Big air coolers have well-marked advantages, mostly the install-and-forget benefit, but also reach steady state in just 90 seconds of a thermal load. The next measurement is at 100% radiator fan speed, with the radiator mounted approximately 1cm away from the edge of the board. There’s not much diversity overall, and that often means there’s not much change in performance from one competitor to the next. That’s why it has an asterisk next to it – the data isn’t directly comparable, since liquid temperature is less in control at this low of a static pressure.

The Liquid Freezer with the VRM fan off loses a few ranks, consistent across all 12 total test passes for this one chart (and we have about 24 test passes for the other 3 configurations we ran). By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. the radiator can mount on the side and front, but with barbs down the hoses simply aren’t long enough to reach the cpu.The test is also tough to standardize since every motherboard will have different heatsinks and positioning, so although you can mostly extrapolate out a hierarchy, it’s not perfectly comparable to every configuration. i’ve got an arctic liquid freezer ii 420mm (actually 458mm from end to end) and am having a tough time finding a case to fit it while still allowing the hoses to reach the cpu. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience.

The cold plate is part of the water-cooling system that comes in direct contact with the CPU and through which the coolant flows. The A500’s box plot shows the largest range, illustrating the chaotic levelness that hurt its performance, while the Deepcool Assassin III and original Wraith coolers have some of the best levelness.

This means there’s always airflow over the VRM heatsink in all the CLC tests, whereas testing it on the table, away from the VRM, would paint a picture of Arctic’s VRM fan having a higher relative impact since you’d be taking away all cooling otherwise. I will consider undervolting (like I have done for my RTX 3090) to keep temps in check and (more importantly for me) noise levels low. We have these numbers too, but let’s focus on 3950X OC numbers at 35dBA radiator fan speed first, with the Arctic VRM fan at 100%. This not only leads to significantly lower noise levels at low and typical loads, but also a much lower power consumption for all components of the AiO.

Liquid coolers afford longer periods of low thermals for bursty workloads, which can also help with soaking fan speed changes. There's only a visual manipulation to deceive you that the 420 performs better (the axis starts at 45 degrees).

Generally, the higher the static pressure of fans, the better the cooling performance of the radiator. We understand that most of our viewers only have two hands and are unable to deploy their fourth-dimensional abdominal hands, so although we could do this, we wanted to keep it realistic for the audience.

I've bought the 420 version but I'm surprised how little PC cases support it, so I started wondering what's the cooling performance difference. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. They mostly exist for system integrators or for special SFF PCs that don’t have the physical space for a tower of any kind. We’re taking VRM measurements at points that will work better for testing cooler impact, since we don’t care about comparative VRM performance from one board to the next. To get the best out of your cooler, it is recommended to adjust the fan speed control in the Bios, follow this guide to adjust your PWM.I just bought this case and I think 420mm is too much for a first time builder, so I am hoping to mount the 360mm version of this AIO. Today’s review has been the most-requested review from our commenters for about 6 months now, and it’s not even a piece of silicon. For tests which leave the frequency to auto but control the voltage, we instead report on frequency rather than thermal outcome.