Noctua confirms that many existing coolers will work with Intel's next-gen CPUs

(Image credit: Noctua)

Noctua makes some of the best CPU coolers, including the NH-D15, which is our favorite air cooler right now. Good news: That cooler will be compatible with Intel's upcoming Comet Lake-S processors, despite the introduction of a new socket. So will many of Noctua's other coolers, and several of the ones that will not be compatible can be made to work with an upgrade kit.

Intel will be introducing a new LGA 1200 socket for Comet Lake-S. Though the socket has not been officially announced, Noctua essentially confirmed the rumors by outlining in no uncertain terms "which Noctua CPU coolers are compatible with LGA 1200." You can check out the full list on Noctua's website.

The list includes all of Noctua's coolers that already work with LGA 115x sockets, including LGA 1156, 1155, 1151, and 1150. Noctua's list suggests there will not be any change to the mounting mechanism on LGA 1200 motherboards, compared to LGA 115x motherboards. If that's the case, existing coolers from other manufacturers should work just fine as well.

Bear in mind we're only talking about physical compatibility. It remains to be seen what kind of cooling requirements Comet Lake-S will bring. As we previously noted, Comet Lake CPUs spanning 10 cores and 20 threads draw the same power as an RTX 2080.

This probably won't matter when it comes to higher end CPU coolers that are built for overclocking. However, it's anyone's guess how lesser performing coolers will fare.

Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).