Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB, black

The ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB is an absolute cooling beast. From top-tier performance to whisper-quiet operation, this AIO cooler sets the bar in every category. Temps are impressively low—even under heavy workloads and overclocked conditions—thanks to the powerful, efficient pump and innovative VRM fan built into the block.Installation is smooth, cable management is clean with the integrated design, and the A-RGB lighting looks fantastic without being over the top. It adds just the right amount of style to your build while keeping everything cool and quiet.Compared to much more expensive alternatives, the Liquid Freezer III punches way above its weight class. If you're looking for the best combination of cooling, aesthetics, and value, this is it. ARCTIC nailed it with this one—truly the king of AIOs.

Very nice build quality and materials. Cools great. Installation is easy with the simple two screw flexible metal leaf spring mechanism that attaches the AIO heat sink/pump assy to the CPU. I installed this one for an AMD 4 type CPU with no issues. The radiator cooling fans and VRM fan are very quiet at all speeds and move plenty of air/heat.The only drawback I can see with this new version of the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer line of AIO CPU coolers is the pump is noisy at high operating rpm ranges. If you throttle it up to 100% operating duty cycle (yes it is PWM controlled) it is really is loud. Like noticeably loud.After observing the loud pump whine noise at high RPMs I did some research and was surprised to read on some forums of other early adopters observing the same loud pump noise issue, especially when they run it at 100% speed. This is not good as it's for many it's a best practice to always run the AIO water pump at 100% speed and only use your UEFI BIOS to control the speeds of the radiator fans and the VRM fan based on CPU temperature. So for this AIO you'll also be forced to throttle the AIO water pump motor by basing its operating duty cycle based on CPU temp and starting its temp/duty cycle curve in my experience at at most 50% on-time duty cycle in order to not have to deal with the loud water pump whining noise. BTW, I installed this AIO in a beQuiet case that is very insulated and quiet compared to many other Cases.In closing, I was able to work around the loud water noise issue by controlling the water pump motor speed or running on-time duty-cycle with a temp temperature curve keeping it at about 50% speed till the CPU temps rise up much higher (which mine do not as I'm not doing high-stress computing work, over-clocking, or gaming) and this was for an older AMD 4 series AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU that doesn't produce a lot of heat and is not over-clocked at all. If you're running a high-speed latest and greatest CPU you'll definitely need to run the water pump speed faster and will be more likely to observe the water pump noise issue people are just starting to talk about.

I bought this to replace another MUCH more expensive cooler (Discard the Kraken!!) that did a miserable job. With an AIO swap I went from 50C idle, 80C when gaming and thermal throttling at 95C when rendering on my 7700X to 38C at idle, 45 to 48C gaming and about 77C rendering with much higher sustained clock speeds. The radiator itself is kind of thick, so be careful if you are space constrained in that way. It's nearly silent (unlike the old one) under all but the most extreme workloads, and even when the fans do need to ramp up they are far quieter.Three minor complaints. First, the fans look like they are from 2009 or so... very dated appearance. Second, the spring mount on the water block/pump is STRONG. It is a bit challenging to start the second screw, be careful you don't slip and poke your motherboard. And third, the RGB cable is a bit short if you mount the fans as intakes on the front of your case. They get moved to the other side of the radiator, and no matter how I routed the cable I had to pull it tight to make the connection.Even when put together, those complaints in no way counter the excellent performance I'm seeing with this cooler. At some point I'll replace all my fans with a matching set, and the dated look doesn't detract from performance. You could run a separate RGB cable and control the fans separately from the pump, so there are certainly options there. And yeah, if it's a little difficult to start the mounting screws, but it works this well?? I'll put up with it. Highly recommend this cooler, and it will be choice 1 for every build I do going forward.. at least until they release something better!