You may need to upgrade your CPU cooler if you’re buying a new Intel gaming CPU

The temperature hotspot in the forthcoming range of Intel Arrow Lake CPUs is likely to have moved compared to previous Intel gaming CPU designs, according to a new report. This could affect the performance of existing CPU coolers on the new Intel Core Ultra 200 chips and, in particular, CPU waterblocks designed for existing Intel LGA1700 chips. For peak performance, an upgrade may be required.

The Arrow Lake architecture is expected to be Intel’s most competitive CPU launch in years, with the various Core Ultra 200 chips that will use the architecture standing a good chance of competing with AMD for spots on our best gaming CPU guide. However, for those using high-end cooling setups and looking to directly upgrade from a current-gen Intel LGA1700 setup to the new LGA1851 CPU socket, a straight CPU cooler swap might not see you getting the best cooling from these chips.

The hot spot of a CPU is the location on the heatspreader of the CPU where the chip gets the hottest in typical high-power workloads. This can vary between CPUs in accordance with the design and layout of the chips underneath the heatspreader, which can change when moving from one architecture to another.

Crucially, because this area tends to get the hottest, CPU cooler designers – particularly when it comes to CPU waterblocks – will specifically target these hot spots in their coolers and waterblocks. For example, aiming the cold water intake of a waterblock directly at the hotspot area of the chip can help shave a few degrees off the temperature of this crucial part of the chip, enabling higher overclocks or just a lower overall temperature.

A new investigation by waterblock designer and YouTuber Der8auer has revealed that the layout of Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs has changed considerably from its previous Raptor Lake and Alder Lake designs, based on leaked images of the new chips. In many ways, this shouldn’t be at all surprising, as the new chips use a new LGA1851 CPU socket, rather than the older LGA1700 socket. However, many aspects of the new socket design are very similar to the old version, so CPU cooler designers and end users might have hoped existing CPU coolers would be optimized for this new socket.

Before you rush out and grab yourself an upgrade from our best CPU cooler guide, though, keep in mind that this difference should only affect those users who are pushing their systems to the limits. Coolers that directly target hot spots aren’t the norm, with most standard coolers designed to operate as best as possible across a wide range of AMD and Intel CPUs.

However, if you’re looking to overclock or optimize your system for peak cooling, certain coolers will be better for specific CPUs, and this change in hot spot location could change the CPU cooler landscape.

The specific change in the hot spot is that on LGA1700 CPUs it was typically near the middle of the heatspreader, whereas now it has moved “quite a bit further north.” Der8auer also points out that “it also means that rotating the block 180 degrees would harm the performance,” referring to the fact that users won’t just be able to flip their coolers around to accommodate the hot spot change.

Until we’ve actually tested the overall heat output and performance of Intel’s new Arrow Lake processors, though, we won’t really have a sense of the importance of this change for general consumers or extreme overclockers. What we do know more about, though, is the rumored specs of these new CPUs, and you can read all about them in our Intel Arrow Lake guide.