Slashdot Mirror
Intel Skylake CPUs Are Warping Under Mounting Pressure From Third-Party Coolers (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: It's been discovered that some third-party heat sinks can physically damage Intel's new Skylake CPUs, along with the pins in the accompanying motherboard socket. The problem has prompted at least one cooler maker to change the design of its Socket 1151 heat sinks and it wouldn't be surprising if others soon followed suit. The apparent issue is the substrate Intel used for its Skylake chips. A close-up shot of a Skylake CPU sitting side-by-side with a Broadwell processor (Google translation of German original) shows that the substrate is noticeably thinner on Skylake, and thus prone to bending from the force that some third-party heat sinks exert.
Intel has addressed the issue by saying, “The design specifications and guidelines for the 6th Gen Intel Core processor using the LGA 1151 socket are unchanged from previous generations and are available for partners and 3rd party manufacturers. Intel can’t comment on 3rd party designs or their adherence to the recommended design specifications. For questions about a specific cooling product we must defer to the manufacturer.”
Well, maybe Intel should stop requiring such high pressures on the heat sink/heat spreader interface. Surely there's a more efficient way to handle cooling. This idiocy started with the Pentium 4 and needs to stop.
Kriston
Great, now all we need to do is build the rest of the starship
I signed in just to say how awesome the title is. It makes it sound like a political article. Well done. Well done.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.
If so, then the cooler makers should follow the spec.
- corollary - if the spec is followed and the CPUs still warp, well then Intel should fix their problem at no cost.
I want a processor that curves to the contours of my Operating System.
This would matter less if Intel would include a usable heatsink with their CPU's. I have worked in high performance computing for over a decade, so putting a heat sink on isn't exactly some exotic task to me, but I couldn't get either of my home OEM Haswell heatsinks to hold onto the motherboard, they would both pop off after the slightest bump. So I *had* to use third-party heatsinks.
Intel should make backplates with threaded mounts mandatory, and should ensure that their OEM heatsink is capable of actually staying on the motherboard and keeping the CPU from thermally throttling during a Prime95 run. If the user needs a third-party heat sink due to overclocking or unusual case geometry, that's fine, but their OEM heatsink should work properly for 95% of users. But it doesn't.
Doing the right thing at Intel's scale couldn't cost more than a dollar (a little extra aluminum/steel in the right spots), yet they mysteriously cheap out. Even AMD's stock heatsink is better.
Look, oh_my_shittynumbers is being an idiot again.
The question isn't whether or not shit is thinner, it clearly is.
The question is whether:
A: Third party heatsinks are exceeding the limit (50 pounds) for mounting pressure.
B: Intel fucked up and the 50 pound limit needs to be lowered for the thinner shit.
C: Both A and B.
My guess is A.
The heatsink mounting pressure is way over limit for many third-party heatsinks, but the 50 pound limit was conservative for older Intel CPUs and they could handle a lot more. The newer CPUs can almost certainly handle the listed 50 pounds, and more, but not nearly as much as the older CPUs.
Anyone who has installed a large third-party heatsink knows that the fucking motherboard will flex and bend and you'll put a ton of fucking pressure on it when installing it and trying to get it latched/screwed/etc. properly. After installation you look at it and think "Uh, is this really okay? Should I switch to a horizontal configuration?". But you'll leave it vertical anyway.
Well if you had read the details of the problem, one manufacturer Scythe admitted a problem with their Mugen 4 and Mugen Max coolers on the new Skylake processors. From what I know, these coolers have been around at least a year before Skylake. Their coolers work with architectures as old as LGA775 and AM2. So what you really saying is that any existing product may not work well with all future products.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm curious why my previous post was marked a troll. I *have* worked in academic HPC for over a decade, have assembled dozens of server motherboards over the years, and over two dozen for myself and family. I'm not exactly a newb here.
Intel consumer-grade OEM heatsinks (as of Haswell at least, perhaps they fixed the issue on Skylake OEM heatsinks and I'm unaware) are boat anchors. On two quality Haswell motherboards (Asus H97M and H97I) I have, the OEM heatsink fails to mount sturdily in the motherboard, and pops out with only the slightest jarring.
Third-party heatsinks would be much less necessary if the OEM heatsink would actually do its job.
Anyone who has installed a large third-party heatsink knows that the fucking motherboard will flex and bend and you'll put a ton of fucking pressure on it when installing it and trying to get it latched/screwed/etc. properly. After installation you look at it and think "Uh, is this really okay? Should I switch to a horizontal configuration?". But you'll leave it vertical anyway.
The decent third party heatsinks never caused the motherboard to flex and bend because they used a backplate that held the enter area rigid. The real issue is did the heatsink mounting pressure and if it exceeded what the substrate can handle. Obviously with Intel's change, the height and/or tolerances changed on the new CPUs. Whether this resulted in Intel needing to release new specs or if it still was within the limits of the old spec, it is then up to the heatsink manufacturers to see if their heatsinks exceed those specs (which almost all of them do in terms of weight, but the weight limit is for the un-augmented heatsink mounting points, and almost all the large heatsinks that exceed the weight replace the mounting system to use the additional backplate which takes the load from the 4 small screwholes around the CPU socket and distributes it across a much larger area of the motherboard).
In other words, the problem exists in either Intel not disclosing a change to the specifications, or third party heatsinks exceeded the values like you said initially. There is no motherboard bending getting a decent heatsink to be installed as most use a screw+spring setup where-in a spring is placed around a screw (much like shocks on a car) and the pressure applied to the CPU/socket is from the springs being compressed as the screws are tightened down.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The first i7's to ship (6700k) did not ship with a cooler
I have never seen an i7 6700k (4.0GHz to 4.2GHz) ship with a cooler. The i7 6700 (3.4GHz) has a cooler, however it is a basic Intel fan one which in most cases will do the job. What is important here is that you need a compatible mother board and associated memory if you are going to design and build the core of your PC properly. Next comes peripherals such as storage, graphics card, monitor, wireless or LAN connection as well as a keyboard and mouse, not forgetting the case and power supply of course.
What is important in any PC design is knowing what you want which will (or should) dictate the required components. Of course knowing your budget constants is important although for some that may not be an issue.
The bottom line is "homework" --> Knowledge and repeat as often as you like until it all sinks in. Don't like that well you can buy pre-built PC's for a price.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Anyone who has installed a large third-party heatsink knows that the fucking motherboard will flex and bend and you'll put a ton of fucking pressure
Well, there's your problem. You're not supposed to have sex on your computer components. They're not designed for that. There really is no such thing as a fucking motherboard. Motherboards are strictly for computation, not fucking... even if most of the computation done involves displaying fucking videos and images.