Why Ryzen Threadripper has two extra chips - howardperen1949

Gordon Mah Ung

When celebrated overclocker der8baurer "delidded" AMD's highly anticipated Ryzen Threadripper in a television posted happening Thursday, he got a surprise and spawned a mystery: Did AMD really waste ii perfectly soundly 8-core chips to build Threadripper?

The mystery kicked off when der8auer, cracked open his Threadripper and set up what appeared to be quaternity 8-nitty-gritty dies used to defecate the 16-core group 1950X CPU. Adding to that mystery story, der8bauer aforementioned AMD confirmed that lonesome deuce of the "dies" were active.

der8auer delid 1 — Two of the 8-burden "dies" along the 16-Congress of Racial Equality Ryzen Threadripper 1950x are just dummies to keep the high temperature spreader from bending tabu of shape.

So did AMD really waste two absolutely good "Zeppelin" dies? Nope.

Those other two "chips" are nothing more spacers to help maintain the structural integrity of the large heat broadcaster, PCWorld has learned from a source who declined to live identified.

The source didn't particular so much more, but it makes a lot of horse sense when you consider the size up of the CPU and its construction. Rather than a single monolithic conk out, like Intel uses connected its Core i9, AMD builds its Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs using multiple chips connected with a high-speed fabric.

If AMD had inhabited a Threadripper CPU with just two of the dies, the metal heat broadcaster would likely bend where the empty musca volitans are.

Indeed nary, your fantasy of somehow magically turning a 16-CORE Ryzen Threadripper 1950X into a 32-core won't happen.

ryzen threadripper socket with skylake x — The plastic plate is approximately the size of Intel's new Marrow i9 chip.

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One of founding fathers of hardcore tech reporting, Gordon has been covering PCs and components since 1998.