We got a little excited when we saw an image posted on XFastest purporting to be an upgraded Wraith Prism RGB air-cooled cooler with two additional heatpipes. Unfortunately, while the shots of the supposedly upgraded cooler look real, they are not genuine AMD products.

This was interesting because heat pipes play an integral role in modern coolers. Heat pipes usually consist of copper tubes with liquid inside. The liquid heated from the CPU at the bottom of the cooler is converted to gas and travels down the heat pipe, which extends through an aluminum finned block. Cooled by the aluminum block and an attached fan, the gas condenses into a liquid and returns to the base, starting the process all over again.

The stock air coolers bundled with the processors have not been that exciting over the years, but to AMD's credit, the Wraith coolers for Ryzen CPUs are quite good. And as it stands, the Wraith Prism RGB is certainly serviceable, if not one of the best CPU coolers (considering third-party alternatives), with multiple Ryzen 9 3900X, Ryzen 7 3800X, Ryzen 7 3700X, and Ryzen 7 2700X bundled with Ryzen processors.

In the mainstream area, all of the processors provide adequate performance with the exception of the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X. Therefore, the introduction of an upgraded version with six (instead of four) heatpipes was attractive. We do not know if such a design would have been sufficient to cool the 3950X, but it would have increased overclocking headroom and extended the time the CPU could run at boost frequencies.

It doesn't matter because it doesn't exist. [AMD is pleased to offer the market-leading premium Wraith cooler thermal solution for socket AM4 and AMD Ryzen processors. more information on AMD's current solutions can be found at AMD Wraith Cooling Solutions However, it uses four heatpipes and AMD has no plans to announce a new AMD Wraith Prism cooler with additional heatpipes at this time," AMD told PC Gamer.

"We have discovered that there are third-party coolers on the market that use six heat pipes that appear to be the official AMD Wraith Prism solution, including the improper use of AMD branding. Please note that these solutions are not genuine AMD products and have not been tested and verified by AMD to meet AMD's manufacturing quality and performance requirements AMD is actively investigating the source of these products to ensure users are getting genuine AMD products, AMD will take the necessary steps to enforce its rights. If you have any questions about the source of your cooler, please click here for a solution."

With this statement, AMD seems to confirm that this is not a simple case of an edited image circulating, but an actual illegal product "on the market."

This is important because if you buy a CPU and it is bundled with what appears to be an upgraded Wraith Prism RGB cooler, something nefarious is going on. Perhaps even the CPU has been replaced.