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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.”
Intel still sells stock coolers for all of their CPU's, they just don't ship with them. Intel coolers are more than adequate unless you are going crazy with overclocking. Intel coolers don't bend Intel CPU's.
Not sure why you are blaming Intel here.
Great, now all we need to do is build the rest of the starship
They don't. The pressure rating for Skylake is the same as Broadwell, 50psi. Which ensures a good contact. What is likely happening is that some aftermarket coolers used more pressure because they're huge, heavy hunks of metal and needed more force to keep from lifting away, and those worked with the stronger substrate that Broadwell and earlier had, but not with Skylake.
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Intel still sells stock coolers for all of their CPU's, they just don't ship with them.
Huh? The last two I personally purchased (Ivy Bridge i5-3570K and Skylake i7-6700) both provided a heatsink+fan.
Intel coolers are more than adequate unless you are going crazy with overclocking. Intel coolers don't bend Intel CPU's.
Both 100% true. The fans on the Intel coolers are quiet under common loads (gaming included) and the temperatures are in spec at all times. The only time I've ever heard the CPU get loud enough to matter was running prime95 to deliberately load the devices.
I don't know what "high pressures" kriston is talking about. The Intel cooler, particularly on the Skylake, didn't require high pressure to install. Honestly the Skylake case kind of confused me because so little pressure was needed.
This is about overclockers buying out-of-spec aftermarket stuff. Self inflicted.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Actually, non-overclocked Skylakes do ship with a stock cooler. The first Skylake processor released was the 4790K (K=overclocked) and does not ship with its own cooler. Non-Ks do, though.
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Likely they're intentionally trying to deform the surface to fit, and to compress and thin the thermal paste.
You want a thin, fully-contacted surface to maximize thermal transfer. Intel likely made the substrate thinner to increase thermal transfer: 1 inch of highly-thermally-conductive silver is a better insulator than 1 micrometer of highly-thermally-conductive silver (hell, a mile of silver wire is a better electrical resistor than a layer of silver foil stuffed between two terminals). Silicone substrate isn't particularly thermally conductive, and thick silicone substrate is even less so.
Because the CPU surface isn't perfectly flat but *is* flexible, pressure will help conform it to the (also not perfectly flat) heat sink surface. This squeezes some of the thermal paste away, and compresses out voids to increase contact surface area. If you assume more is better, you'll naturally conclude that crushing the CPU into dust will give you better contact.
If Intel puts out a specification saying 50psi is rated contact pressure for correct heat sink function, you might decide to put 90psi on it. It works. You ship that, Intel releases a CPU that can handle 70psi instead of 140psi, they don't bother telling anyone because the CPU's spec is still 50psi, and shit starts breaking.
Amusingly, Intel could have glibly put every cooling system manufacture on a list of warranty-terminating equipment ages ago. They could have said, "Hey, we tested all these EXXXTREME COOLING jet fans and they dump 120psi onto our chips like the Hulk putting our balls in a vice. You strap that to the CPU and it fails, we're not responsible." It's fair for Intel to claim that unknown third-party equipment can destroy their hardware; can they quality control third-party equipment? They could, and they could stamp their name on it. That's how motherboards are made, and the board manufacturer is still liable if their board is mis-manufactured (now, if Intel passes the design and the design is flawed, Intel's certification makes Intel liable--Intel is negligent here; if the manufacturing is not within tolerance to produce properly-working equipment and it pumps out flawed boards, it's the manufacturer's fault).
These things happen. It sucks when they do.
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It sounds a bit like you didn't install the Intel boxed cooler correctly...
I think the the "K" version of the 6700 is the overclocked version so it does not come with a cooler as most overclockers will buy a 3rd party one. The poster had the non "K" version which is not meant to be overclocked.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
I don't remember which one Haswell was (2 generations ago?) but I fucking HATE the Intel mounting design.
You have to line up 4 plastic pegs, and then push and twist (to lock) each of them.
While the pegs have a convenient arrow on them to tell you which direction you need to twist to lock them, they DON'T have an indicator for what the starting position should be. In the unlocked state they're fairly loose and can rotate in the package. I believe the slightly flatter side of the top of the peg should be closest to the heatsink, but I've never truly figured out if that was the case.
The pegs are spring loaded, and if you push them down too far before locking you'll get it stuck in the mounting hole and you'll have to twist and pull and tug to get it back out, upsetting any of the others you have already mounted. Once you do free it, you have to reset the thing to neutral, not just by rotating it to the starting position, but also by determining if the spring or peg are stuck, and you'll need to pull and twist and tug again to reset that.
The things are so fucking finicky. Just use a real backplate with screws. Fuck.