Threadripper processor is stripped naked down to the dies

Famed overclocker der8auer has once again delidded an AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor, this time with a retail chip he purchased off the shelf. You may recall he did the same thing in July. That prompted to AMD to explain that two of the four dies are dummy dies included for structural stability (we wrote about it here). This time around he der8auer took things a step further by removing the dies and cleaning them up.

Turns out the non-functioning dies have integrated circuits and transistors. It's not clear if they are defective or intentionally disabled by AMD, but they're definitely not blanks. And since this is a retail chip as opposed to an engineering sample, it's likely that all Threadripper processors are built this way.

This particular processor is a Threadripper 1950X. It's the top-end Threadripper CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, along with 1.5MB of L1 cache, 8MB of L2 cache, and 32MB of L3 cache. At stock settings, it has a 3.4GHz base clockspeed and 4GHz Turbo clock.

Bear in mind the Threadripper 1950X is a $1,000 CPU. If you're okay with seeing a pricey piece of hardware being destroyed, then here you go:

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).