AMD took the wraps off the Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 CPUs on August 29. The series which include the Ryzen 9 7950X (16 cores/32 threads), the Ryzen 9 7900X (12 cores/ 24 threads), the Ryzen 7 7700X (8 cores/ 16 threads), and the Ryzen 5 7600X (6 cores/12 threads). The CPUs offer substantial performance improvements over their predecessors while being much smaller. But, according to Chinese hardware leaker Enthusiast Citizen, the performance of the Zen 4 CPUs comes at a huge thermal cost.

Posting over at Bilibili, Enthusiast Citizen reports that the Ryzen 9 7950X will lose to Intel Raptor Lake in multi-core “with no suspense”. As the chip produces 95 C under load, the leaker maintains that the Zen 4 flagship will reach thermal threshold and throttle to less than 5 GHz at 230 W. The 6-core Ryzen 5 7600X also doesn’t fare any better according to the leaker as it shoots up to 90 C while consuming 120 W.

Substantiating Enthusiast Citizen’s report, Wccftech mentions hearing from one of their sources that the heat output of the AMD Ryzen 9 7000 series CPUs stands between 92-94 C even with a “high-end 360 mm AIO liquid cooler” in AIDA64.

On the other hand, the Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K allegedly produces a much lower 82 C while consuming 40 W more at 270 W. To prove how much cooler the Raptor Lake CPUs run, Enthusiast Citizen also showcased an engineering sample of a Core i7-13700K running at a sustained 5.3 GHz on all P-cores while coming around 81 C.

Assuming these readings are true, the question is: Why do the Zen 4 processors produce so much heat? Leaker @harukaze5719 might have some answers for us.

First, the Zen 4 chips are not only smaller than the Zen 3 parts but also pack considerably more transistors, resulting in a significantly increased heat output per mm2. @harukaze5719 shows this in a chart where Zen 4 SKUs have the highest W/mm2.

In other words, one reason why the Ryzen 9 7950X and the Ryzen 5 7600X get so toasty is that it is pretty hard to move heat away from such dense, small chips. This would also explain AMD’s decision to use gold-plating in the Zen 4 chips to dissipate heat faster.

Another reason can be faulty BIOS. Per @harukaze5719, the Ryzen 7000 CPUs do run quite hot at stock settings under load. The CPUs reportedly downclock too much and take too high of a voltage. But once you manually adjust VCore, not only does the temperature drop significantly, but the CPU also retains the clock speed. The leaker showcases two AIDA64 charts depicting this. One chart displays an unnamed Ryzen 7000 CPU clocked around 5 GHz operating at a whopping 93.1 C while using 122.212 W. The other chart shows the heat output drop from 93.1 C to 56.5 C and clock frequency remaining at 5 GHz while the power draw is reduced almost by 50% to 67.924 W after manual VCore adjustments.

Finally, it is important to remember that Enthusiast Citizen tested the ES/QS of Zen 4 CPUs. So, take these thermal performance results with a grain of salt.

Buy the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X on Amazon

If set manual V with same CLK, can get MUCH reasonable result. And there is a lot of CLK/temp headroom. More than 3 weeks for launch. Wait and hope to fix this. Many thanks for tip! ☺️ (2/2)

Enthusiast Citizen on Bilibili, Wccftech, @harukaze5719 (1,2,3), Teaser image: Cullan Smith, AMD (edited)

Top 10 Laptops Multimedia, Budget Multimedia, Gaming, Budget Gaming, Lightweight Gaming, Business, Budget Office, Workstation, Subnotebooks, Ultrabooks, Chromebooks

under 300 USD/Euros, under 500 USD/Euros, 1,000 USD/Euros, for University Students, Best Displays

Top 10 Smartphones Smartphones, Phablets, ≤6-inch, Camera Smartphones