Once Again, Most ASUS B660 & H610 Motherboards Have Compatibility Issues With Noctua’s LGA 1700 Alder Lake CPU Coolers

Hassan Mujtaba
Some ASUS Z690 & B660 Motherboards Will Not Be Compatible With Noctua's LGA 1700 Alder Lake CPU Coolers 1

Back in November 2021, we reported how several of ASUS's motherboards based on the Intel 600-series chipset were incompatible with Noctua's LGA 1700 cooler lineup. Well, it wasn't just Z690 as the compatibility list now shows that there are also several B660 and H610 motherboards from the manufacturer that will have compatibility issues with some of its most popular CPU coolers.

Most ASUS B660 & H610 Motherboards Have Compatibility With Some of The Most Popular Noctua LGA 1700 Desktop CPU Coolers

With the launch of Intel's Non-K Alder Lake family and mainstream 600-series motherboards, there are several users who are planning to build their new entry and budget tier gaming PCs. Most users will be utilizing CPU heatsinks instead of AIO cooling solutions since they offer the best value on entry-level builds. As such, Noctua's cooling lineup is a decent option around the $50-$60 US price range.

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But for those who are planning to build a 12th Gen Intel PC with an ASUS B660 or H610 board, then you might want to take a look at the compatibility list over at Noctua first. Currently, the only cooler that is fully compatible with all ASUS's motherboards is the NH-U9S. The NH-U12S is compatible with B660/H610 motherboards but not with several of ASUS's Z690 motherboards. The NH-U14S has compatibility issues with several B660 and H610 motherboards and the reason stated is that the cooler overhangs the top PCIe x16 slot. This is true for the Chromax variant too.

Moving over to the Noctua NH-D15, while this beast of a cooler is not a balanced choice with a mainstream PC platform, those who still want to put this cooler on an ASUS B660 or an H610 motherboard are in for some bad luck as not only does the cooler overhangs the top PCIe x16 slot and the proper mounting kit is required (which can be delivered to customers, free-of-charge).

We also want to talk about other manufacturers and it looks like almost everyone else has their entire B660 motherboard lineup fully compatible with the Noctua LGA 1700 cooling lineup. The ASRock Mini-ITX B660 motherboards may have some trouble with the NH-U14S but it's nothing as bad as the ASUS B660 motherboards. Furthermore, MSI and Gigabyte have full compatibility on board for their 600-series motherboards.

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ASUS and Noctua have been collaborating together for a long time, starting with their ROG AIO coolers and the more recent GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards. But it looks like, despite the information that they had for Z690 motherboards being incompatible with most Noctua coolers, they didn't work on fixing these compatibility issues for their B660 and H610 motherboards.

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