AMD has released their new Wraith stock CPU’s as a bundle with the FX-8370. There is reportedly also an option of smaller Wrath coolers for some of the 95 Watt CPU’s as well, such as; the A10-7860K, A8-7670K, A8-7650K and the Athlon X4 845.
While stock CPU coolers are usually tossed when building PC’s in favor of aftermarket ones, the Wraith is a bit of a game changer as it boasts way stronger cooling power, compared to the units AMD has been using for the last decade or so. it was also designed to be significantly quieter too, with the intention of being ‘library’ levels of noise.
According to benchmark tests done by Tom’s Hardware, the Wraith was able to achieve a little over 10 degrees cooler than the old stock units. Furthermore, the sound levels were nearly 9 times lower than the previous stock coolers at about 38 Dba. (The Decibel system is exponential, meaning the old stock coolers were in the about 47 Dba, not 380 Dba, haha.) While it was a bit louder than the upper-mid aftermarket cooler in their test, it did cool the surrounding motherboard a little better.
If you plan to do any significant overclock your CPU, then you’ll likely still need something aftermarket – however leaving the CPU at stock or just a slight overclock should make the Wraith a pretty solid buy. Hopefully Intel may follow suit, and do a little upgrading of their own as well to the next generation of their i-series.