ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 with LGA 1700 upgrade kit

[r01100011]

I purchased an ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 with LGA 1700 upgrade kit bundle on Amazon.

 

Here was the first problem -

 

Upgrade kits from Amazon are shipping with incorrect number of parts. I had to buy two upgrade kits to get all the parts I needed. The first kit I purchased only had three O-rings, while the second upgrade kit only had three LGA 1700 standoffs. My suggestion, buy two kits and RMA the other once you are done building. Someone at Arctic totally dropped the ball on this when packaging the kits.

 

Also read the manual very carefully

 

https://support.arctic.de/lf2-280r6#lf2280installation

 

Look for assembly videos on Youtube. Don't want to post links here, because it might be against policy.

 

Most importantly, use the right mounting standoffs. I made the mistake of getting the standoffs mixed during the build. This was totally my fault.

 

https://imgur.com/a/vwpaI3e

 

I realized there was something wrong with the setup when I rendered a video, and the temperatures were hitting 100c. I would have expected synthetic benchmarks to do this, but not video rendering.

 

https://imgur.com/a/zZxsfNn

 

Here is an article on Arctic's website that mentions this fact.

https://support.arctic.de/lf2-lga1700

 

Hopefully all this will help someone.

 

Full Parts List

 

Here is the full parts list from my latest build. I will discuss more about the parts in a different post.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/6k4nTW

 

Installation

 

Out of the box, the fans are mounted on the side with the tubes, with air pushing on to the radiator. I had to the change the position of the fans, and fit them to the back of the radiator. This was necessary to accommodate the cooler with my case. There was simply not enough clearance because of the GPU. In addition to this, the size of the case restricted me from installing all three case fans. Therefore, I installed one of the spare case fans into the radiator. Refer to the picture for more information.

 

https://imgur.com/sVlmB1V
https://imgur.com/p7375Ft
https://imgur.com/8zgMp01

 

Performance

 

In a blended test in Prime95, the temperatures hover around 65 - 75c, and the torture test will hit 100c. This didn't matter with or without the wrong stand offs. Real world tasks on the other hand, are far more forgiving. Playing Battlefield 2042 at ultra settings, the CPU temperature is around 65c, and video rendering has never crossed 70c.

 

Conclusion

 

I am quite pleased with the cooler. I truly wish Arctic had gotten its act together with the upgrade kits. I am going to rate this 4/5.

[r01100011]

I want to thank @rickeo for talking me out of buying the MSI MAG.

[CT854]

52 minutes ago, r01100011 said:

I want to thank @rickeo for talking me out of buying the MSI MAG.

You mean this little number?

 

I'm not a fan of the company but I'm curious as to why you moved away from it. Not familiar with how MSI's AIOs perform.

[r01100011]

3 hours ago, CT854 said:

You mean this little number?

 

I'm not a fan of the company but I'm curious as to why you moved away from it. Not familiar with how MSI's AIOs perform.

So I was looking for a CPU cooler that is LGA1700 compatible, because Corsair didn't have any that were readily available. I saw that MSI had one available, but I never purchased an MSI cooler before. Even though I think quite highly of them with regards to their motherboards and video cards, I wanted to ask around before I took the plunge.

 

I made a post about it here -

 

@rickeomade a post with all the complaints about MSI coolers that were posted here. So I started looking around a little bit more, and I found Arctic, and I am thoroughly happy with it.

[CT854]

3 hours ago, r01100011 said:

So I was looking for a CPU cooler that is LGA1700 compatible, because Corsair didn't have any that were readily available. I saw that MSI had one available, but I never purchased an MSI cooler before. Even though I think quite highly of them with regards to their motherboards and video cards, I wanted to ask around before I took the plunge.

 

I made a post about it here -

 

@rickeomade a post with all the complaints about MSI coolers that were posted here. So I started looking around a little bit more, and I found Arctic, and I am thoroughly happy with it.

Speak of the devil, this video just came out.

 

 

Dead MSI MAG AIO. Huh.

[r01100011]

 

Amazon did not let me post the review for whatever reason.

 

I am going to modify it, and try submitting it again.

[r01100011]

On 2/18/2022 at 7:10 PM, CT854 said:

Speak of the devil, this video just came out.

 

 

Dead MSI MAG AIO. Huh.

I just had a chance to watch this, and while this is not to imply that every single MSI AIO is bad, I am just glad I went with Arctic.

[motomat86]

did you notice any clearance issues with the ram slots?

 

I took a EKWB block from a b450 board (with a 5600x) and moved it to a z690 board (with 12700k) and i lost dimm slot 1 due to the way 1700 mounting and the position of the tube ports.  

[r01100011]

Nope. Not at all. I have all four RAM slots in use.

 

Check the pictures posted here - https://pcpartpicker.com/builds/edit/?userbuild=6k4nTW

 

I mounted the radiator in the front, so clearance was not an issue. Mounting it on the top was not an option at all with this case.