might be looking at a cooler shortage at launch.

On top of this, we're hearing that although the rated TDP is 130W these beasts are consuming closer to 180W and that's without even overclocking them. In fact, according to PSU design guidance we've seen, Intel is telling power supply makers to make sure their Sandy Bridge-E PSUs can cope with a peak current of 23A on the 12V2 rail and based on an 80 percent or better efficiency rating of the PSU.