Tom's Hardware's Biggest CPU Shoot-Out, Ever

When Birdshot Isn’t Enough

We put size 7 birdshot through our 20-gauge test mule, which works for dove and quail, but clearly not Opteron CPUs. This time around we’re going with 00 buckshot—8.3mm pellets. Far fewer pellets inside each shot shell mean you have a much lower chance of hitting a small target from range. However, the .33 caliber pellets are devastating at the range from which we’re shooting. Let’s see what the Defender did against four cores of fury.

Aftermath

We pity the fool. Here you see the tight pattern of copper pellets embedded into the processor's heat spreader. We were close enough that the wad fused itself to what was left of the processor's PCB, as well.

Still no penetration, but the destructive force of double aught buckshot is clearly evident versus the 20-gauge loaded with birdshot.

Reaching Out To Touch Somechip

Ah, the rifles—our first longer-range weapons used in this epic CPU shoot-out.

Our first test subject was a bit of a buzz kill. To be completely honest, I picked up this old .22 caliber rifle on sale for $100 from someone who didn’t want it any more. It looked like it had never even been shot and had stickers on it from the manufacturer still. But when it was loaded up to shoot, it quickly became clear that the firing pin wasn’t striking the rimfire cartridge.

C’est la vie. Given the high velocity of the CCI Stinger hollow points you see in the picture, it would have been interesting to see if the copper-plated bullets would make it through the Opteron’s heat spreader.

The Targets From Range

Ah, the Opteron processor meets more formidable opposition. From here on out, you stop seeing heatspreaders pounded into scrap metal by blunt bullets and pellets traveling too slowly to shear metal. Now we’re dealing with military firepower—and the guns only get larger moving forward.

Pictured is the barrel of an AR-15 on the bench, pointed downrange at AMD Opteron CPUs taped to paper targets 50 yards away.

A Ranch Gun Goes Home Clean

The Ruger Mini-14 is a semi-automatic carbine able to fire .223 Remington and NATO 5.56 x 45mm cartridges (which are technically slightly different). This is an incredibly fun gun to shoot; however, because we had another rifle chambered for .223 on-hand, there really wasn’t any point to getting this one dirty.

As it was, it took the better part of two days to strip and clean all of the firearms used in this shoot-out.

.223: Bigger And Badder

The ArmaLite model 15 is one of the most easily recognizable rifles out there—largely due to the militarized version, the M16, used by the United States (and a number of other countries). The “civilian” AR-15 shoots the same .223 cartridge as the Ruger Mini-14 on the previous page. With a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second, both guns are able to do some serious damage to the Opteron’s heatspreader, as we’ll see on the next page. 

The version of the gun being shot here is a California-legal model, with a standard upper receiver and lower receiver with a fixed 10-round magazine.

A Hole Clean Through

Now we're talking. The jacketed .223 rounds cut through AMD's Opteron like butter, leaving a copper-coated hole behind.

Besides the entry/exit holes, the processor is amazingly intact.

And The Back

Here's the back-side of the Opteron CPUs.

Taking It Back To The West

This one takes you back into time. Designed in the late 1800s, the .30-30 Winchester cartridge is known as the first designed for smokeless gun powder. Incidentally, it’s still commonly used for deer hunting.

If you click on the image and look at the cartridge itself, you’ll notice its round nose (as opposed to the more pointed noses used in our military rounds). This is because our rifle, the Winchester Model 94—the same one designed by John Browning in 1894, is a lever-action with a tubular magazine. The round nose helps prevent a chambered cartridge from striking the primer in front of it, setting off a nasty chain reaction in the magazine.

Unfortunately, .30-30 runs about $1 per round. And after we went through a box of 20 rounds without hitting anything from 50 yards, we decided that this one probably needed to be sighted-in on a day when the wind wasn’t gusting between 30 and 50 mph. That means no impact shots of this one in action.

Stepping Up To .308

There’s a bit of history here, as well. The M1A is the civilian version of the military’s M14 rifle. The M14 was succeeded by the M16 (though Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, used an M14 for sniping from helicopters in the Battle of Mogadishu, basis for Black Hawk Down).

The M1A pictured here is used as a match gun by our illustrious shooter when he participates in local competitions. It’s that accurate.