AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Zen+ APUs May Include Overclocker-Friendly Soldered IHS
AMD is prepping two new rounds of Ryzen 3000 series processors for the desktop, one of which is based on the company's Zen 2 architecture and the other of which is built around Zen+. It's confusing, but stick with us—the latter are APUs (accelerated processing units), and according to some pictures that have emerged, they will be using a soldered TIM (thermal interface material) instead of grease.
We'll get to that in a moment, but before we do, let's recap where things are at in Zen territory. AMD no longer likes to use the "APU" designation, and instead labels these types of chips as "Ryzen Desktop Processors with Vega Graphics." We'll continue to call them APUs, because it's shorter, and that's what they are.
Not to be confused with AMD's desktop Ryzen 3000 series, these APUs are actually second generation Ryzen parts, otherwise known as Picasso, and are built on a refined 12-nanometer (12nm+) manufacturing process. In contrast, the upcoming Ryzen 3000 series that will ship sans integrated graphics are Zen 2 CPUs built on a 7nm manufacturing process.
Further complicating things, Ryzen 3000 APUs already exist on the mobile side, and those are Zen+ parts as well. In short, Ryzen 3000 with integrated graphics (mobile and upcoming desktop parts) is Zen+, and Ryzen 3000 without integrated graphics is Zen 2. Savvy? Let's move on.
Getting back to the leak, TomsHardware discovered a post by a "forum veteran" on Chiphell that contains pictures of a delidded Ryzen 3 3200G. The post has since been removed, probably at the behest of AMD, but as we often say there are no mulligans on the internet.
What's interesting about the picture is that it shows a soldered design. This apparently caught the poster by surprise, as previously AMD used grease. So in his initial attempt to delid the chip, he inadvertently broke off a chunk of the die and destroyed the processor—oops! Luckily for him, he's apparently in possession of several Ryzen 3 3200G chips, so he was careful with his subsequent attempt to remove the IHS (integrated heatspreader)..
The use of solder is a big deal as it pertains to cooling and overclocking. It's generally better than the grease that AMD (and Intel) have been known to use, resulting in lower temps. Indeed, the poster claims he was able to squeeze 300MHz out of the Ryzen 3 3200G wand 320MHz out of a Ryzen 3 3400G, both without raising the voltage. At full load, those two chips hit 75C and 76C, respectively. Not too shabby.
There's also a picture of some specs jotted down on a notebook. As we've seen in previous rumors, the Ryzen 3 3200G is a 4-core/4-thread processor and the Ryzen 3 3400G is a 4-core/8-thread processor, both with 4MB of L3 cache. It's not clear what the stock clocks are, but as it pertains to the Ryzen 3 3200G, previous leaks have pointed to a 3.6GHz base clock and 3.9GHz boost clock, with the GPU running at 1,250MHz.
AMD has indicated when these chips might emerge, but we're betting it's soon, perhaps as early as Computex in June. Stay tuned.
Thumbnail/Top Image Source: TomsHardware via Chiphell
