ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360 - Water Cooling PC, All-in-One CPU AIO Water Cooler, Intel & AMD compatible, efficient PWM-controlled pump, fan: 200-1800 rpm,LGA1851 and LGA1700 Contact Frame - Black

I recently purchased a Liquid Freezer II 360 with the intention of installing it on my 13900K main system here, but a month later still not got round to doing so, when Arctic launched this week their updated Liquid Freezer III AIO at an unbelievable price. The price alone for the LFIII 360 was what made me purchase it in all honesty, even if I have an unopened LFII sat here, but I am glad that I did!No longer do I need to undervolt the CPU or restrict power limits to the CPU to keep temperatures under control (although if you play games that use the Unreal Engine 5, you may still want to do this).Running Cinebench R20 (which puts a load on the CPU much higher than what 99% of applications or games will) on the 13900K will almost automatically send the temperatures up to the thermal throttle limits within a few seconds of starting the test, but with the Arctic LFIII installed, temperatures have not even approached anywhere the thermal limits of the CPU, therefore it does not throttle & stays at full turbo speed for longer. With the CPU overclocked to 5.9Ghz all P-Cores & 4.4Ghz all E-cores, a maximum temperature of 82C has been experienced with no throttling what so ever. Before with a Noctua NH-D15 (one of the very best air cooling solutions available), 100C+ could be reached within 2-3 seconds of starting the test causing the CPU to throttle back by upto 300Mhz during the a single test run or more if you are running it for a longer period of time.During game sessions, I have yet to see the CPU temperature on any core get higher than 63C and not had the fans spin up any more than about 40% of their maximum speed (no change in noise basically with the fan curves I have set).There is one drawback though which stops me from buying more of the LFIII units & that is that it is not compatible with ANY other Intel sockets than LGA1700 (12-14 gen) or the upcoming LGA1851 that is going to be used with newer generations. That means if you have a i9 9900K/10900K/11900K (or any older socket platform), you cannot make use of this cooler. I feel Arctic are losing out on sales because of this as it is obvious that the cooler can be used with the more traditional style mounting solutions as they use this with the supplied AM4/AM5 mounting kit. For the sake of an extra £2-3, Arctic could have provided a mounting solution for LGA115x/2011 and still be cheaper than virtually every other AIO brand on the market. Same applies with the tiny amount of MX6 thermal compound supplied with the cooler. This is a one time application and with contact frames having to be torqued correctly to make sure that all memory channels are present (if overtighten the screws or not provide even pressure on all sides when tightening it down for the contact frame you run the risk of some pins not making a good contact with the CPU) & if you find after installing the cooler that half your memory is not available or system is unstable because of this, you will need additional thermal compound to be able to remove the cooler, reseat the CPU & frame, then reattach pump block. Putting a 2g syringe of MX6 in (£3 if sold separately) still will have the package much cheaper than other available (this is something that should be aware of & have to hand just in case if you have not fitted a 3rd party contact frame before or seen any of the YouTube videos talking about them). In short, tighten the screws 1 turn at a time working in a X/star (top left, bottom right, top right, bottom left, repeat) pattern until the thread bottoms out under 2 fingers turning the screwdriver - DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN!I haven't even mentioned the other benefit of having a fan mounted on the block that cools the VRM’s on the motherboard as well which is silent even at full speed. Unlike other similar VRM cooling solutions built in to an AIO, if it fails, it it can be easily replaced without having to dismantle the whole system & pump block by simply lifting off from the pump as is connected by 2 magnets. Power to the VRM fan is provided by pogo pins on the pump itself that make connection to the fan motor when the magnets engage. You also get a choice of mother board connections as well - two cables are provided - one with a single 4 pin PWM connector that powers the main fans, pump & VRM fan together with a single PWM curve or a 3 way PWM cable (fans, pump & VRM fan) for setting individual PWM curves for each part individually (ie run the pump at 100%, steeper curve on VRM fan & a flatter/steeper curve on the main fans). Regardless of which solution you choose to use, the 4 pin ribbon cable is the same size for ease of cable management.Other than the 2 minor issues that buyers could run into, every thing else I don’t think can be beaten for performance, let alone the price, unless you go full custom loop water cooling (which is going to cost a LOT more than the LFIII does!). For any new machines that I build going forward, the Arctic LFIII will be my first choice of cooler for them as you get all the benefits of a top end liquid cooled cooler at the price of a mid-priced air cooler. If you want/like RGB, then there is also an A-RGB version available for roughly £10 more than the non-RGB version, which when compared to other AIO’s available is still around half the price of other brand equivalent in performance!

what a fantastic cooler.not only cheap for what it is, but also very quiet for the cooling performance.things to know:- it has a deep radiator so needs to be matched with a case that has recessed motherboard mount (like lian li lancool 207) if your mobo has tall vrm radiators.- the cou block might obstruct taller nvme heatsinks, look this up online, arctic provides a full list of boards that it works with. for the boards that don't they can send you free low profile nvme heatsink! these are pretty cheap to buy, but it's a nice gesture.- you can control the pump, vrm fan and radiator fans independently of use single 4pin fan connector to control all 3 at the same time. it's better to control each 3 separately as vrm fan is the loudest one from all the components and does not need to run at full throttle, can be tuned down for even better spund to cooling ratio performance.- you need to be comfortable removing cpu socket from the motherboard. it's a very easy procedure but might be a bit outside of comfort zone for new pc builders. just take it slow and watch some how to videos and you'll get there.- it comes with thermal grease, as well as intel and amd mounting bits.- it can easily cool a cpu that draws about 250W. my core ultra 7 265k is 94 degrees C with this cooler on full power with power limit removed - 265W. that's the limit, any more power to the cpu and you might run into throttling.

I have given this 5 stars. It has excellent reviews and was a good price.Unfortunately I need to return it due to a few factors I didn't realise:It is too large for the Fractal Define R6 case when the HDD trays are present. Fractal confirmed this in support. I could've dismantled the pc to check, didn't have time and wanted to secure the cooler at a good price in case the cost went up.The R6 case is air-flow restrictive and a radiator at the front may restrict airflow further. Think of a radiator in the way compared to unrestricted fans normally in place.Using it at the top of the case is not an option, still too large when HDD trays present.The cooler on tests is quieter than my nh-d15 during heavy use and louder during idle. The pc needs to be quiet most of the time, during heavy use the slightly less noise is if no benefit to me.Without the HDD trays in place this cooler may fit in either orientation, front or top of an R6 case.I've heard and read good things about this cooler and I just couldn't wait to get it and didn't want to miss out on the great offer. It's coming back to Amazon, unused and unseen still sat in its box.