CPU Unboxing...The Quick Way
Instead of a step-by-step unboxing, let's start with a quick dump to the tabletop, for those of you in a rush. Here's what we saw when we dropped the lot from one of the chip boxes onto our studio table.
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Meet the First Raven Ridge Twins
Let's do this unboxing the more conventional way now. One has SMT and the other doesn't, but apart from that, the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G share the same genes (and much the same outer packaging).
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The APUs In Their Shells
Okay, we've gotten the chips out of their larger retail boxes. Inside, they come in the usual shiny black cardboard mini-boxes, with the chip encased in a clear-plastic clamshell inside. Very gothic.
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So, What Is That We're Looking At?
We broke out our digital microscope and got up close with the APUs. What are we looking at? It's not a Mandelbrot graphic or a solar flare...
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In Close-Up: Any Better Idea?
At an angle, it should be much easier to figure out what we are looking at. (It's a few of the pins on these new APUs.)
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This Is Why Thermal Paste Isn't Optional
No, that isn't a lunar landscape; it's the rounded edge of one of the heatspreaders atop one of the APUs. Without the right paste applied, heated air would be trapped in all of those grooves and pits in the metal, leading to inefficient cooling performance.
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The New APUs: Front On
Okay, we're back out to a normal viewing distance now. Here's a look at the heatspreaders on the new Raven Ridge desktop chips. No sign of Vega branding here...just Ryzen.
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It's a Small Board, After All
Of course, every APU also needs the right foundation to build upon. For the purposes of our unboxing, that's the Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming WiFi, a space-saving Mini-ITX mobo.
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Slots & Expansion...
With two DIMM banks and a PCI Express slot, this Mini-ITX board gives you just enough expansion to work with for a basic PC build. The voltage regulators on the Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming WiFi have a proper heat sink, too, and are also cooled by partial airflow from the chip's in-box cooler. (More on the cooler shortly.)
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...And Let's Show the I/O
The AB350N-Gaming WiFi offers plenty of connectivity for a space-saving PC. Keep in mind the PCI Express x16 expansion doesn't need to be occupied by a graphics slot, thanks to the Vega graphics integrated into the CPU.
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Installing The Hardware
Here, we've mounted one of the Raven Ridge chips into the board's AM4 socket, along with 16 GB of the matching DDR4-3200. The whole thing looks much closer to complete now. But something important is missing...
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