Laminar RH1, Intel's most powerful cooler for Alder Lake processors
Shortly after the leak of a detailed photo of the box cooler for Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 Alder Lake CPUs, the most powerful model is revealed in all its glory. This one is naturally more robust and the tall fins are no longer plastic, but made of aluminium. It uses fixed mounting via screws, which is good news as well. The cooler also includes a backplate, which is handy since this cooler is significantly taller and heavier than the current stock coolers.
Along with the 65-watt Alder Lake processors, Intel will also release three new box coolers with varying cooling performance. Although the processors have the same TDP, their power draw will be different in boost. We have theoretically discussed the medium-performance Laminar RM1 recently.
Meanwhile, photos of the complete Core i5-12400F package have also leaked, so it’s confirmed that this is the final form of the cooler and the tall fins are indeed plastic. The more powerful Laminar RH1 model, however, did not suffer the same fate. This cooler will ship with Core i9 processors where higher cooling capacity will be required, and that will be achieved by the most powerful of Intel’s coolers thanks to the all-metal heatsink. The tall contour fins are already metal in its case. As with the less powerful Laminar RM1, the aluminum fins extend from a common center, but in the case of the Laminar RH1, every other fin is elongated.
The shape of the fins is similar to the cheaper cooler, but the difference is that while the RM1 only has a plastic crown, the RH1’s tall fins are still aluminum. These tall fins also widen the cooler quite a bit and overall the Laminar RH1 looks robust.
Note that there is an inconspicuous frame around the rotor with an enlarged outer diameter. This helps the fan achieve higher static pressure, but also serves as a light pipe for the LED. So far, it’s unclear whether it will be “blue only” or RGB. The connector cable is also captured in the photos, and it seems that the lighting could be multicolor after all, and the blue is only set here for the sake of synchronizing with the “intel” color.
Finally, the Laminar RM1 cooler will also be characterized by a fixed mounting via screws – so naturally the backplate is also included in the accessories. Such mounting system is quite a rarity among Intel’s box coolers, but the company has already avoided push-pins in the case of the model for the Core i9-980X (Gulftown). But that was a tower cooler, and among top-flow designs, the screw-on mechanism is a premiere. This is probably also because the Laminar RH1 will be quite tall and even the weight may be close to half a kilogram. The thickness of the aluminium fins is estimated to be around 2 mm. And assuming that an 80 mm wide and 20 mm deep fan is used (as on current Intel box coolers), the Laminar RH1 may reach about 60 mm in height.
The Laminar RH1 cooler will be included with at least Intel Core i9-12900 (with active iGPU) and Core i9-12900F (with inactive iGPU) processors. These, along with the lower-end models, will be out in January 2022, which is coming soon.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš