Sandy Bridge-E CPUs Shipping Without Coolers?

180W....give it to me

Sounds like babyspeak... Sandy Bridgy!

Though really, high end CPUs like this end up in mostly enthusiast hands, they'll have something planned or some other high end cooling system.

Why does the Prescotts come to mind? Sorry, even if I had the money, I will not be buying a CPU that they actually suggest water cooling for. That is insane.

Wonder how many chips are going to be fried and questions about computers shutting down during/just after POST cause of people not using a heatsink.

Great for people that actually want to choose their own cooling though

I already have a water loop, so the fact that the chips come without a heatsink is fine for me. less waste.

Will this translate into savings for the consumers?

The lower end ones will probably have a heatsink. A common Joe won't pay Top dollar for a box processor. Hopefully not, then they deserve it overheating

The Intel train wreck just keeps piling up. Immediately after news of more "upgrade cards", Intel decides that spending $300 -1000 for a processor doesn't entitle its consumer to a $20 stock cooling solution... wow. Most people will dump the stock option, but Intel should offer something in exchange for their savings... maybe an upgrade card

So... First intel is gouging customers by selling scratch cards to unlock features of chips they already purchased. Now they are shipping chips without stock coolers, but guarantee they are not passing any savings onto the customer... no... instead they SELL you a heatsink lol Remind me again why I will never buy an intel chip no matter if they are faster than AMD or not? They are out to bend you over any way they can and make sure you have to buy a whole new mobo, chip and all every time you want to upgrade. And now want to gouge further! I bet next they will charge you for an intel sticker in the box. Just the intel way I guess!

I can say I was impressed on the 1100T I picked up a month ago from newegg, the stock heapipe cooler was impressive for stock, kept idle temps around 28C and allowed a stable overclock of 3.8 / 4ghz-turbo. Verified stable after 3 hours of burn in with all cores at 100% and no errors! Hottest it got in my well vented case was 45C!! And it came with the chip and I did not have to pay extra!

I agree, to a certain extent. While I never used the stock cooler that came with my i7-950, I think it's still a good idea to include one in a retail package. Regardless of how crappy the heat dissipating performance may be, it's still rated to work fine at stock clocks, and it also gives the user the option to install a processor before investing in an after market cooling solution.

You're no longer getting a fully functioning component out of the box. You're basically getting an OEM processor with full retail packaging, and unfortunately at full retail price.

Go Pentium 66 Mhz w/o a heat sink overheating & giving birth to fans!

I'm waiting for Ivy Bridge before I upgrade my i7-990X, a 20% increase is not worth another $1000.

My current I5 sandy bridge machine was not a great upgrade, but as another addition to my render farm, it certainly was cheap.

A 3820K model would have been nice...

When are these first LGA 2011 chips coming out? I wasn't expecting them until nearly Christmas. Bulldozer's really going to be late to this party.

Meh. I'm perfectly happy with my little Phenom II quad humming along beside me. It's reliable, snappy, and it gets the job done. Maybe for someone who wants nothing other than bragging rigbhts, these will be worth it. But to people like me, being able to render a 3D layout in Blender or a video in After Effects 30% faster just isn't worth $1000.

Hell, I could buy a small boat for as much as the entire platform would cost. And it would do a lot more than a CPU will ever be able to do.

I bought my previous i7-785 boxed but without a cooler (the retail box had no room for one either). Whats the big deal??

Even as a PC game enthusiast, I am not convinced that a CPU with $1000 price tag has no cooler in it. Do they actually expect users to not make a mistake and buy the wrong heatsink and fried their new CPU?
Moreover, when you paid $1000 for a CPU you don't expect it is not bundled with a proper highend cooler.
It sounds to me like those lighten version of Porsche with no carpet, air-con, door handles, stereo, no insulation and yet they will sell the car for twice the price! Why don't I just get the fully equiped car and throw away all those extra weight and save myself 50% money?

What's the point in buying the highest end SB-E if they're just going to replace it 3 months later. Sounds like a waste of $1k. Intel just milking the their Extreme Edition CPUs.

From personal experience it will happen, and it will happen often. I work for a company in the tech support/RMA department and I personally get at least 1 call a month from someone who has bought an $800 GPU that comes with a waterblock and that has put it in their system and had no idea they needed a water cooling loop.

That's probably about when they're coming out. The most recent road maps I've seen show Q4 2011, maybe in the October to November time frame.

Yep a whole $5 off!!

I already thought the $315 Sandy Bridge 2600k was a huge waste, now they are launching another $1000 cpu? Steve Jobs should buy me one.

you DO realize that the Thuban processors have a glitch in the thermal diode that causes the temperatures to be read as 10-12*C lower than they actually are, right?

They must be under the assumption that their retail employee training program is a success. I hope some of the more hilarious phone calls wind up on the net. I can't wait.

Hopefully most people buying these chips will already have sense enough to know that a heat sink is required.
I am sure Intel will put a nice big sign notifying of this. I think its good to allow the end user to buy what they need for their application.

Yep, Have read about that, but I have read that was on the early revisions? Mine was from a month ago. Even if so, and say it is a full 13C higher, I am still within spec, overclocked a decent amount and the system is running perfectly stable My average on games and all programs hovers around 35C, can only get it up to 45C running benchmarks non stop. So that would put me at 48C real world on all of the apps I run if I add in 13C. Not bad!

Forgot to mention the 28C idle temp is with the fan running at 25% I have it set to ramp up sharp at 40C. Only downside is when she does ramp up to full, she sounds like a vacuum cleaner lol However most of the time, the fan never ramps past 50% and is very quiet.

A 30% reduction in render time is quite significant, and while that on it's own might not warrant paying 5-10x more (even for pro applications), I think you're also vastly underestimating the performance of these upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processors.

The i7-990x, a six core processor based on Intel's previous gen architecture already outperforms a Phenom II x4 by quite a bit more then 30% in the applications you mentioned. Especially Blender, where the performance increase is probably much closer to 2x. And that can definitely be worth the price premium if the extra performance is needed and put to use. It may not make a lot of sense for the average user or gamer, but I think to suggest that bragging rights is the only reason anyone invests in a high performance processor is a bit ignorant.

intel is going into my bad books. ill be looking forward to what AMD has to offer when it releases bulldozer. Hope they dont follow intel with that upgrade card crap either.

Looks like now I'm changing to Intel cpu's LGA 2011, because Bulldozer has taken to long and I keep seeing delays from AMD like crazies. I will buy bulldozer only if the Octa core part is better than the flagship from Intel if not nevermind, I will buy Intel again.

It's a very reasonable assumption that there are some people, somewhere, who will pop in the chip and fire it up without a thought.

It remains to be seen however, how detrimental this may be. Many can recall the old Tom's video of simulating what happens to a P4 and an AMD processor if the heat-sink should fall off during some intense quake III action.

Those upgrade cards intrigue me. Suppose someone figures out how to unlock more processor performance through firmware software. Now that intel sells a non-existent good called "performance", would it then become illegal to soft-mod a processor yourself and distribute your technique freely? I'm just trying to wrap my head around the "double-dipping". You'd think it would be free and offered as a "thank you" for their continued support.

So $300 for the low end sandy bridge-E and (likely) another $250 (easily) for a "entry" level socket 2011 mobo. All of this equating to almost no performance increase for anything gaming related unless you have tri-gtx-580s that max out a 8x PCI-express lane.

This seems like it will only be a good upgrade for productivity software. Having 16 sata ports, 8 dimms for ram, and quad channel memory are just treats that will have little benefit to 99% of consumers. I remember going from dual to tri channel memory had almost no benefit outside of HEAVY memory related processes... which are few and far between.


I will stick with my 2600k for now. I just hope this doesn't make an excuse for developers to make their games even more CPU reliant. I have had quite a few games that work the hell out of my CPU while my gpus sit at 50-60%. I don't want that to be a trend.