The difficulty when you are a CPU cooling manufacturer is to make your heatsinks compatible with a new platform. In our case, brands are trying to make their heatsinks compatible with the upcoming LGA-1700. However, despite compatible mounting kits, we learn that for AIOs, we can encounter pressure problems on Alder Lake-S processors. This results in a deterioration in cooling performance.
Alder Lake-S: beware of the temperature with an AIO in LGA-1200!
According to our colleagues at Wccftech, having a mounting system compatible with the LGA-1700 may not be enough. Indeed, our colleague received information that the current AIO (not compatible with LGA-1700) could be problematic. Indeed, the new platform of Intel shows a slightly lower height of 1 mm compared to the old one. Moreover, it is this small millimeter that can be problematic since the pressure on the processor’s IHS may not be sufficient anymore.
The image above illustrates this problem well. You can see it on the Corsair kit (middle), that the thermal paste has not spread properly on the surface of the base. Thus, the heat conduction is not optimal and our CPU will see its temperatures increase drastically. The same is true for the Cooler Master kit (on the right) where we can see a lack of paste on the left side of the base. In the end, only the MSI kits do well.
Finally, this is a phenomenon that we will have to follow closely to see if it is a generalized problem or not.
