A little while ago it was reported that Intel may consider shipping their Sandy Bridge-E series of CPUs with some kind of water cooling (rumours have it that AMD may do the same for their FX line), such as the offerings from Coolit or Asetek. Currently the high end Gulftown CPUs on the X58 platform such as the i7 990X come with Intel's high end cooling tower with direct touch heatpipes.
The cooler shipped with Intel's current Gulftown CPUs
Though word has it that the i7 3820, 3930K and the 3960X are all coming without a cooler. Apparently there are reports that the Sandy Bridge-E chips may be pushing close to a 180w use without overclocking and to top it off for those who like to use extravagant cooling, early samples at least, all have the cold-bug!
What's more the i7 3820 is delayed or arriving later than the 3930K and 3960X as Intel are working on a C1 stepping.
Well thats all the bad news, now for the good, it would appear that Intel have decided to offer their own brand coolers for the platform... (hold on a minute?) just that they aren't shipping with the CPUs. Stock coolers are vital to many professionals where spending out extra for cooling will make little business sense on the flip side the enthusiast will see little point in Intel's coolers being offered and would gladly see the back of them and opt for third part solutions that will be ready at time of release.
Personally for this level of product (level 97) I would like to see them shipped with an adequate stock cooler, so things can run out the box in a handy manner for anyone, combined with a custom well made waterblock that caters towards the enthusiast. Maybe the issue lay in the actual TDP of these chips where Intel are forced to seek more exotic cooling designs, or they are wasting money and making the end user pay for it. Either way I7 3xxx series is due for a Q4 2011 launch so let us see how things unfold.
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