ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 – Water Cooling PC, CPU AIO Water Cooler, Intel & AMD Compatible, efficient PWM-Controlled Pump, Fan: 200-1700 RPM,…

TL;DR: Mounts to AMD easier or as easy as a well known Noctua air cooler if you leave the mounting brackets on the motherboard loose before threading on the water block/pump to the brackets. Cooling performance is WAY above and beyond the best air coolers also while being able to lower the fan speed and run very quiet to dead silent while idling/webbrowsing (NO DISCERNIBLE CONSTANT PUMP NOISE – VERY QUIET). FIVE STAR FROM PLACING ORDER TO FINISHED BUILD!

*Note: there was about a 4-5 second slight ‘gurgling’ sound during the initial powering on of the system after installing but appeared to be just some air bubbles in the pump that got pumped up to the radiator and that initial sound never returned after that initial 4-5 seconds of the initial power on after installing – it’s been dead silent from then and thereafter multiple days of use even taking the side panel off and putting my ear up close to the side you still can’t hear any discernible sound from any type of pump for those like me who like more silent builds and was worried about reading about pump noise in liquid cooling systems.

Long Version:

First things first, about the bad reviews/complaints about AMD mounting simply leave the two black mounting brackets that you attach to the motherboard fairly loose before attaching the water block/pump to the brackets and then it becomes easier than even installing a Noctua air cooler because on a Noctua air cooler you have to first remove the fan off of the heatsink after unboxing to tighten down the screws of the cooler to the mounting brackets and then reattach the fan back to the heatsink when done. So as long as you leave those brackets loose and tighten them down after attaching the water block, the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 becomes easier to install than even a Noctua air cooler! SO DON’T LET THE VARIOUS REVIEWS OF AMD INSTALLATION DIFFICULTY THWART YOU FROM BUYING, ITS REALLY SIMPLE AND EASY!!!

Next, it cools MUCH better than a top of the line Noctua NH-D15S air cooler! And yes I even use the special AMD offset mounting brackets on the Noctua. I read a lot of people commenting in various places on the net from forums to Youtube comments that a top air cooler is comparable to a top liquid cooler, definitely not this 420mm one! On a 16 core Ryzen 9 9950x it dropped around 10 to 13c just sitting there idling and under full all core Prime95 CPU torture test even more since the Noctua would ramp up to my 85C thermal limit set in the bios (THIS IS EVEN UNDERVOLTING THE CPU!) and the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 would peak at 67c using the default out of the box fan curve in the bios of the MSI MAG X670E motherboard which was around similar sound output or lower than the Noctua but I set a custom fan curve in the bios to make the liquid cooler more dead silent and only gained 4c and peaked at 71c while under sustained prime 95 torture test.

So now assuming that the CPU might of went higher than the 85c limit I had set in the bios on the Noctua air cooler, peak temp drop could of been even more than 18c! But even assuming that it didn’t and 85c was what the Noctua peaked at, even with an undervolt, that’s still a whopping 18c drop in temp out of the box! And the fact that you can spin the fans way down to near silent (including the case fans since you’re not dropping CPU heat output back into the case) and only gain 4c from the out of the box fan curve to a more silent fan curve peaking at 71c during prime 95 torture test that’s still a huge jump in performance from 85c of the Noctua while it throttled the fan to 100% noisey speed to the 14c drop running the fans of the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 at near silent! IDK about you, but I like a silent/quieter running sytem WHILE still performing dramatically better!

Anyhow I was reluctant to purchase this as my first liquid cooler because Amazon gave warning that it was a frequently returned item. That had me worried that something might be inherently wrong with this model but I still wanted to experience liquid cooling for my first time and there was other glaring reviews across the net. I’m glad that I went with this one because the performance to price is phenomenal with lowering CPU temps while being quieter than and as cheap as top air cooling like Noctua and the installation on AMD was easier than even installing a well known Noctua air cooler as long as you leave the mounting brackets loose before threading on the screws of the water block/pump to the brackets.

So if you were like me on the fence and reading reviews from people that the top air coolers are comparable to liquid cooling definitely not this 420 liquid cooler! It was nice to drop temps so much and get so much more quieter! Especially when you have a high core count higher end CPU like the Ryzen 9 9950X! When you read user reviews that say that the current AMD chips are a less power consuming and cooler running chip than say an Intel i9 14900k, don’t assume that you’re just going to get a high core count AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and it’s going to be some easy to cool chip because it’s a boiler in itself and I found that traditional but top notch air coolers like the Noctua had to get a little noisey to handle the high core count chips like the 9950X but the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 AIO Water Cooler makes easy work of it while being able to lower the fan speed noise on top of it. I love my silent running ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 PC!

Oh and, the case used was an Antec Flux Pro. Nothing from the out of the box settings of the Antec FLux Pro had to be tweaked to fit the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 to the top mount, not even having to lower the front three fans in the case. The Antec Flux Pro & ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 420 make a perfect match and combo and work great together right out of the box! I ordered them both together from Amazon and they both came in 1 and 2 days (1 day for the cooler, and 2 days for the case)! 10 stars IMO!

Cambie mi noctua nh-d15 por este enfriador y el cambio si es notable, note un descenso en la temperatura considerable, un juego exigente que me llegaba a temperaturas de 69 a 70 C en el CPU ahora con este enfriador anda en 61-62 C, solo tengan en consideración que el disipador es gigante, revisen si su caja tiene el tamaño adecuado y es compatible, solo dos cosas de este disipador le veo de negativo, 1- la instalación en un procesador Amd para poder sujetarlo a la placa madre si fue algo complicado y estresante pues los tornillos que lo sujetan son difíciles de atornillar y 2- tengo una placa madre gygabyte aorus master x670e y el “heatsink” de la SSD qué se encuentra arriba del slot de la tarjeta gráfica tuve que removerlo y dejar el slot para la sdd descubierto porque el enfriador al intentar atornillarlo al cpu topaba con ese “Heatsink” así que si su placa tiene uno muy prominente van a tener que removerlo y mover de lugar su SSD a otro slot.
Update: Me comunique con el servicio al cliente de Artic por las tarjetas madres que no sean compatibles el disipador de calor de las memorias M.2., y al mostrarle los tickets de compra de la tarjeta madre y del disipador ellos decidieron enviarme un disipador de repuesto que si sea compatible para mi memoria M.2. desde Alemania por paquetería totalmente gratis, un muy buen detalle de la empresa que fabrica estos disipadores.