When news hit the web last week that Alienware’s Area-51 gaming PC would be packing AMD’s Threadripper processors, a rather important fact slipped under my radar: Dell is the exclusive OEM builder to have that privilege for the rest of 2017.
That’s both good and bad. On one hand, AMD could use a business deal like this. On the other, consumers who enjoy PCs from the likes of HP, Lenovo, and others, are going to be out-of-luck for at least the rest of the year. What about system integrators, like MAINGEAR, Origin PC, BOXX, and so forth? They’re not considered OEM partners, so they are still free to ship their rigs with Threadripper under-the-hood.
Alienware’s Area-51 Gaming PC
It’s also important to note that this won’t affect those building their own PCs. Amazon and Newegg will be selling the chips soon, along with the required X399 motherboards.
As of the time of writing, AMD hasn’t released the full list of Threadripper SKUs, but based on a recent rumor, there will be nine models available ranging from 10 – 16 cores (and likewise 20 – 32 threads). The chips look to start at the 125W TDP mark, and scale up to 155W, with boost clock frequencies hitting close to 4GHz across the board.
There are a handful of features that will make enthusiasts want to jump on Threadripper, and it’s not just about the cores (though that helps). 64 PCIe lanes will be made available to every single Threadripper owner, much to the chagrin of Intel, I’m sure (launch Core X chips will offer between 16~44).
As covered a week or so ago, AMD’s Threadripper chips will be built around an LGA design, in lieu of PGA. That means that TR adopters won’t need to worry about the chip’s ~4,000 pins from catching on something. Instead, the bottom of the CPUs will be flat, like what we’ve seen from Intel for the past forever (or just about).
With AMD’s EPYC launch set to go down this week, we might learn more specifics about Threadripper SKUs at the same time (at least, I hope).