To try and counter all the excited enthusiast processor chat generated by Intel's Devil's Canyon CPUs AMD have decided to re-release their top-end FX-9590, but this time with a Cooler Master liquid chip-chiller in the box.
The FX-9590 is a straight CPU—none of that APU malarkey—so it's not wasting package space on integrated graphics that gamers with discrete GPUs are never going to use. To that end it's an eight-threaded design with four Piledriver modules and a base clock of 4.7GHz.
The big headline-grabber was the fact that under the right circumstances—thermals and power permitting—it's be capable of turbo-ing the cores up to 5GHz automatically.
By bundling the FX-9590 with the Cooler Master Seidon 120 AMD is hoping that it will be able to guarantee that 5GHz clockspeed across the board. I spoke with AMD's Iain Bristow earlier and he explained, “the intent is to make AMD's highest performance desktop processors available even more easily to AMD enthusiasts who want to enjoy a quiet, great looking system.”
The closed-loop Seidon 120 is a quality 120mm radiator water cooler—I use the 240mm version as the chip-chiller for my regular test bench—so it's good to see that AMD have gone for a solid cooler for their bundle.
The new bundle will be available from July, with only a slight premium attached to account for the added cooler. I expect it to be available for around $360 / £250 when it does go on sale, which would be less than picking up the individual components.
What this says about AMD's interest in the enthusiast CPU market is harder to work out. They won't be drawn on whether we'll see FX processors with the Steamroller architecture appearing on the desktop—with the only FX Steamroller chips being the mobile Kaveri APUs . With Intel making strides in the budget CPU space —a place AMD has traditionally offered the vest value—the processor side of AMD's business is going to have to up its game.
