Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280 liquid cooler review - Introduction

Arctic LIQUID FREEZER II 280 liquid cooler
Will it freeze(r) your CPU?

Today, we are reviewing an AIO cooler from Arctic: the LIQUID FREEZER II 280. The series has been introduced on the 9^th of December this year. Arctic is no “newbie” in the AIO segment of the market. It’s already been four years since they announced the Liquid Freezer I series. This time around, there’s no RGB either, and the system is still not expandable (similarly to most of the solutions on the market today), unlike the Alphacool Eisbaer 280 Extreme or Swiftech H240 X3 that we reviewed this year. Four variants are available:

• 120 mm
• 240 mm
• 280 mm (the one reviewed here)
• 360 mm

The LIQUID FREEZER uses a very popular All-in-One formula, with a radiator and pump that are coupled into a single loop and aided by fans (2 x 140 mm in this case). Speaking of fans, they are PWM-controlled 140 mm P-series units with 200-1700 rpm and noise performance up to 0.3 Sone (but you should know that each manufacturer measures this in a different way). They provide a fast heat transfer thanks to their high static pressure and outstanding performance.
One difference here is the 40 mm VRM fan, also controlled by PWM and with an rpm range of 1000 – 3000. This prevents overheating, especially when you overclock, and allows for continuous heavy loads. Well, you probably remember that Asus has something similar in their Ryujin series. You can check what it did for the VRMs there on this specific page.

And now the icing on the cake: the Liquid Freezer II has integrated cable management within fully sleeved tubes for a clean look in your PC’s case.  The housing’s dimensions are 317 mm × 138 mm × 38 mm, which is not typical, as it’s thicker than other solutions on the market.
The Liquid Freezer II doesn’t have any ARGB lighting, so there’s also no compatibility with lighting systems from motherboard vendors.
The pricing looks very reasonable, please check it below:

• Liquid Freezer II 120 ($59.99),
• Liquid Freezer II 240 ($75.99),
• Liquid Freezer II 280, ($89.99),
• Liquid Freezer II 360 ($99.99).

The warranty period is only for 2 years. One important note – on page eight, you can find some nice changes for the test system. Let’s check out the manufacturer’s info, specs, and features on the next page.