AM5 direct-die water block can lower Ryzen CPU temps by more than 25C

Shawn Knight

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What just happened? Renowned overclocker der8auer has developed a custom direct-die water block for AMD's Ryzen 7000 series CPUs that can significantly lower operating temperatures under load and could lead to higher overclocks.

der8auer's journey started by removing AMD's integrated heat spreader (IHS) and replacing it with a custom-designed high performance variant. In testing, this step alone delivered a huge improvement over AMD's IHS. With a Ryzen 9 7900X overclocked to 5GHz @ 1.30v, temperatures peaked around 90C with a stock 280mm AIO liquid cooler. With the custom heat spreader, temps dropped by an average of 12-14C.

Temperatures dropped even further when switching to the Mycro Direct-Die RGB cooler. Under full load using the same system and settings, der8aur's block topped out around 62-63C.

Direct-die CPU cooling isn't new. For a period in the early 2000s, AMD shipped some of its Athlon CPUs without integrated heat spreaders. Most heatsinks at the time used mounting brackets that had to be physically clipped into place, and the unequal pressure this created could easily crack or chip the fragile processor die.

CPU shims designed to mitigate damage eventually found their way to market but their effectiveness was hit or miss. I remember killing at least one chip this way, and also fried another trying to overclock using the pencil unlocking method.

Nowadays, CPUs ship with integrated heat spreaders in part to prevent end users from accidentally destroying chip dies. As der8auer and others have highlighted time and again, however, these from-the-factory solutions aren't terribly efficient and leave a lot of cooling capability on the table.

der8auer said the heat spreader and block are already in production. Expect to pay around 40-50 euros for the high-performance heat spreader, about 100 euros for the non-RGB water block, and 130-140 euros for a version with integrated lighting.

Cost aside, you'll also have to accept the risks that come with delidding your CPU (like losing your warranty). If top-notch cooling is high on your list of priorities, however, this looks like a bona fide way to get there.

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Der8auer made something similar for Intel processors too.
der8auer has it's merit on this because it shows us, users and the customers, and especially to Intel and AMD manufacturers how to improve thermals for their processors. Some may say that this may be too costly or not worth to bother, but the late development in processors performance showed us that power will increase, Tmax temp is increasing, and we need better cooling solutions. So sooner or later, AMD Intel, Nvidia and other will have to take into consideration this new improvements and solutions.
I read that on smartphones space, Xiaomi came with an improved solutions which made their latest Xiaomi 13 Ultra to be better on performance tests than Iphone 13, because Xiaomi 13 Ultra maintained a substantially better performance in time than Iphone 13. And all of this due to a better, and innovative cooling solution.
https://www.gizchina.com/2023/04/28/xiaomi-13-ultra-dethroned-iphone-14-pro-max-in-stress-test/
 
So it's not bad engineering, or designed to work at 105C engineering, but simply shite alloy under heat spreader?

It's usually the overall thickness of the IHS that's the problem, because most (if not all) IHS are already nickel-plated copper, and you can usually gain a decent amount of cooling capacity by lapping them, which helps not just by reducing the material thickness, but also in removing the often convex profile of the top surface. That's further compounded by most cooler coldplates also having varying flatness, so if you want to achieve max cooling potential of your setup without buying aftermarket parts like these, you'll want to lap both the IHS and the coldplate, and then compensate for the modified depth of the IHS/coldplate by swapping out the mounting hardware.
 
Everyone is ignoring the main reason why the IHS is so thick on the new Ryzens: AMD did this, so AM4 coolers could be used, instead of forcing you to buy a new one.

Dammed if you care for your customers, dammed if you dont.
 
Everyone is ignoring the main reason why the IHS is so thick on the new Ryzens: AMD did this, so AM4 coolers could be used, instead of forcing you to buy a new one.

Dammed if you care for your customers, dammed if you dont.

Surely at worst you just need a new mount bracket, not a whole new cooler. I'd have preferred a cooler cpu.
 
Surely at worst you just need a new mount bracket, not a whole new cooler. I'd have preferred a cooler cpu.
Dont get me wrong, I agree with you and perhaps they took the wrong approach to this problem, but at the very least, the intentions were good, I guess.
 
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