ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 - Multi Compatible All-in-One CPU AIO Water Cooler, Compatible with Intel & AMD, Efficient PWM Controlled Pump, Fan Speed: 200-1700 RPM, LGA1700 Compatible - Black

Have had this now for five years. This is an ideal product. It runs whisper quiet and effectively cools at the top of the product class. It is priced competitively. The company warrants the product for 6 years. And when there is an issue with part of their production line, they quickly identify it and offer replacement parts to fix the quality control issue. Installation was a bit awkward but do-able. I cannot say enough good things about this product. This applies double to Arctic. I would not look elsewhere when I am building my next PC -- if Arctic is still in the game, they have earned my confidence and my business.

Background (skip to go to review):My roommate has a prebuilt gaming pc, but her CPU cooler went bad, causing the CPU to get to 100 degrees C and throttling her CPU. Games went from ultra 150fps to low 17fps, and even Microsoft Word was lagging. Replacing the cooler fixed everything, and her PC is back to blistering fast speeds.Pros:incredibly coolquietminimalistic (only 1 wire, no LEDs)complete control with just one 4-pin PWM (connect to CPU FAN header)Cons:the manual and parts make certain configurations difficult (I wanted to set up a push intake at the front of the case, but had to settle for a pull intake at the front)online installation manual is a bit scuffedReview:This cooler is really good at cooling. Games barely raise the CPU temp. Tasks like installations and stuff raise the temperature up to 40 degrees. I have the "Smart fan mode" enabled, so the fan speeds are automatically regulated and running not even close to the max fan speeds. There is barely any noise, even with the case open.The minimalism of the setup is amazing. I was looking at other coolers, and you need to plug the LED header in, multiple fan headers, and a SATA power cable. This setup, you just plug your one 4-pin cable into the CPU FAN header, and everything will be automatically controlled by your motherboard. The two 140mm fans are plugged into a Christmas-light-style cable that comes out of the radiator, so if your fans ever go bad, or you want to upgrade your fans with some RGB or Noctua fans, you totally can.The one gripe I have with this cooler is that certain configurations are difficult to do. I wanted to set up a push intake at the front of the case because the top of my case does not have the fan mounts needed to do a push exhaust. The manual and parts given strongly encourage you to have the radiator on the outside (touching the case) and not the fans. This means that if the top of your case does not support 280mm fans for a push exhaust configuration, then you have to set up your radiator on the front with a pull intake configuration. You may be able to do the push intake setup if you had some patience, and held all the parts in place while screwing them into the case, but once again, this method is not even described in the manual, and honestly, the pull configuration is keeping my CPU pretty cool anyway.Finally, the other dislike of this cooler is the online installation manual. There are many screws and parts that look very similar, and the manual is not descriptive on the differences between these parts, nor are the parts labeled in any way to help. There is a step that is completely skipped in the manual (it goes from step 1 to step 3). As you start using up all the parts, praying that you don't strip any of the screws unintentionally, the installation gets smoother.One other cool thing is that the installation parts comes with some extra screws and parts, so if you happen to need certain parts for mounting hard drives or fans, you're in luck. There were 4 screws that I was able to use to mount my SSD to the case (it was just free floating in the back of the case before).

Running a 140W CPU load through this AIO, the intake air (at the radiator) temp is 26C and the exhaust temp (of the radiator) is 30.5C, at 100% fan/pump speed.After 15 minutes of Prime95 the AIO and entire system is fully heat soaked, and stopping p95 the idle temp after ~30 seconds is just 2-3C higher than before. Which means the water, when heat soaked, is only a few C above ambient.That's phenomenal performance and really shows that Arctic's thick radiator does the job.Yes, this is a thick boy. I managed to fit the 280mm just barely in the space between my 24-pin connector and the hard drive cages (my case only has 120mm front fan mounts and a single 140mm top exhaust, the case is an old design not meant for AIOs).I switched the radiator fans to the other side, as I also went with GamersNexus' recommendation of having the hoses at the bottom of the radiator.What I like about this setup is I still have a couple Corsair AF120s on the front that can blast the system with fresh room air. I also took one of the 140mm fans from my air cooler, hooked it up to the CPU header with a splitter, and have it on top of the radiator blowing air on the DRAM and VRMs. This works really well, and basically my DRAM and motherboard temps have decreased a couple C.My idle, low load, and "moderate" gaming load temps have all improved dramatically,Coming from a big fat heavy dual tower air cooler with 5 8mm heatpipes, my CPU idled at 40-45C and liked to reach 60-65C in games.The Arctic 280mm idles 35-38C at the same room temp, barely goes over 40 when watching videos and using the web (compare to 45-50C on the air cooler), and stays 55-60C in the same game workload.The VRM fan is silent, I don't know what anyone complains about I can't hear it at all.The pump has a small whine at higher speeds (and so does almost every AIO) but I don't care it's very quiet.The P14 fans are the most quiet 140mm fans I've ever had.I run this on my CPU header, not the AIO header, and keep it at 60% speed up to 60C, ramping up to 100% at 85C.The fans are audible at 60%, but I can't hear the pump.The fans are still very quiet - my single top 140mm exhaust makes more noise at 850RPM than they do at 1100.All in all I would agree with everyone else, Arctic's water coolers are a very good purchase.Even "sidegrading" from an expensive dual-tower heatsink with a 3mm thinned and mirror-polish lapped baseplate gave a nice improvement in idle and general use.Now, after all that good stuff, the sole "bad":My high load temps -seem- no different than the air cooler.The same clockspeed/voltage setting for Cinebench gives the same 85C, and the same (reduced) clock/volt for Prime95 gives the same 85CPerhaps my thinned and lapped air cooler was modified so well that it gave out great 100% load performance, so I already had "water cooling temps" benchmark from it.And perhaps a new paste installation needs a little bit of time? I don't use Arctic Silver 5 anymore, but I always noticed that it took at least a few weeks for the thermal paste to settle and give a few degrees better performance.

Had this running and cooling my 3700x with PBO enabled for well over a week and the temps were respectable. (Mid 60 to Low 70C range). Fairly quiet, even while the fans at max rpm. Very little install time needed out of the box, since the fans were already pre-installed in push config. All the fan and pump power cables are daisychained and pre routed cleanly to a single 4-pin, so very little cable management is needed. Be sure to plan ahead and see if the radiator will fit in your case because it is thick, especially if you plan on getting the 280mm model. (38mm, 65mm w/ stock fans)I took out 1 star mainly because of the AM4 mounting and installation. You need to feed and screw in with long screws from the pump bracket holes to the stock AM4 backplate, which is loose and hanging by itself. It's recommended to have someone to help hold the back plate and also wrestle the stiff tubing while you screw in the pump block in place, especially while inside a case. The Intel LGA mounting installation is fine and straightforward, but AM4 could've been designed better.