Despite its Swiss origins, Arctic is known for its rather affordable line of PC cooling products, and today’s announcement from the company is no different. The product in question is the Liquid Freezer II series of all-in-one CPU coolers, which will arrive in four different flavors.
The last series, which we reviewed three years ago and gave an Editor’s Award, came as a simple all-in-one AIO, but the new model takes things a few steps further.
The Liquid Freezer II coolers come with an almost all-black design and a radiator with a clean ‘square’ design. The braided coolant hoses to the CPU block come with silver striping. Most notably, however, the CPU block comes with a small 40mm fan, which will provide some airflow to the components surrounding the CPU socket. This fan can spin at speeds between 1000 and 3000 RPM through PWM control.
| Pump | 800 – 2000 RPM (PWM Controlled) |
| Pump Consumption | 1.0 - 2.7 W (Pump & VRM Fan) |
| Fans | 200 – 1800 RPM (PWM Controlled) |
| CPU Block Fan | 1000 - 3000 RPM (PWM Controlled) |
| Size options | 120mm, 240mm, 280mm, & 360mm |
| Socket Compatibility | Intel 115X, 2011-3*, 2066*, AMD AM4 (Sq ILM Only) |
| Noise Level | 0.3 Sone (22.5 - 24.5 dBA) |
This area typically sees very little airflow on other liquid cooling systems. Cooling to this area isn’t strictly necessary, as case airflow and passive convection for heat dissipation is often just enough. Any motherboard that generates too much heat in the VRM areas will often come with some small heatsinks to aid this process.
Nevertheless, some added cooling here certainly can’t hurt anything aside from noise levels.
The main 120mm or 140mm fans on the unit come with PWM control, which allows them to run at speeds down to just 200 RPM, and all the way up to 1800 RPM when required. Arctic claims that the Liquid Freezer II series liquid CPU coolers produce about 0.3 Sone of noise, which translates to a dBA rating between 22.5 and 24.5 dBA. We’re still not sure why Arctic continues to rate its hardware in Sone levels in a market that almost exclusively measures sound levels in decibels.
The Liquid Freezer II 120, 240, and 280 will come with a tube of MX-4 thermal compound and should be available on shelves any moment now, with availability for the 360mm model scheduled for the end of the month. Pricing will match the old units, which are currently being phased out.
Because I got really bad results with their original Liquid Freezer.
(That's a joke; Just like how their marketers think they can get away with calling a rectangle a square)