About a week ago we finally received our sample of the Ryzen 9 3900X. A day before all stock positions at the five largest Dutch Hardware retailers were flagged red, thus no stock. Then later that evening i was browsing the web i came across one available Ryzen 9 3900X. At first i didn’t believe my eyes but didn’t hesitate long and bought it immediately taking the risk somebody else was buying it at the sime time leaving me empty handed.
Later that evening, just before 11:00 PM I got a satisfying message that told me the cpu was on it’s way to me, and would be delivered the next day. Yes! And as promised the next day it arrived. Since the beginning of this week we see e-tailer stock regarding Ryzen 9 3900X becoming more and more available. That is at the moment of writing. We don’t know how it will be tomorrow, but we have good hopes it remains this way since the Ryzen 9 3950X is planned for November 2019 which proves our forecast of last week.
We probably have bought one of the first cpu’s of the new batch send to the Netherlands. After installing the cpu, mounting of the included Wraith Prism cooler was not going very easy. We are used strubbeling with other AM4 and Intel coolers we installed before but this one made us sweat a little.
Somehow the allignment of the retention bracket that clamps onto the retention bracket was off, so we unclipped the bracket and pulled the cooler upwards. To our suprise the 3900X stuck to the cooler and we pulled it straight out of the socket! Whut! We carefully removed the cpu from the cooler and we had to twist is to get it loose to release the suction. Sadly i did not take pictures because i was to overwhelmed by the fact and realized I had to inform you guys today. I found some examples on various forums that illustrate my point.
A very thick layer of cooling paste is applied by AMD’s cooling supplier which to our knowledge is Coolermaster. Looking at a user standpoint applying a lot of thermal paste makes sense, if you expect a lot of novice users need a few attempts to mount the cooler. In any case there will always be enough paste left to get a good enough contact with the CPU and that is also a good thing especially when looking at the surface of the heatpipes making contact with the cpu, they are anything but flat and even bumpy in some places as you can see in the images below.
The disadvantage is ofcourse what happened to our cpu which was pulled out of it’s socket despite being in the locked position. Furthermore the mess the surplus of cooling paste leaves behind is also not wanted. It drips of the sides of your cpu onto the motherboard not to speak of the fact that your cpu is pulled and the cooling paste comes between the cpu pins. Cleaning it up is ofcourse a tedious job.
We are well aware of the fact that our little experience here is not a reason for AMD to do something about this, but it seems like more users online face the same problem, see here, here and here. Nonetheless there is a way to reduce the risk of this happening to your cpu.
Option 1: Remove the original cooling paste and replace it for another brand. This enables you to apply lesser paste reducing the suction and makes the job less of a mess when removing the original cooler. Twist the cooler slightly and carefully when removing.
Option 2: Heat up the cpu before you pull the cooler. An idea is to fire up an instance of prime95 or Orthos that makes your cpu nice and hot. Then quickly turn of your system and remove the cooler. The heat makes the cooling paste less sticky and removal of the cooler easier. In our opinion you should do this for AM4 as the PGA (Pin grid array) design makes pulling the cpu from its socket much easier than an LGA (Land grid array) cpu which is held in place by a cover holding the cpu down.
