Chiptastic, and a new cooler
The Core i7 980X EE is to the right of a retail-model Core i7 930 chip that we reviewed recently.
And it's very similar on the bottom. Remember, it's a drop-in upgrade on most X58 chipset-based motherboards.
Knowing that folk who purchase the £765 Extreme Edition chip may well overclock it, Intel is shipping an upgraded cooler in the retail box. The chunky heatsink requires through-the-motherboard mounting and uses a rather noisy two-speed fan. Intel claims a 20dBA at 800rpm and <35dBA at 1,800rpm. To us, however, it sounds louder than that.
We used the fan-speed set to high-performance mode during our testing. Readers that can afford this chip will probably have a better cooling solution in place, though.
