Confirmed: you'll be able to install current AMD AM4 coolers on AM5
It has been five years since the “Ryzen” brand was created. On this auspicious occasion, the gentlemen from AMD sat down at a table in front of the camera and it wasn’t all about retrospect. On the contrary, it also came out of the conversation that users will be able to install AM4 compatible coolers on future processors in the AM5 socket. No modifications to the mounting system will be required. It already contains everything needed.
It doesn’t seem like it, but Ryzen processors are well and truly in their fifth year. The first generation, codenamed Summit Rigde, didn’t come out until 2017, but the fact that processors built on the Zen architecture would be called Ryzen naturally leaked to the public earlier.
From the beginning until now, the AM4 socket has been used to connect to the motherboard. Its time is running out, next year it will be replaced by AM5 (but before that, the refresh of Zen 3 processors with 3D V-Cache will come out for AM4).
With this new socket, AMD will already use the LGA mechanism like Intel or even its own Threadripper processors within the TR(X)4 sockets, i.e. with the pins in the socket while on the processor PCB there will be contact plates. But you’ve known this for a while now, and over the summer, a safety clip also appeared in the images.
However, it hasn’t been confirmed until now how it will be with cooler support. Although the fact that AM4 heatsinks will be compatible with the AM5 socket was hinted at a while ago by some leaked technical documentation. It was still unconfirmed and major interventions in the design of the processor PCB, IHS, and socket usually mean the need for modifications to the mounting system as well. However, that’s not really the case with AM5.
Robert Hallock (AMD’s technical marketing director) noted that the current AM4-supported coolers will also be compatible with the AM5 socket. The physical dimensions of the heatsink of these processors will be different in shape, but its height will be similar. It will have to be adjusted so that the current downward pressure of AM4 heatsinks is neither too high nor too low for the new Ryzen (6000?).
AMD is doing a bit of a revanche for the perhaps unnecessary compatibility complications when moving from AM3 to AM4. On these sockets the mounting hole positions don’t diverge too much, but they are different nonetheless. Some motherboard manufacturers therefore initially adapted the PCB to be compatible with both one and the other spacing. But AMD AM5 will not bring complications of this type, neither to heatsink manufacturers nor to owners of older heatsinks.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš