AMD Updates Warranty to Allow Aftermarket Heatsinks

By Published April 25, 2018 at 5:07 pm
AMD Updates Warranty to Allow Aftermarket Heatsinks
Hardware

Some controversy bubbled-up recently when reddit, as it does, found its newest offense at which it could express collective rage. That offense was AMD’s CPU warranty, which had previously indicated that any cooler aside from included stock coolers would violate the warranty – not that they’d be able to prove it, if we’re being honest.

We reached-out to AMD for comment when this story went public, and received a response today that AMD had updated its warranty terms for clarity. The original language was meant to prevent warranty replacements for scenarios where the CPU had been damaged by an out-of-spec cooler (think: something like an LN2 pot, or the jury-rigging we do at GN). It was not meant to block warranty replacements for issues unrelated to coolers.

AMD’s new language states:

“This Limited Warranty shall be null and void if the AMD microprocessor which is the subject of this Limited Warranty is used with any heatsink/fan (HSF) that does not support operation of the AMD processor in conformance with AMD’s publicly available specifications. Use of HSF solutions determined by AMD as incapable of such performance or which are determined to have contributed to the failure of the processor shall invalidate the warranty.”

And:

“Upon receipt of a Return Material Authorization (RMA) number from a Customer Care Center Representative, you will be required to send in your processor. If requested by AMD, you will also be required to send in the heatsink/fan that was packaged with your processor. The packaging materials themselves will not be required to process your RMA. If AMD, in its sole discretion, determines that the processor is not covered by the AMD limited warranty, AMD will return or destroy the processor pursuant to your election.”

Previously, the warranty stated:

"This Limited Warranty shall be null and void if the AMD microprocessor which is the subject of this Limited Warranty is used with any heatsink/fan other than the one provided herewith."

This line has been removed and replaced with the above. The terms now seem reasonable.

Editorial: Steve Burke

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.

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