Quick Look: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II Service Kit

[VSG]

ARCTIC showcases how to handle a potential quality control issue the right way by being proactive about it. Today we take a look at the ARCTIC service kit for affected batches of its popular Liquid Freezer II AIO CPU coolers and go through the service process ourselves to see how user-friendly it is.

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[TheDeeGee]

People always laugh at me for buying overpriced Noctua coolers

I have yet to have a leak or performance drop due to AIO nonsense.

 

[ZoneDymo]

People always laugh at me for buying overpriced Noctua coolers

I have yet to have a leak or performance drop due to AIO nonsense.

yeah..., im pretty sure nobody ever has laughed at you for buying a noctua cooler.
I mean, if it was overpriced maybe, if you paid 250 while it should have been 100 dollars sure...meanspirited but sure.

 

[DeeJay1001]

People always laugh at me for buying overpriced Noctua coolers

I have yet to have a leak or performance drop due to AIO nonsense.

You must not have ever had to ship or transport a PC with a large air cooler. It takes a shockingly small amount of force to cause significant damage to the motherboard socket and/or CPU. All of the thermal mass in an AIO is in the radiator and water and thus is securely bolted to the chassis. Much safer for shipping and transport.

 

[GerKNG]

good ol' arctic quality.
there is a reason why it's cheap.

 

[thewan]

People always laugh at me for buying overpriced Noctua coolers

I have yet to have a leak or performance drop due to AIO nonsense.

Every manufacturer has had their fair share of bad batches and manufacturing mishaps. All because you didn't get a lemon Noctua out of the box doesn't mean everyone else hasn't.

 

[walker15130]

My own LF2 was bought in late 2020 and apparently predates the affected batch. I wonder what other material was used in such older variant and how does the seal stack against the faulty and new one in terms of longevity (and possible performance loss over time).
Topping up the liquid is a cool side-feature of this kit.

 

[VSG]

My own LF2 was bought in late 2020 and apparently predates the affected batch. I wonder what other material was used in such older variant and how does the seal stack against the faulty and new one in terms of longevity (and possible performance loss over time).
Topping up the liquid is a cool side-feature of this kit.

Your cooler just has the EPDM gasket vulcanized correctly, so it should be fine.

 

[tetrapak]

good ol' arctic quality.
there is a reason why it's cheap.

Cheaper and better than 90% AIO on the market. Don't write nonsense. Have you ever had corsair,coolermaster or MSI AIO ? Those are crap, with capital C. All of them can watch and learn from arctic. One faulty AIO doenst mean its bad. EK is wannabe pro wc manufacturer, their AIOs are most overpriced crap you can buy, every single iteration of their AIO is faulty in some point.

 

[boomheadshot8]

Yes when i see kraken 280mm for 250€ even more !! for 360mm I'd rather buy a custom loop not brand new but used, for 300€ you can have very good stuff
Just bouth gpu ek waterblock for 40€ and cpu block for 30€ , just need a rad, pump reservoir + tubing and co.

 

[maxfly]

Solid write up, it helped clarify the process for someone that had no idea how one of these came apart.
I'm sure those knocking Arctic for standing behind their gear, either have no actual experience with their AIOs or most likely are just bored and trying to seem edgy and cool. Cuz fixing a mistake the right way is always bad. :/

 

[thegnome]

If only they made some prettier tubes and pump block (and fans probably too) I'd gladly buy them with this service. I'd gladly replace it myself rather than sending it back.

 

[ThrashZone]

If only they made some prettier tubes and pump block (and fans probably too) I'd gladly buy them with this service. I'd gladly replace it myself rather than sending it back.

Hi,
Damn that's the entire product you want to change

 

[Aretak]

Cheaper and better than 90% AIO on the market. Don't write nonsense. Have you ever had corsair,coolermaster or MSI AIO ? Those are crap, with capital C. All of them can watch and learn from arctic. One faulty AIO doenst mean its bad. EK is wannabe pro wc manufacturer, their AIOs are most overpriced crap you can buy, every single iteration of their AIO is faulty in some point.

There's no point trying to reason with brand whores. They only care about the writing on the cardboard box, not the quality of the product itself. Just let them get on with it.

 

[Ando]

Cheaper and better than 90% AIO on the market. Don't write nonsense. Have you ever had corsair,coolermaster or MSI AIO ? Those are crap, with capital C. All of them can watch and learn from arctic. One faulty AIO doenst mean its bad. EK is wannabe pro wc manufacturer, their AIOs are most overpriced crap you can buy, every single iteration of their AIO is faulty in some point.

It's been pretty well established that any 240mm or bigger aio is sufficient for 90% of people. As long as it is functional and doesn't break in short order (or is warrantied if it does) then it's fine. Tower coolers are generally better value and last indefinitely. You mainly pay for looks/silence, and the niche use of transporting (good for pre-builts).

I'd be more interested in these arctic coolers if they didn't have the dumb little meme fan, that seems like it'd be annoying. Case airflow ought be enough for vrm cooling if the motherboard has good enough heatsinks.

 

[nguyen]

How to do Vulcanization properly

 

[cvaldes]

I'd be more interested in these arctic coolers if they didn't have the dumb little meme fan, that seems like it'd be annoying. Case airflow ought be enough for vrm cooling if the motherboard has good enough heatsinks.

I have the Liquid Freezer II 360 version and I can't hear the silly little VRM fan.

You can't turn it off so there's no way to know whether or not it makes any difference with VRM temperatures. I see this mostly as a marketing gimmick. I certainly didn't buy this AIO because of it!

Pleased to see Arctic being proactive and taking ownership of their mistakes. The world needs more companies like this.

 

[Divide Overflow]

I have the Liquid Freezer II 360 version and I can't hear the silly little VRM fan.

I have the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 A-RGB (not affected by this issue) and am very happy with it. I can't hear the small VRM fan either. Arctic's response to this issue has impressed me and given me confidence they are willing to stand behind their products.

 

[watzupken]

good ol' arctic quality.
there is a reason why it's cheap.

Cheaper and better than 90% AIO on the market. Don't write nonsense. Have you ever had corsair,coolermaster or MSI AIO ? Those are crap, with capital C. All of them can watch and learn from arctic. One faulty AIO doenst mean its bad. EK is wannabe pro wc manufacturer, their AIOs are most overpriced crap you can buy, every single iteration of their AIO is faulty in some point.

Cheap does not always translate into bad quality. The LFII series have been around for some time and a proven track record of its performance, and this is clearly a bad batch. The majority of the AIOs out there focuses on things like ARGB and fancy LED screens that inflates the cost, even though the underlying AIO cooler performance is just average. For some people like me, I don't need the cosmetic/ surface improvements. I just want good cooling performance while keeping the noise level low. And this is where I think Arctic Liquid Freezer excels. In my experience, I had the worst experience with Corsair AIO where cooling is bad (got beaten badly by a Scythe Fuma 2), fans are noisy, requires you to install iCue software which is a resource hog, and the worst part is that it is costly for no good reasons.

People always laugh at me for buying overpriced Noctua coolers

I have yet to have a leak or performance drop due to AIO nonsense.

There are pros and cons going with AIO water cooler or big air coolers. There are more points of failure for AIO coolers, i.e. pump failure, potential leaks, coolant running low, etc, but you cannot deny the fact that a good AIO cools better and does not cause obstructions like a big air cooler. The last big air cooler that I used was the BeQuiet Dark Rock 4 Pro, and while it cools well, I had a lot of difficulties trying to remove/ install cables, adjust/ change ram, can't get to the NVME SSD below the cooler, and for some boards where the PCI-E slot is too close, removing the GPU is also a problem because you need to push down the locking mechanism for the slot, which is blocked by the heatsink.
Noctua offers the best when it comes to coolers and their famous 120mm fan. However, they are extremely pricey and given that competition have caught up in terms of introducing air coolers with comparable performance, I see little reasons to shell out that steep premium. But I guess the worth really boils down to individual preferences.

 

[Mussels]

Fantastic write up on what could have been a very short article skimming over the issues with AIO's


It's pretty much Arctic and Be quiet that have AIO's you can refill and do maintenance on exclusively, with alphacool kinda being in the running - but their expandable AIO's are more like custom loops with built in quick disconnects


Look at MSI and coolermasters AIO track records recently, they've been pure garbage... not a single Asetek based AIO i've owned has lived past the 3 year mark. None could be refilled either, with designs that just self destruct when opened.

 

[thegnome]

Hi,
Damn that's the entire product you want to change

Haha, well no need to change much aside from looks imo, I'm a sucker for good looks with great performance

 

[gasolina]

my eisbaer solo + corsair h55 aio block + gpu bracket + 3 copper radiator + 1 chinese 50% pump speed rock solid for years cheapest configuration for good performance + maintenance

 

[ThrashZone]

Haha, well no need to change much aside from looks imo, I'm a sucker for good looks with great performance

Hi,
Just glad you liked the radiator

 

[jesdals]

Well I think its great that they react and offer this service wish others did the same

 

[Luke357]

Have an LFII 240mm that's been affected and waiting on it to ship. My temps have been fine right now but I would rather not risk having to buy a new cooler by waiting so long that there might be damage to it. Arctic could have let this slide and most people probably wouldn't have noticed until years have passed, but they did the right thing by letting everyone know about the issue and providing a fix for free. That alone is some excellent customer service and I will certainly buy another cooler when the time comes.