Manufacturers respond to claims that coolers could damage Skylake chips
After Scythe, Noctua and Alpenföhn, Thermaltake, Thermalright, Arctic Cooling and EK Water Blocks have also responded to claims that CPU coolers could damage certain Skylake-generation processors in transit.
The purport of the statements of Thermaltake, Thermalright, Arctic Cooling and EK Water Blocks is that they do not expect any problems with their coolers, at the most caution should be exercised with some old or heavy models and during transport. They are responding to claims from PC Games Hardware, which last week reported various reports of CPU coolers that damaged the Skylake processor and parts of the motherboard. It would be several complete systems that showed the problem after transport.
The cause of the problem would lie with the substrate: Intel would have made it thinner with the Skylake generation than with previous processor generations. The result would be that under certain circumstances coolers bend the substrate so far in the socket that damage occurs. In previous generations, cooler manufacturers had the necessary leeway in the pressure on the processor, but if that tolerance with Skylake chips is less, there would be a greater chance that some coolers would cause damage, the German technology site reasons.
Scythe then admitted the problem and said he traced the problem to his Hyper Precision Mounting System. Coolers with this or similar mount, which are compatible with LGA socket 1155, 1156 and 1150, should also support Skylake’s LGA1151 socket, but could be damaged by major impacts. “To prevent this, the mounting pressure has been reduced by adjusting the screws,” Scythe writes. The manufacturer will send customers who want it a new set of screws free of charge. The problem can actually occur with the Ashura, Fuma, Grand Kama Cross 3, Mugen 4, including the PCGH Edition, Mugen Max and Ninja 4. Coolers with push pins would not suffer from the problem.
Alpenföhn says it adheres to Intel’s pressure requirements and strongly recommends securing large or heavy coolers during transport. Noctua says it sees no problems with its SecuFirm2 mounting system. The Austrian-Taiwanese company does recommend disconnecting coolers weighing more than 700 grams during transport.
EK Water Blocks warns to be careful with coolers that have no restrictions on increasing pressure. That goes for all platforms, according to the company, but Skylake in particular. The EK-Supremacy series waterblocks, with Precisemount mechanism, should not cause any problems, but EK Water Blocks do not recommend using older waterblocks such as the Supreme LTX in combination with the LGA1151 socket.
Arctic Cooling guarantees that all its coolers with support for LGA1151 are trouble-free to use and Thermaktake also offers this guarantee for all its models that support the socket. Complete systems with heavy coolers must be transported horizontally according to Thermaltake. In turn, Thermalright recommends only dismantling heavy coolers during transport; the company’s coolers would pose no further problems.