Gamers Nexus recently visited AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas—a previous video documented company employees discussing the history of Zen CPUs, and the showcasing of historical prototypes including (unreleased) Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D models. The YouTube channel promised that more AMD HQ tour footage would be shared over the next couple of weeks—their latest upload has (host) Steve Burke talking to representatives from various internal labs.

A notable detail extracted from Team Red's thermal laboratory was an old heat spreader concept for Zen 4 processors—the team evaluated whether a concealed vapor chamber would offer improved cooling performance versus conventional metal solutions. Their tests determined that the extra cost (not disclosed) required to integrate a vapor chamber was not worth the resultant 1°C temperature difference, when lined up against a traditional metal design IHS. AMD confirmed that the concept was not developed further since prototype chips were also found to generate heat exceeding expected normal levels, under continuous long-term workload conditions.Gamers Nexus: "This tour of AMD's Austin Headquarters features labs from around the sprawling campus, allowing us a never-before-seen look at the tools used by a hundred-billion dollar chip designer.


During these tours, we get to see unreleased prototypes - like vapor chamber heatspreaders (at the 29 minutes 50 second mark), first-party direct die plates, and unnamed CPUs - while also learning about the technology and tools used to test and design AMD's Ryzen (Zen) processors. The tour goes through the Bring-Up Lab, the codename "red door" lab, a thermal engineering lab, the device failure analysis lab, and an IHS etching facility."