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Intel sent their latest creation in a plain white box, retail packaging will be identical except it will obviously be branded. As usual, Intel made a small cut out on a side of the box to reveal the processor in all its splendor.
Inside, the Core i7-980X lays in a small plastic blister pack. Since the processor uses the same LGA1366 socket as previous Core i7's, it will work in most existing X58 motherboards providing the manufacturer supplies a BIOS update.
After a long history of inadequate heatsinks supplied with Extreme processors, Intel finally stepped up and now bundles a real cooler with this one. It's a fairly simple, four copper heatpipes tower cooler, which leaves push-pins behind and instead uses a backplate. It also has a small switch on top to choose between performance or quiet. However, I'll spoil the surprise right away -- performance is ridiculously loud and while quiet is, well, quiet, the fan is whiny. It's far better than the usual design in terms of cooling performance, but third parties have nothing to worry about.
The backplate in question is made out of seemingly cheap plastic which feels under par. Quite frankly, if Intel wants to bundle a decent cooler like this one, at least make sure the whole thing isn't just good enough, but excellent! I have to give credit where it's due though, this heatsink miles ahead of every other retail coolers. They include thermal paste in its own tube instead of having it pre-applied. I don't really mind either way, but dispensing the whole syringe on a single application as recommended will leave you with a paste mess.
The mounting system is usable, but you need a long, thin screwdriver to tighten the outer screws. I can live with that, but the screws on the fan's side have to be tightened at an angle which is really awkward. You can see it pictured below in all its glory on our tesbed, which consists of the ASUS P6X58D Premium and Mushkin HP3-12800 memory.
What you should take away from this is that while the bundled heatsink is a huge step up, Intel is still much better at making processors than coolers!
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Overclocked on the stock cooler I hit like 70C, which really isn't bad
nice review anyway. keep up those quality reviews
No 980x for me till the price drops though. I can't justify that kind of price. I look forward to AMD hex cores and hopefully it'll nudge a price drop from Intel, even if it means Intel releases faster models to cut the current chip price.
I'll stick with my 920.
hiigaran - It's always been like that with top of the line products in general. Processors, cards, houses... anything really. Also, overclocking in a business (whether it's a workstation or a data center) isn't an option. Except smaller businesses possibly, they all buy OEM computers along with the technical support. You don't void the warranty of a $5000 workstation or $100 million data center! Money isn't a concern in this situation, the return on investment comes from increased productivity.
Anyway, if you worry about price, this clearly isn't the processor for you. Some people are lucky enough to be able to afford them and that gives these people the fastest desktop processor in the world. It's as simple as that. Of course it's not a good value, but neither is a Veyron, a 3 story house or a 108 inch TV.
For OEM bulk purchases there's no reason to OC anyway
On a workstation the last thing most people want to do is modify anything, if they're 10hrs in on a render and something fails the only thing that will be heard for miles is a bone chilling scream of rage. At stock spec the system is guaranteed to work on them and if it doesn't they can rage out at the company instead of themselves for the lost time.
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