Arrow Lake hotspot purportedly moves up compared to LGA 1700 — Der8auer preparing water blocks for Core Ultra 200 series

Arrow Lake’s new LGA 1851 form factor has shifted the CPU’s temperature hot spot to a different position than it was previously. Der8auer reports on the Overclock forums, that the hotspot has shifted north compared to LGA 1700 Alder Lake and Raptor Lake CPUs, requiring new CPU cooler designs for ultra high-performance waterblocks and coolers to extract the maximum amount of heat from Intel’s new Arrow Lake chips.

“Regarding 1851 we are working on making a normal block, too. The hotspot on 1851 is quite a bit further north than it was on 1700. This means for ideal cooling a shift of the cooling center is required to fight the hotspot. It also means that rotating the block 180° would harm the performance. For us it would be the easiest to have the in port north and out in the south orientation,” Der8auer wrote on the Overclock forums.

The master overclocker revealed that he and his team are building new waterblocks for Arrow Lake chips. He confirmed that the hotspot area on the Alder Lake die and IHS has moved “a bit further” north compared to LGA 1700 CPUs which had a hotspot directly in the center. As a result, water block manufacturers who want to extract the maximum amount of performance from Arrow Lake might have to change their designs accordingly. For der8auer’s blocks, that means putting the input port on the north side of the IHS and the out port on the south side for optimal heat dissipation.

It remains a mystery whether traditional air coolers and AIO’s will need design changes to accommodate Arrow Lake’s new hotspot characteristics. However, it is possible that all coolers could benefit from a positioning or design update to better suit the Arrow Lake chips. 

The good news is Arrow Lake changes are not an apparent requirement for cooler compatibility. LGA 1851 purportedly maintains cooler compatibility with LGA 1700, with the only exception being cooler mounting pressure. This means that LGA 1700 coolers will be compatible with LGA 1851, though you’ll need an updated mounting kit to compensate for the adjusted mounting pressures. Regardless, LGA 1700 coolers will be compatible with LGA 1851 regardless of Arrow Lake’s hotspot characteristics. These hotspot changes are only likely to affect enthusiast-grade cooler designs, where every single degree of temperature improvement counts.