Thermal Grizzly, known most for its high conductivity thermal compounds, showcased a trio of innovative products at Computex 2024, which are highly relevant. The first such innovation is the WireView Pro, a gadget that monitors power delivery to your graphics card, and puts out audible alarms when there's overcurrent or overheating of the wires at the connector. This helps you prevent the power connector burnouts we're seeing with modern graphics cards. This particular model supports the 12V-2x6 (H++) connector standard, which in turn has compatibility with 12VHPWR.

The WireView Pro device sits between the power connection from your PSU, and the connector of your graphics card. It has a physical segment display that lets you monitor power draw or current in real time. It also has two thermal diodes, which connect to the wires close to the terminals of the connector. The device will provide an audible alarm if it detects overheating of wires that can lead to a burnout, or if it detects overcurrent (beyond the ATX 3.1 specification and its excursion tolerances).

During the CES 2024 show, EK unveiled an exciting new addition to their premium all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler lineup—the EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 Direct Die D-RGB. As the name suggests, this new 360 mm AIO water cooler is purpose-built for direct die cooling of delidded Intel LGA1700 CPUs. The EK-Nucleus Direct Die stands out with its custom cold plate and mounting mechanism, which are exclusively engineered for exposed CPU dies. The nickel-plated copper base ensures compatibility with liquid metal TIMs like the included Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, which comes in the package. EK has worked with der8auer to provide delidding service kits and tools to facilitate easy DIY removal of the integrated heat spreader (IHS).

The package also contains a contact frame and protective foam for safe liquid metal application. At the heart of the cooler is a powerful AIO pump EK co-developed with the OEM manufacturer, meaning it is not an off-the-shelf pump found in other AIOs and is capable of up to 500 L/h flow rate. The reinforced, sleeved rubber tubing is fitted with aluminium covers for durability. Integrated omnilink connectors allow daisy chaining of the three included 120 mm D-RGB fans for cable management. The EK-Nucleus Direct Die offers extensive RGB lighting customization with illuminated circle accents on the removable pump top covers. The diamond-cut brushed aluminium side panels and radiator cowl add to the premium aesthetic. The new AIO will be available for the Intel LGA1700 platform, with hopefully more versions later. The EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 Direct Die D-RGB is now available for pre-order at €202.90 MSRP price tag.

Tech innovator GELID Solutions, is thrilled to unveil its latest Phase Change Thermal Interface. Developed with cutting-edge technology and designed to meet the demands of today's high-performance devices. HeatPhase Ultra is built to last, offering great durability. Unlike regular materials, it stays effective without getting
hard or worn out over time, ensuring steady temperature control. Safety is a priority, and HeatPhase Ultra is designed to prevent electrical issues, reducing the risk of short circuits, especially in delicate applications.

Designed with user convenience in mind, HeatPhase Ultra prevents bleeding during application, staying in place without creating a mess. Its user-friendly nature simplifies both application and removal processes, making it the preferred choice for technicians and users alike. Responding to demand, HeatPhase Ultra comes in two sizes: one for Intel and one for AMD processors. This tailored approach guarantees a good fit for different systems, providing effective thermal control for various electronic devices.

ASUS at the 2023 Computex launched the ROG MATRIX GeForce RTX 4090, its absolute top-end custom-design graphics card, designed to be the fastest money can buy. The card features the industry's highest factory-overclock for an RTX 4090, and has its power limits set squarely at 600 W, maxing out the single 16-pin 12VHPWR connector. The card also features the strongest VRM solution ever by ASUS for a graphics card, to hold this PL. The star attraction with this card is that it is marketed as the first graphics card that incorporates liquid metal technology.

What it essentially means, is that the cooling solution uses liquid-metal thermal interface material (TIM) for the GPU. The enthusiasts among you know how difficult it is to apply and maintain liquid metal, and ASUS is among the first companies to do this on an industrial scale, using a fully automated process. The company originally designed this mechanized liquid-metal TIM application technique for its high-end notebooks, but figured it could use it even for graphics cards. Liquid-metal TIMs offer the highest possible thermal conductivity as the TIM is pure metal. It's also electrically conductive, which is why application and maintenance is extremely difficult. ASUS innovated a cold-plate design specifically for this task, so the graphics card could survive international shipping from its factories. A third innovation by ASUS has been to develop a special multi-layer resin that protects the SMD components on the PCB against being shorted by the liquid-metal. ASUS is so confident in its liquid-metal technology, that the company is backing this graphics card with a comprehensive 5-year warranty.

A relatively new entrant to the PC cooling space, Iceberg Thermal had its first major in-person outing at CES, with the exhibition of several of its newest CPU coolers, purpose-built heatsinks, case fans, and thermal pastes. To begin with, the company showed off its IceGale Xtra, IceGale ARGB, and IceGale Silent case fans. The IceGale Xtra comes in 80 mm, 120 mm, and 140 mm sizes, and in color options of icy-blue, gray, and black. These fans lack illumination, but offer a solid combination of high RPM range and dual-ball bearings. The IceGale ARGB fans are essentially the same, but come only in 120 mm and 140 mm sizes, and only in icy-blue and black frame options. These ones feature addressable RGB LEDs in the fan impeller hub, with the frost-finish impeller blades diffusing the light. The IceGale Silent series is a line of entry-level case fans that come in 120 mm size and black trim, with sleeve bearings. The fan is claimed to offer a noise output of just 12.3 dBA.

The FuzeIce thermal interface material ships in flattened piston syringes that double up as applicators. This is an electrically non-conductive TIM that offers thermal conductivity of 11.25 W/mK, 56,000 poise viscosity, and 2.6 g/cm³ density. It comes in 3.5 g and 7 g syringes. Iceberg Thermal also showed off a wide range of custom-design heatsinks that are purpose-built for a wide range of cooling needs. These are not sold to customers in the retail channel, but the company is looking to become an OEM for purpose-built air-cooling solutions. Moving on to the good stuff, and we see the company show off a trio of its IceSleet series CPU coolers for the DIY retail channel. These include the IceSleet G4 OC, IceSleet G4 Midnight, IceSleet X5, IceSleet X6, IceSleet X7 Dual, IceSleet X9 Dual, and a couple of IceFloe low-profile coolers.

Also at the 2023 International CES, be quiet! showed off its new and upcoming thermal interface materials and new Light Wings lines of case/radiator fans. The DC2 PRO is an enthusiast-grade liquid-metal thermal interface material for high-performance applications, targeting overclockers who know how to handle liquid metal. The company wouldn't put out thermal conductivity numbers but mentioned that the DC2 PRO should be competitive with the best liquid-metal TIMs out there (north of 70 W/mK). The DC2 (non-PRO) is a conventional ceramic base TIM that's electrically non-conductive, and can be used with bare copper surfaces (such as coolers with direct-touch heatpipes). We expect this one's conductivity to be north of 10 W/mK.

be quiet! also showed off its Light Wings White 140 mm fans in two variants, one with a standard RPM range, and another with an undisclosed high-RPM limit. These fans feature high-endurance dynamic bearings, 4-pin PWM control, and 3-pin ARGB control for their addressable RGB LED diffusers along the bore of the frame. These are sold in packs of 3.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference-design isn't a first-party product with limited availability like the NVIDIA Founders Edition; but rather a classic reference-design that's sold by AMD's add-in board partners under their marquee (without sticking their own labels on the product). AMD and its partners internally refer to reference-design cards as "MBA cards" (made by AMD cards). The company gave us a technical overview of the reference-design PCB. As with every reference AMD PCB for the past several generations, the RX 7900 XTX PCB has a premium selection of components. The card uses an expensive 14-layer PCB with 4 additional layers of 2-oz copper. 14-layer PCBs are typically used with enterprise-grade products, and graphics cards typically tend to have PCB layer counts of around 10. The PCB also uses ITEQ IT-170GRA epoxy and laminate materials, which enable a glass transition temperature (Tg) of 175 °C (no, the GPU won't get anywhere near as hot).

The reference-design RX 7900 XTX PCB draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. With the typical board power of the RX 7900 XTX rated at 355 W, this falls inside the 375 total power-draw capability when you add up the 150 W input from the two connectors, and 75 W from the PCIe slot. AMD worked to minimize power-draw spikes at least from the PCIe slot. Excursions, if any, should be localized to the 8-pin power connectors. The card features 20-phase VRM solution, using "high efficiency" DrMOS power-stage phases (could be very high current). The "Navi 31" GPU is surrounded by 12 GDDR6 memory chips given the GPU's 384-bit memory interface. Two of these memory pads could end up unused on the RX 7900 XT, which has a 320-bit memory interface. Display outputs of the RX 7900 series include two standard-size DisplayPort 2.1, one USB type-C with DisplayPort passthrough; and one HDMI 2.1a.

Alphacool expands the portfolio for thermal pastes and offers Apex Thermal Grease also in containers with 20 g, 50 g or 100 g content. The offer is intended for users who have to frequently resort to the use of thermal paste. The container has a large opening, is uncomplicated to handle and protects the thermal paste reliably and in the long term from drying out. The new containers are also very interesting in terms of price. When purchasing the 20 g can, one already achieves a saving of 25% compared to the quantity in the 4 g applicators required for this.

With a thermal conductivity of 17 W/mK, Apex is one of the best-performing thermal pastes on the market. However, this is not only due to the high thermal conductivity. Aspects such as viscosity and durability play an equally important role. Alphacool was able to optimize the viscosity so that the thermal grease is particularly suitable for high contact pressures and is still easy to apply. The Apex Thermal Grease is electrically non-conductive and non-caustic. The contained nano particles have a very low thermal impedance and manage to close even microscopic gaps between cooler and heatspreader. Disruptive air pockets are a thing of the past, as are excessively high temperatures.

Arctic today unveiled the MX-6 thermal-compound. The incoming MX-6 replaces MX-5 from the shelves, which is now EOL, but retails alongside the MX-4, Arctic's best-selling TIM. The new MX-6 is a high-viscosity, non-conductive, non-capacitive thermal paste which doesn't corrode pure copper. It is suitable for processor IHS, exposed dies (such as GPUs), or even ceramic packages (such as DRAM chips).

The Arctic MX-6 has a viscosity of 550 poise, density of 3.2 g/cm³, 1.9 X 1013 Ω-cm, and a breakdown voltage of 250 V/mil. Each application can stay in place for 8 years (maintain conductivity and viscosity). The company didn't mention chemical composition or conductivity figures, yet. It comes in syringe-type dispensers of 2 g, 4 g, and 8 g, as well as a bundle of a 4 g dispenser with six MX Cleaner wipes. The MX-6 is available from now, priced at USD $6.79 for the 2 g syringe, $8.49 for the 4 g syringe, $9.79 for the 4 g syringe and 6 pieces of MX Cleaner wipes; and $11.99 for the 8 g syringe. These are introductory prices.

Thermaltake today introduced the TG-60, a high-performance thermal interface material made of liquid-metal. The TG-60 offers an extreme thermal conductivity of 52 W/mK, but comes with all the downsides of any liquid-metal TIM—it's electrically conductive, and requires that your CPU cooler's contact surface have nickel-plating (without which it will corrode through any exposed-copper surfaces, including copper base-plates, vapor-chamber plates, or direct-contact heat-pipes. Luckily the selection of nickel-plated copper DIY water-blocks and air coolers are fairly broad. The TG-60 includes an applicator, a nozzle with the syringe, and a cleaning gauze. The company didn't reveal pricing.

An AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor that's been de-lidded (has its integrated heatspreader or IHS removed), posts vastly better thermals, according to Madness7771 on Twitter, who succeeded in de-lidding their 5800X3D. The stock 5800X3D posts significantly higher CPU core temperatures than a regular 5800X, due to its 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache) chiplet design, in which heat from the CPU cores is conducted through structural silicon, to the surface of the die-stack, from where the STIM conducts heat onward to the IHS.

A de-lidded 5800X3D reveals the 8-core "Zen 3" 3DV chiplet (CCD) next to a blob of structural material in the vacant area meant for a second CCD. With the residual STIM cleaned off, Madness7771 used a Conductonaut TIM and a Noctua NH-D14 to cool the processor. Madness7771 also posted some before and after temperature numbers for the processor (using the same cooler). It sees a maximum temperature drop from 80 °C to 70 °C, and average temperature drop from 78 °C to 67 °C, tested with a Forza Horizon 5 gaming workload. They also note that the peak temperature of the 5800X3D no longer reaches over 90 °C. De-lidding processors with STIM is a very risky process, and will destroy your processor if not done right.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the expansion of the AMD EPYC processor footprint within the cloud ecosystem, powering the new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) E4 Dense instances. These new instances are part of the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution offerings, enable customers to build and run a hybrid-cloud environment for their VMware based workloads.

Based on 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, the new E4 Dense instances expand the AMD EPYC presence at OCI and are made to support memory and storage intense VMware workloads. The E4 Dense instances utilize the core density and performance capabilities of EPYC processors to provide customers a fast path to a cloud environment, enabling similar performance and advanced security features through enabling the AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) security feature for VMware workloads that they have on-premises.

For ARCTIC, it has always been a top priority to supply customers only with products of the best quality and durability. Should there ever be any doubts about products we've delivered, we stand by our responsibility to our customers.

Current findings from our permanent quality assurance tests show that certain batches of our MX-5 thermal compound contain anomalies in consistency and shelf life. The affected products show an increased separation of oil within the paste, resulting in premature hardening. This can lead to adverse effects and application difficulties.

Thermalright today introduced the CFX thermal compound. The compound offers a wide temperature range of -50°C to 150°C, while being electrically non-conductive. Its conductivity is rated at 12 W/m-K, with a thermal impedance of 0.009 °C-cm²/W, and has a specific gravity of 2.3 at 25°C. The company didn't mention the composition or viscosity of the paste. It ships in 2 g syringes and includes a spatula, so it could be more on the viscous side. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the expansion of its 5G RAN Platforms portfolio with the addition of the Qualcomm 5G DU X100 Accelerator Card. The Qualcomm 5G DU X100 is designed to enable operators and infrastructure vendors the ability to readily reap the benefits of high performance, low latency, and power efficient 5G, while accelerating the cellular ecosystem's transition towards virtualized radio access networks.

The Qualcomm 5G DU X100 is a PCIe inline accelerator card with concurrent Sub-6 GHz and mmWave baseband support which is designed to simplify 5G deployments by offering a turnkey solution for ease of deployment with O-RAN fronthaul and 5G NR layer 1 High (L1 High) processing. The PCIe card is designed to seamlessly plug into standard Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers to offload CPUs from latency-sensitive and compute-intensive 5G baseband functions such as demodulation, beamforming, channel coding, and Massive MIMO computation needed for high-capacity deployments. For use in public or private networks, this accelerator card aims to give carriers the ability to increase overall network capacity and fully realize the transformative potential of 5G.

Alphacool 2-part thermal adhesive is perfect for mounting coolers onto items such as motherboard VRMs. The 2-part epoxy-based adhesive is the optimal choice when coolers need to be mounted more securely onto the CPU or GPU of single-board computers (Raspberry PI, ODROID, Arduino, Cubieboard etc.). The field of application is so wide that even coolers on electronic components in power amplifiers or RC vehicles can be reliably and stably bonded.

Arctic is readying its first new high-performance thermal compound in over a decade, the MX-5. 4-gram syringes of the compound started surfacing on Amazon UK, where it's listed for £13.59 (includes UK VAT). The listing does not mention the all-important thermal conductivity or viscosity figures for the compound, but mentions that it is not metal-based (doesn't contain metal particles), is electrically non-conductive (so you can use it on bare FCBGAs/FCPGAs without an IHS) and is designed to hold integrity up to 8 years after an application. The listing mentions a "ships by" date of March 15, 2021, which is also its release date.

Update Jan 25th: Arctic released a statement on Twitter regarding the availability of the MX-5.

The ARCTIC MX-5 will be officially released on March 15. Since there are only a few quantities at the beginning, a pre-sale will be done via Amazon and our website. Unfortunately, we cannot predict Amazon availability, so please check Amazon availability on your own.

Sony has decided to post a teardown video of its latest, upcoming PlayStation 5 console. The video shows how to disassemble the console and what is inside it. The new console features a different design from the previous generation, and thus a different internal layout. What is perhaps the most exciting thing shown in the video is the new cooling solution Sony implements. The new design uses some pretty interesting solutions that combine good airflow generated by 120 mm wide, 45 mm thick blower fan cooling the vapor chamber heatsink. Under the heatsink, the silicon company has made is running at high clocks and is said to generate a lot of heat, so to manage it, the console uses liquid metal thermal interface material (TIM) instead of regular thermal paste for heat transfer. Combined with good airflow and good heatsink, heat management shouldn't be a problem on this console.

In addition to the CPU+VRM monoblock for the Z490 AORUS Master, Bitspower also introduced the Baircool TP-1 thermal compound. This is a graphene-based, non-silicone thermal interface material that boasts of being "long term stable," non-corrosive, electrically non-conductive, and does not require burn-in after application, with a short dry-out period. The compound offers 6.5 W/m-K thermal conductivity, and 0.009 K-in²/W thermal impedance. With under 600,000 CPS, it's rated among the less viscous compounds, and has a specific gravity of 2.5 g/cm³. Its dielectric strength is rated at 0.9 KV/mm. The Baircool TP-1 comes in a 2.5 g tube priced at USD $9.70, and a 5 g tube at $13.80.

Thermaltake today rolled out the TG-30 and TG-50 thermal interface materials. Both appear to be silver particle-based viscous compounds, although the company did not put out their composition. Both the TG-30 and TG-50 come in 4 g syringes. The TG-30 offers thermal conductivity of 4.5 W/m-k, while the TG-50 offers 8 W/m-k.

A unique selling point with the two is the inclusion of a honeycomb pattern stencil and a tiny spatula, which lets you apply the paste onto your CPU IHS in a neat honeycomb pattern for a Thermaltake-recommended Z-height of the application, and uniform spread under pressure from the cooling solution. Thermaltake also includes two alcohol rubs for clearing out its compound from the IHS and cooler. The company didn't reveal pricing of the two.

Intel today launched its 10th generation Core desktop processor family and its companion Intel 400-series chipsets. Based on the 14 nm++ silicon fabrication process and built in the new LGA1200 package, the processors are based on the "Comet Lake" microarchitecture. The core design of "Comet Lake" and its IPC are identical to those of "Skylake," however Intel brought significant enhancements to the processor's clock-speed boosting algorithm, increased core- or thread counts across the board, and introduced new features that could interest enthusiasts and overclockers. The uncore component remains largely unchanged from the previous-generation, with support for DDR4 memory and PCI-Express gen 3.0. Use of these processors requires a new socket LGA1200 motherboard, they won't work on older LGA1151 motherboards. You can install any LGA115x-compatible cooler on LGA1200, provided it meets the thermal requirements of the processor you're using.

At the heart of the 10th generation Core processor family is a new 10-core monolithic processor die, which retains the same basic structure as the previous-generation 8-core "Coffee Lake Refresh" die, and 4-core "Skylake." The cores are arranged in two rows, sandwiched by the processor's uncore and iGPU blocks. A ring-bus interconnect binds the various components. The cache hierarchy is unchanged from previous generations as well, with 32 KB each of L1I and L1D caches; 256 KB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The iGPU is the same Gen 9.5 based UHD 630 graphics. As we mentioned earlier, much of Intel's innovation for the 10th generation is with the processor's microcode (boosting algorithms).

ZALMAN today announced market availability of its new CNPS16X tower-type CPU cooler and three new STC-series thermal compounds. The CNPS16X features an aluminium fin-stack tower-type heatsink that's ventilated by a pair of 120 mm fans in push-pull configuration, held together by an ABS shroud. The top-plate of this shroud features an addressable RGB embellishment with the ZALMAN logo at the center. Besides this, both fans feature ARGB diffusers along the bore of their frames. ZALMAN has two color variants of the CNPS16X depending on the color of the shroud - black and white. Splitter cables are included so the ARGB connections of both fans and the shroud are combined to a single 3-pin connection.

The design of the CNPS16X involves a direct-touch heatpipe base, from which four 6 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes pull heat, spreading it through the aluminium fin-stack. This stack features wave-shaped fins that make hexagonal patterns when viewed from the side. This design helps with increasing turbulence and heat-dissipation to the air-flow. Each of the two included 120 mm fans takes in 4-pin PWM, spins up to 1,500 RPM, together pushing around 75-90 m³h of air, with 25-29 dBA of noise output. ZALMAN rates the thermal capacity of this cooler at 150 W. Among the CPU socket types supported are AM4, LGA115x, and LGA2066. The CNPS16X is priced at 59.90€ (including taxes).

Applying thermal interface material (TIM) properly is a simple task that is under-documented or sometimes even misrepresented by the press. A bad application harms, rather than help your thermals. Their application varies from either the "pea drop" method, where you squeeze the TIM syringe or sachet to put out a tiny pea size blob onto your chip, letting the pressure from the heatsink spread the TIM out; or using an included spatula or plastic card to spread the TIM out to a very thin film. Of course when minors have plastic cards and syringes lying around in their rooms, parents sometimes get the wrong idea.

Cooler Master, in a tweet confirmed that it redesigned its TIM packaging to address exactly this: that TIMs supplied in syringes that look and function identical to medical syringes, make parents think their kids are doing drugs. "We didn't change the shape of the syringe to make applying thermal paste a lot easier, but because we we're getting tired of having to explain parents that their kid isn't using drugs," reads the Cooler Master statement. The new packaging by Cooler Master looks closer to a highlighter or Play Doh tube than it does a medical syringe. It still uses a syringe-like manual piston to dispense TIM, but the nozzle is wide and flattened to put out a layer of TIM directly on your chip. It's no longer round, and you can no longer attach injection needles. This nozzle also takes away the need for plastic cards or spatulas. The design, however, has a downside: the "pea drop" application is impossible, and a somewhat sub-optimal method is being forced upon users. Did Cooler Master just give in to pressure from an uninformed section of the market? Could a printed disclaimer on a conventional round syringe have helped instead? Tell us in the comments below.

Intel issued a product change notification (PCN) dated November 13, calling for a recall of boxed Xeon E-2274G processors from customers and distributors. The boxed SKU of the E-2274G, which includes a stock cooling solution, has been marked as "discontinued" and "end of life." Intel is offering an E-2274G tray processor (chip-only) as replacement for the returned inventory. The cause for the recall is the cooling solution included in the boxed SKU, which has been found to be insufficient to cool the E-2274G, a 4-core/8-thread processor based on the 14 nm++ "Coffee Lake" microarchitecture, with a rated TDP of 88 W.

The E973708-003 fan-heatsink included with boxed Xeon E-2274G processors is supplied by Foxconn, and has been known to be bundled with Intel's entry-level client-segment processors, such as the Pentium Gold series and Core i3 series (chips with TDP typically rated 65 W or less). It features a thin, circular, all-aluminium heatsink, which lacks a copper core that certain other LGA115x-compatible stock coolers by Intel have. The heatsink makes contact with the CPU over pre-applied TIM on an aluminium surface, with spirally-projecting fins dissipating heat under the fan's airflow. It could be been an oversight bundling such an underpowered cooler with an 88 W TDP processor that's designed for the rigors of mission-critical use-cases such as workstations and small-business servers.Heatsink images courtesy: AndyKingParts (Amazon seller)

AMD senior technical marketing manager Robert Hallock, responding to a specific question on Twitter, confirmed that the 3rd generation Ryzen processors do feature soldered integrated heatspreaders (IHS). Soldering as an interface material is preferred as it offers better heat transfer between the processor die and the IHS, as opposed to using a fluid TIM such as pastes. "Matisse" will be one of the rare few examples of a multi-chip module with a soldered IHS. The package has two kinds of dies, one or two 7 nm "Zen 2" 8-core CPU chiplets, and one 14 nm I/O Controller die.

The most similar example of such a processor would be Intel's "Clarkdale" (pictured below), which has its CPU cores sitting on a 32 nm die, while the I/O, including memory controller and iGPU, are on a separate 45 nm die. On-package QPI connects the two. Interestingly, Intel used two different sub-IHS interface materials for "Clarkdale." While the CPU die was soldered, a fluid TIM was used for the I/O controller die. It would hence be very interesting to see if AMD solders both kinds of dies under the "Matisse" IHS, or just the CPU chiplets. Going by Hallock's strong affirmative "Like a boss," we lean toward the possibility of all dies being soldered.Image Credit: TheLAWNOOB (OCN Forums)