We personally are conversative by nature. We do not need, want, nor even desire a PC cooling solution that is targeted at Ritalin addicted tweens. Over the top aesthetics that demand to be the center piece of custom build? Why? If want the cooler to be the star of the show it sure as shite will not be anything other than a full custom water loop. Baked in LCD on the waterblock that can not only change colors but display custom images? Why? That is a needless waste of money when software will tell you the CPU temp numbers on your monitor… for free and not make you peer into the PC case to read it. LGA 115x or LGA 2011 compatibility? Why? No one is buying a 1bill or better cooler for an ancient system. A-RGB controller accessories? Why? Motherboards come with ‘good enough’ for a mere 3 or even 6 fan AIO… and if the build needs a ton A-RGB control we will pick up a 5 dollar ThermalRight RGB or ARGB hub for it along with the (half to full) dozen or so LED strips the build needs.
You however may feel differently.
You may be tasked with building a 10K custom PC for a Las Vegas Casino and need some of the above features. Conversely, you may just feel like you sometimes need to indulge your inner child with goo-gaws and gadgets. Both of which are perfectly acceptable reasons. Hell ‘because I want it’ is also a perfectly reasonable. So while we consider all those features a waste we do not want to come off as a 21st Century Karen. This is our bias and our personal point of view on things. Pleas keep it mind as we pick nits with this big boi AIO… that we truly, honestly love to use in builds. It just is not perfect, nor optimal for all builds.
To begin, the Artic Liquid Freezer III or “ALF 3” (as we are going to call it… as that is its nickname just as its predecessor was the ALF 2) comes in an extremely conservative shipping container. One that has been optimized to not only be aggressive in its ‘blandness’ but in its weight saving design… and boy no one does ‘conservative chic’ like zee Germans and zee Swiss. As such, do not be surprised that the ALF 3 series comes clad in a thin sleeved, right-triangle’ish looking carboard pyramid shaped ‘box’. Do not be surprised if the flagship A-RGB 420mm AIO comes in a white box. A white pyramid of power festooned with all the data you need, but certainly lacks any “look at meeee” features beyond its oddball shape and size. However, this aggressively conservative approach to aesthetics does make it stand out when placed amongst a sea of sameness that is most AIO shipping containers these days.
With that said, even if you do not care that it looks like a Bentley at a Ford show the performance of this shipping container is pretty much a great allegory for the ALF 3 itself. That is to say it looks unusual, but pure premium performance is hidden underneath that ‘bland’ exterior. Furthermore this box will laugh at Mister Murphy and his Shipping Agent of Chaos. So much so this is a box that can be drop shipped direct from the factory to you all the way around the world with no worries over it arriving safe and sound. As such the fact this box weighs less than most (and thus will save you a bit on shipping) is just an added bonus.
Moving on. When you do figure out how to open the box, you will be greeted by one drop dead gorgeous device. Put bluntly, if you do not see the ALF 3 in person for the first time and go “Ain’t that Purdy”… you need to touch grass. It is straight up gorgeous, and yet is not a prima donna in the least. Want it to light up and doa fancy lightshow? Thanks to 16.1+ Million color combinations baked into A-RGB LEDs it can easily accommodate your every wish. Want it to be more toned down? Don’t plug in the daisy-chainable A-RGB header and they will act just like any non-LED enabled fans. No fuss. No muss. Just pure elegance… just like the ALF 2 before it.
Moving on. The one thing that separates the “ALF” series from the rest of the AIO marketplace is the fact that their blueprints are not static and certainly not considered in a final form. Instead Artic, as befitting of Swiss infused German engineering, are constantly tinkering, tweaking, advancing the ALF design so that it is… Bigger. Stronger. Faster… be the best that it can be. All without a change in the MSRP. This radical departure in engineering philosophy does separate Artic from the competition who at the very least add a ‘202x Edition’ to the box and typically just EOL a model and replace it when they feel the need to unlock and adjust said blueprint. Even then, this typically only occurs when they want to create a more expensive version.
One can argue that the Artic Way™ can cause consumer confusion on what a given model can and cannot offer. One can even argue that needing to constantly tweak a design is the hallmark of bad engineering. Others, ourselves included, would argue that this is more than offset by the fact that Arctic admit when they have made a mistake and then go and fix it. Furthermore if you buy an ALF ‘today’ you are pretty much assured it will be the best ALF that Arctic can make (for now)… and if you ask nicely the changes in future revisions can (sometimes) be shipped to you for very little cost (e.g. the AM5 offset mounting kit was a ‘free’ upgrade for existing ALF 2 owners… all we had to do was ask for it after proving ALF 2 ownership). Put another way, until Noctua get into All In One water based CPU cooling Artic is the undisputed OCD champion of the market. One where they want to constantly improve upon their creation and share those improvements with you their loyal buyers.
Regardless of which side of that argument you feel is the most compelling, one thing is certain: ALF 2 owners expecting just minor revisional difference between their existing ALF 2 and the new ALF 3 are going to be sorely mistaken. So much so that very, very little of the ALF 2.x series lives on in the all new ALF 3.0… which in turn will be somewhat to a lot different than a future ALF 3.1/3.2/4/4.1 etc. With this in mind we are going to do our best to show what has changed since the ALF 2 heydays of yester yore (aka a couple months ago). This way you can decide if it is worth tracking down an ALF 2 before they are all gone (and they are going fast from warehouses… for reasons we will go over in this review).
So let us start with the accessories. Artic made their bones on offering Swiss watch level quality components that are as robust as they are sensible. For example, the AMD mounting hardware has been simplified and is more optimized for AM5 Ryzen CPUs rather than older Ryzen AM4 CPUs… as the “AMD offset” has now been baked directly into the waterblock and the brackets are thus “offset only” without the flexibility of the previous generation (where the offset was a secondary set of mounting brackets that one could opt out of using for a myriad of reasons).
This baking in of an advanced option certainly is quirky, and while we do dislike the removal of choice, no one can deny that the majority of AMD users will opt for the offset so not much is lost by this simplification. Furthermore Arctic’s Intel hardware is not only much more advanced than the ALF 2’s… it is pretty much in a different league compared to the competition. To be blunt, the Intel mounting hardware for the ALF 3 is insane. Not only have they upgraded to a beefy bracket instead of two piddly little mounting arms… said bracket does double duty as an ILM replacement! Yes. The ALF 3 comes bearing gifts in the form of a ~20 USD (or more) mounting bracket that eliminates the Intel stock ILM’s notorious ‘bow’.
For free.
One just has to be comfortable with replacing the ILM (or ‘reduced load’ ILM in the Core Ultra 200 series case). Which is a bit of a big ask, and while the online instructions are typical German levels of OCD’edness we dislike the fact that Artic just says ‘tighten’ the four bolts. No mention of how much… nor the fact that if you torque them down like an Indie pit crew changing tires you can cause damage to the motherboard, the CPU, or both… and do so in such a manner that will not be covered by warranty. So… finger tight, stop when you feel resistance and then give at most a quarter turn… and call it done.
Counteracting that (massively) increased pucker factor is the fact that your Intel CPU will last longer and will not develop a ‘bow’. Which can, does, and probably will with all LGA 1700 socketed CPUs who did not get installed into a reduce-ILM socket equipped motherboard.
Moving on. For those who have not used Arctic P14s in the past, this series is notorious for their excellent static pressure, air movement, low noise abilities, and doing all that without going above ~1900RPM. All of which is tough for a 25mm thick fan to do. How is Artic is able to do all that in a “25mm” form-factor without raising RPMs? Simple. They cheat. These are 27mm high/tall fans not 25mm. That does not sound like much but a couple extra millimeters on the fan blades’ height allows for more static pressure and a bit more CFM of air movement at a given RPM than the competition who do use the standard 25mm form-factor.
In this “if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t trying” vein, and while it is indeed true that Arctic calls the three (factor mounted to the rad we might add) fans ‘P14’ fans, these are not your granddaddies P14s. Yes, the cable length is the same (short at 40mm as these are customized P14s meant for use on the ALF series… and both are not only daisy chainable but intended to be daisy chained), and the form-factor (140x27mm) is the same, but…
If you look closely you can see that all seven blades of these next gen P14s are connected via a large ‘focusing ring’ around the outer edge of the fan blades. This ring not only increases the overall stiffness of the blades (and thus reduce the chances of a catastrophic failure… which is never fun) but also helps focus the air downwards with little chance of it ‘bouncing up and out of the fan chassis). Just like you want out of a radiator orientated fan.
It also almost goes without saying that these A-RGB fans… are 16.1 million RGB color LED enabled. Thus you can create quite the light show if you so choose; and if you do not want to their semi-opaque white nature blends nicely with the white of the rest of the ALF 3… and very noice’ly with Corsair 7000D white edition cases.
Before moving on there is one feature we do need to mention. Artic has finally included integrated vibration dampeners into the P14 fan design. Better still these small pieces of rubber are color matched with the rest of the fan (and bolts) so that if you are not looking for them you may miss them. In testing they do a fantastic job of not only reducing vibration induced noise… when in push-pull configuration they also all but eliminate any of the minor vibrations from being passed on to the case. Trust when we say that is a big deal. No one wants their expensive Super Tower to ‘hum’, nor engage in an impromptu shuffle dance (and shuffle right off your desk) just because the fans shifted to high gear while you were gaming.
As such these P14s may be technically inferior to their very early brethren on paper, but in reality they are major improvement in both the cooling and noise department. In testing when attached to the ALF 2 they outperformed earlier gen non-ARGB P14’s when set to the same speed. So much so that we consider them some of the best ‘thin’ sub-2000RPM 140mm fans you can find in the marketplace today… and we sincerely doubt many will be in a rush to swap them out. As such, we highly recommend trying them before you opt to change them. They may just change your opinion on ‘needing’ Yate Loon or Noctua Industrial fans for an AIO based system build.
This excellent overall impression is further reinforced when you consider the fact that Artic not only took the time to pre-mount them to the rad for you, they even took the time to tidy up the cabling! Yes, that is right. Arctic are so OCD that they hid the fan cables properly and this is one of the handful of AIOs that does not come from the factory with a “stock rat’s nest” hanging off one side of the radiator. Now that is one nice bonus feature we were not expecting.
Moving on. For the past couple years the All In One water cooing industry has not changed all that much. Pick either thin or thick rad, pick your preference on 120 vs 140 fans, pick your number of fans it can accommodate per side (1, 2, or 3) and go from there. As we have said in the past Arctic do not like to do things by half measures. First of all, not many offer 3x140mm fan compatible AIO models… as the number of cases that can accommodate them is limited to say the least. Of the handful that do offer ‘420mm’ class… ‘thick’ (~38mm) radiators further limited case compatibility. Artic does ~38mm and only ~38mm thick radiator based AIOs. This combo alone assures that they outperform most AIOs and can actually compete with (some) entry level custom water cooling loops… and was one of the main claims to fame of the ALF 2.
With the ALF 3 Artic has once again upended the status queue ante and created an entirely new class of ‘thick’ radiators. Ones that have a ‘core’ (i.e. the water channels and folded fin array) that is more in line with that of the typical ‘double thick’ 45mm thick radiator… just in a 38mm z-height form-factor So how did they get more into the same area? To answer that a bit of background information is first required.
With water cooling radiators the whole idea is to move water over a waterblock’s coldplate, transfer said heat to the water, then flow through long, but narrow, water channels that in turn transfer the heat to the folded aluminum fin array hugging said channels… that then in turn transfer the heat to the air via fan’s air movement. Sounds complex, because it is. Back in the early days of water cooling it was quickly found that the area directly in front of the fan’s hub was a dead zone. AKA an area of the radiator where no air movement was possible. No air movement means no heat transference. No heat transfer means wasted potential and more surface area to overcome these dead zones. To overcome this known issue standoffs were built into the radiator. As the name suggests these standoffs keep the fan from being mounted directly to the core… and instead the fan ‘stands off’ from the core allowing air movement to actually cover the dead zone directly in front of a fan’s motor hub
As an added benefit by moving the fans off the rad itself lower static pressure is required to push the air through the fin array. Making it a win-win inclusion that quickly became the de-facto standard. Like everything else, in now ‘classical’ radiators, this standoff was standardized at between 5 and 6mm per side in the ‘standard’ (remember fans on the other side of the rad would suffer a similar fate as physics doesn’t care about push vs. pull). Thus a ‘thin’ 28mm rad has a cooling core of about 16 to 18mm thick, and a ‘thick’ has about 26 to 28 core… and a ‘double thick’ (~45mm) has about 33 to 35mm core.
This is where the Alien Life For… err… ALF 3 enters the chat. In one of those “mad lad” moments of brilliance Arctic’s engineers asked a simple question: why is the standoff standard set to a nominal 5.5mm? It was set to that because earlier fans were terrible. 140mm fans were worse than 120mm… which in turn sucked worse than 92mm fans that were considered about the ‘biggest’ you could go before giving up static pressure for more air movement at a given RPM (and noise level).
The days of 80mm fans ruling the roost are loooong gone and both 120mm and 140mm fans have enough static pressure to force their way through even the thickness of rads. Sure 120mm are better at it than 140mm, but the differences are no longer night and day large. Especially with fans that come standard with focusing rings like the P14 ARGB does. Thus when Arctic’s engineers were explained the reasoning behind the standard they basically went “yeah… nah” and started to experiment. The end result was that they could reduce the offset / stand-off height from (+/-0.5) 5.5mm to a nominal 3mm. Making this ‘thick’ radiator have a cooling core that is ~32mm thick, and darn near the same as many ‘double thick’ rads. Which in turn means the same cooling performance as double thick ‘custom water cooling loop only’ radiators… just without the headaches those beefy double thick rads bring to the table when it comes time to mount them in cases meant for mere mortals.
The downside to this… double stuffed rad’ is obvious. With its 13FPI it has been optimized for the Arctic P14 fan, so while you can probably get away with many other 140mm options, do not count on all 140mm fans working optimally. Instead only a handful will be worth the upgrade cost, even then expect to spend “Noctua IndustrialPPC” fan level pricing to get better. In other words, water makes things wet, the sky usually appears blue, and Artic P14s are still one of the best value propositions going this side of San Ace 38mm thick fans.
Moving on. This radiator is not only robust and obviously more efficient at converting hot water to cool water, it is also extremely pretty. Yes, (also) in typical Arctic fashion the ALF 3’s rad comes clad in a thick, abrasion resistant coat of paint that is available in black and white… just like the ALF 2. Ironically enough, this ‘white’ is actually white… and arguably whiter than the white that certain case manufactures use for their AIOs. As such, the white versions of the ALF 2 and ALF3 work extremely well with Antec, Cooler Master, Corsair, Phanteks… and basically any other manufacture’s “Super Tower” white edition cases that can accommodate a chonky 420mm AIO. Put another way the ALF 3 is more advanced and better at cooling, but keeps to the ALF2 roots of offering great performance and great aesthetics.
Sadly, one other thing that has been carried over from the ALF 2 is the sheathing covering the tubing. Much like with the ALF 2 white edition… the tubing underneath said sheath is black and black is a hard to fully cover with white. Thus the tubing’s “white” can appear to be more of a gray than the pure white of the rad. Which is a shame as this is a known issue with the ALF 2 that could have easily been corrected by simply double covering the tubing.
On the positive side the length of the tubing as not changed much, nor has the tubing’s diameter. Put another way the 17 to 18 inch length ~13mm OD (when including the sheath… 12.4mm when not), 6mm ID tubing is long enough for the majority of cases. Flexible enough to not be a royal nuisance to work with and yet with well over 3mm thick walls is robust enough that punctures and even outgassing are of minimal concern (during the warranty period at least).
Interestingly enough, while the tubing is basically the same excellent stuff of the ALF 2 generation the connectors are not a carry over. With the last gen ALF 2 the rad ports were large faux chromed (aka painted) metal compression headers that were rather large. Not too large as to be an eye sore, but large enough to somewhat clash with the ALF 2’s overall aesthetics (be it white or black). With the ALF 3 they are smaller and now painted the same color as the rest of the ALF 3. Thus they easily blend into the background… just as they should.
Speaking of upgrades the other end of the tube headers are radically different than the previous gen. In the last gen the two ports were smack dab in the center of the water block and when the ALF 2 was installed in the top, the front, or the bottom of a case it did place a bit of stress on the block’s mounting hardware. Equally important with them sticking straight up you did have to fight the tubing to get everything nice and neat. Especially in normal sized cases with ‘side’ mounted fan(s).
With the ALF 3 the ports are now located at the end of the waterblock, enter in the side of said block, and have swivel connectors to ease the (needless) stress on the block from the tubing. This does make a major difference and does increase the ease of mounting the rad into a case. Sadly, going hand in hand with this change is the fact that the block is downright YUGE.
Think (an official) 68.5mm tall. Think 91mm wide.
Worst of all, thanks to the swivel connector headers adding over 16mm to the dimensions, the block is now a whopping 108.5mm deep.
Ooof. And oof again… as the ALF 3 does not respect PCI-SIG ‘no-go’ zones with regards to z-height restrictions. To be precise it intrudes upon the topmost PCIe slot’s area with extreme prejudice… bordering on ‘romantic intent’. Yes. That topmost PCIe slot was pretty much useless and rarely used, and that was probably the reasoning behind ignoring the PCIe standards way back when Artic started designing the ALF 3. These days that zone is now extremely important… as the top most PCIe slot has been modded into a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280/2210 slot. AKA the typical system’s “C Drive” M.2 port. AAKA the port where the hottest running M.2 drive resides and needs as much cooling as it can get. Sadly, it is not going to get as such as it should when it lives in ALF 3’s house.
To be precise, with the AMD ‘offset’ baked directly/natively into the ALF 3, the inlet/outlet ports invade the M.2 zone by a whopping ~16mm. To be fair, even if it was just disrespecting PCI-SIG by a mere 1mm, the end result would be the same: decreased 3rd party M.2 cooling solution compatibility. Significantly reducing it as this overhanging of said M.2 port will restrict M.2 heatsinks to ~28mm in height (and 25 is a more comfortable hard “safe” limit).
To put this restriction in perspective, a Sabrent Rocket/Colossus sits about ~25mm above the M.2 PCB; an Acidalie/Elecgear is ~30mm; a Thermalright HR10 is about 42’ish; the Thermalright HR-09 Pro is about 75mm. These four represent some of the most popular aftermarket M.2 heatsinks in North America right now. Of the four only the Sabrent will work with the ALF 3. Which translates to a good 8 to 10 additional degrees on a PCIe 5 x4 SSD when pushed hard compared to the HR10, and add another 5 or so degrees when compared to the HR-09 Pro… and add another 5 or more when dealing with actively cooled variants of said chonky bois.
Make no mistake it is not just 3rd party heatsinks that will be affected by this arbitrary z-height limitation. For example, the MSI Spatium M570 Pro’s stock heatsink will not fit underneath the ALF 3’s block. In the coming years more and more enthusiast grade SSD’s will come with heatsinks that make the M70 Pro look small… as PCIe 6 M.2s are expected to have a TDP in the 25-30 watt range and require massive passive cooling abilities.
Thus, for some this will not be a deal-breaker for right now or even 2025. After all, most M.2 drives come with lower than 28mm height heatsinks, and most motherboard’s “stock” M.2 heatsinks are equally “low profile”. The operative word is most… as “the times they are a changing”. Motherboards are starting to come standard with excellent, robustly built M.2 heatsinks that are also rather tall. ASUS’ RoG CrossHair Hero X860E is an excellent example of this necessary trend. A trend which will trickle down from the uber-high end to the more moderately priced motherboards in the coming years. We feel very comfortable in stating that if forced to choose between the two, few will opt to keep the ALF 3 over their new ~1K CAD motherboard. We seriously doubt many will even pick the ALF3 over a $300 motherboard. Thus turning this from a potential deal breaker… into the ALF 3 quickly migrating on to experienced builders ‘do not buy’ list in the coming years. Hopefully, before that doomsday scenario occurs a future ALF 3 revision will have… less “romantic intent” towards PCI-SIG standards and allow builders to use the best of the best M.2 heatsinks and/or whatever motherboard their customer wants.
To be fair, Artic will send you, free of charge, a M.2 heatsink if and only if your motherboard is on their short list of officially affected motherboards. It however by very definition will be no better, and possibly worse, than the 3.4oz chunk of alloy with heat pipe based Sabrent Rocket. It however will get you up and running… if you check the list before buying, and are patient enough for one to be shipped to you from Arctic. That however will be cold comfort if you are unaware of this issue before you start your build.
On the positive side this waterblock is highly… highly advanced. First up is the fact that the VRM cooler is now not only massive but is end-user replaceable. When we mean end-user replaceable, we mean actually replaceable in the real-world and not theoretically possible. To be precise, thanks to mounting magnets this bad boy pops on and off with ease. Such ease that Artic has you install it after you mount the block to your motherboard. This increase in size of said axial fan pays massive dividends in both the amount of air it can move and the whisper level noise levels it can offer… while still moving more air than the ALF 2 could at 100 percent fan speed. Thus even the most hoopity of VRM heatsink on the cheesiest of motherboards will run cool as a cucumber.
Sadly, Artic may have gotten a little too fancy with the new VRM cooler as while it could easily do ~293 degrees of cooling coverage, only about 100-110’ish actually gets covered. The rest? Its physically blocked by the thermo-molded plastic fan housing of this big VRM fan. Which is a shame as this device could have easily offered active M.2 cooling… and rendered most of our concerns over M.2 z-height restrictions moot. In fact, if done properly it could have turned a negative into a major selling feature. Possibly even a big enough feature to make 3rd party heatsinks a thing of the past, which in turn could have freed up ~20 bucks in the budget for other things. Like justifying a 360 instead of 280 ALF 3, or 420 instead of 360. Hopefully a future revision will open up the VRM fan’s airflow zone and allow it to cool more than just VRM heatsink(s).
Moving on. The VRM fan and its removeable design is not the only thing to change with the ALF 3 from the ALF 2. In the ALF 2, like 99.999999 of all AIOs, the pump for the waterblock is centrally located and is mounted in a horizontal orientation. As such water is sucked in from the inlet tube, forced to do a 90 degree bend, pushed through the pump, then another 90degree bend down to the micro-fin cooling plate level, then another 90 degree bend, forced through the copper cold plate, then another 90 degree bend and up and into the outlet tubing. That is a lot of 90 degree bends. Each 90degree bend in a loop increases friction, which in turn makes it harder for the pump to push the water through the radiator and the cold plate.
Compared and contrast that with the ALF 3. The water exits the inlet port, immediately enters (and cools) the water pump, then is pushed down to the micro-fin cold plate height, then and only then does it encounter a 90 degree bend… where it then flows over said microplate, slams into a second 90 degree bend… but then exits the waterblock via the outlet tube. Which is obviously fewer 90 degree bends. Which means less pressure required to push the water through all that tubing, water channels, and water block.
Thanks to modern living we can actually somewhat calculate this ‘head loss’ and give an even more precise estimate… somewhere between a Scientific Wish and a Sciencey Wild Arsed Guess. The water block cold plate is 40mm x 44mm in both (and for ease of calculation we are going to just say it’s a direct straight line for both). The tubing is 18inches / 457mm. Times 2 gives us 914mm. The rad is 420mm long with 7 inlet and 7 outlet water channels. Rounding we get about 3,890mm of ~6mm ID tubing length. Call it a flat 4K to account for a bit of the cold plate channels.
For waterflow, the ALF3 does have a bigger water pump compared to the ALF2 but its only pulling 4 watts of 12v power. Call it a decent 60 Liters per Hour (for point of reference a DC-LT can do 100LpH @ ~5 watts). Using a handy dandy online calculator (albeit with PolyEth for the tubing calculation) with the ALF 3 we get a friction loss of about 2/3rds of PSI. Plunking in the ALF 2 numbers we get basically 3/4’ers of a PSI in static pressure the pump has to overcome. That is just for the 90 degree bends. AKA not including the water blocks impact, the water channels multiple Ts in the rad. Just the 90 degree bends in the water block. It might not sound like much, but that is a major difference when talking about a (relatively) big loop with a teeny-tiny pump.
Of course, the actual difference is greater as the new ALF 3’s pump is a complete redesign of the ALF2. One that makes AseTek’s latest and greatest seem underpowered and overpriced in comparison. As such, the end result is a better pump that can do its job more effectively and efficiently while at the time being noticeably quieter than the already whisper quiet ALF 2s. Color us impressed… by AIO standards. Now if they would only stop worrying about block height so much, and put a big boi DDC equivalent pump into their loop, that would as an added bonus push the inlet/outlet ports up higher (and allow us to use big boi M.2 coolers), we would be truly impressed. Until that happens, or even going to a dual DD-LT equivalent (one on block, one next to the rad), all AIOs are not going to be as good as a legit custom water loop. Getting better every generation, but still plenty of room for improvement.
This nicely segues into the size of the cold plate. As we all know anything that is not covered by the cold plate is not going to get cooled. Back in the ALF 1 days Artic had a cold plate big enough to basically offer HEDT coverage and laughed at Intel and AMD consumer CPU I.H.S. sizes. Intel and AMD have both since gone to bigger I.H.S… and yet AIO cold plate sizes have not kept up. This is why AMD ‘offset mounting’ was required… as the cold plate was not big enough to handle the hotspot’s change in location. In the ALF 2 days this additional mounting option was an acceptable compromise. However, with the ALF 3 Arctic has not increased the cold plate dimensions of ~32×28.5mm. Instead all they did was bake the AMD offset directly into the block.
Sigh.
This means that one cannot turn the block 180 degrees to eliminate the M.2 z-height restriction issue. This is why you can’t even twist the block 90 degrees to give the M.2 port some cooling and the VRM some cooling. Instead you can only install the ALF 3 one way. The Arctic Way. Everyone likes to joke about the rigidly of zee Germans and zee Swiss Engineers, but this is taking things too far (and well into “toilet trained with a shotgun” territory). System builders should be given the luxury of choosing to use or not use an offset. To choose what direction to install a block. The freedom to make a custom system their way. This rigidity and inflexibility hopefully will be changed in future revisions… by taking advantage of the better pump and using a bigger cold plate.
Overall the Artic Liquid Freezer III certainly marches to the beat of its own drum. For some that will be a refreshing change of pace, for others the compromises that come along with all those tasty features will be a bit too bitter a pill to swallow. Hopefully in the coming months Arctic will bring back a bit of flexibility and eliminate some of these issues so that the ALF 3 420 will be just like the ALF 2 420 was: the AIO that all others had to be judged against.
