A Closer Look

The Ryzen 7 2700X comes in a big cubical box characteristic of Ryzen. This box is noticeably bigger and heavier than that of the 1700X because it includes a cooler. It's bigger than other cooler-inclusive SKUs, such as the 1700, because it packs AMD's heaviest and most premium Wraith Prism cooling solution.


As mentioned above, the Wraith Prism is AMD's highest-grade cooling solution, and could even be the most premium stock air-cooling solution we've seen. An up-scale of the Wraith Max cooler the company debuted with its FX-series processors, Wraith Prism has a large aluminium fin-stack to which heat from a copper base is conveyed by four copper heat pipes, and it is ventilated by a large 80 mm fan. The Wraith Prism has three separate RGB LED zones—the ring framing the fan intake, the AMD logo on the shroud, and the fan's impeller itself.


The Ryzen 7 2700X package looks just like any other Ryzen socket AM4 processor. It comes with a soldered IHS (like 1st gen Ryzen, unlike Raven Ridge APUs and unlike Intel). AMD claims to be using a high-grade indium-alloy solder which works to lower temperatures by as much as 10°C.


AMD continues to use the AM4 socket, which means all existing Ryzen motherboards will be compatible with the new Ryzen 2000 series (after a BIOS update). The company also plans to stick to AM4 for the rest of this decade, so there's a pretty long upgrade path ahead for this platform.

AM4 still has a rectangular cooler-mount-hole layout (as opposed to the square ones on Intel LGA platforms). AMD should have switched to a square layout to make it easier to orient tower-type coolers to blow hot air out the rear of the case. Current AM4-ready tower coolers have elaborate retention module kits that let you do so. Most popular cooler vendors are either already including AM4 retention kits with their latest coolers or will send you a mounting kit for free if you want to continue using a cooler you have. You often also have to remove the plastic retention module motherboards ship with to install certain kinds of coolers.