Noctua, an Austrian brand specializing in processor cooling, has taken a little tour. Indeed, our colleagues at Akiba PC Hotline have noticed that the NH-U12A is already LGA-1851 compatible. As a reminder, this is Intel’s future socket for Arrow Lake-S processors.
Noctua NH-U12A: already next-gen compatible!
If this compatibility is good news, we can’t say we weren’t expecting it either. Indeed, the LGA-1700 and LGA-1851 are two sockets that share very similar dimensions, as we mentioned here. The dimensions of this future socket are 37.5×45 mm, while only the height changes. The latter changes from 6.73-7.4 mm to 6.83-7.49 mm, due to a few modifications linked to the IHS.
However, these few variations are not enough to make Noctua heatsinks incompatible. The manual states that you only need to use the same hardware as the LGA-1700 to mount your heatsink on the LGA-1851.
All that remains now is for the company to update its data sheets. The rest of the range should offer no resistance. The same goes for the company’s low-profile fans, such as the NH-L9i, now available in the LGA-1700 version. If we follow the logic, mounting it on the 1851 shouldn’t be a problem either.
Finally, we’d like to point out that Noctua isn’t the first to have hardware compatible with Intel’s future platform. No, last July we told you about Cougar’s Poseidon Elite AIOs, which are also compatible. Now that the news is out, it’s likely that other brands will be unveiling their compatibility in the coming days!
