Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsOne nut wonder
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2020
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20+C drop in CPU temps during gaming! Mid teens drop at idle. Exceptional performance with almost inaudible fans at 100% speed (case on floor 3ft away). at 100%, if any other sound were going on in the room, at any reasonable level, the fans would not be audible. It's a soft rushing air sound (i'm using 3 filtered intake, 1 exhaust in my case btw). it would be a pleasing, though low, white noise to sleep to btw. My MS Surface laptop fan just kicked on and is louder at arms length from me than these fans at 100% 3ft away. I'd say that's impressive. My impressions of Arctic: they are a smaller manufacturer who decided to spend some R&D to build and sell some superior products without the marketing overhead of others. Arctic has 120/240/360 & 280 models, buy one if it fits your needs, you are likely to be impressed. (And yes, there is a plug under the cpu pump housing if you must unplug the VRM fan)
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Why one nut wonder? The CPU pump housing only has one nut!! Like a healthy man, it's supposed to have two, and really needs two.
Suffice it to say, it looks big and gorgeous. And by big, I do mean big. A youtube review called it "Optimus Prime's cod piece", and yeah, that's pretty accurate! :D I probably should have gotten the 240. I have a moveable HD mount thankfully which I had to move rearward to it's last mount to make installation possible. It's going to be impressive once I get the replacement.
As for what I can speak on, it looks very solid and we'll made. The hoses have serious gerth, the braiding looks great, and the pump housing definitely looks like Optimus Prime's cod piece as one YouTube reviewer joked.
Packaging is very good, even if the box looks a tad generic. But let's be honest, save $20 on designing/printing a prettier box and charge me $20 less, yeah me!!
If sent artic an email so I'll come back later with an update as to how quickly they respond and how well they take care of me. I'm really not wanting to have to return then reorder as I don't have the additional room on my account atm. Step up Artic, please 🥰
UPDATE#1
Support responded to my late Thurs night email early Fri, and an hour later had approval to ship me a new unit along with a shipping label to send the 1st unit back. So Mon or Tues I hope to receive the new unit. more to follow...
UPDATE#2
Received replacement Tuesday, date I guessed it would arrive based on quickness of shipping of original item. thankfully, this unit is a two nut wonder, and i was able to successful mount it. So, now that I have it working, on with some real comments.
Installation: Unit is very large, and a bit cumbersome, yet, that is exactly what one would expect from a AIO CLC cooler of this size. Thankfully, due to the failed first install, I had already reorganized my case, and only needed to remove 2 front fans and the AMD cooler. The Fans do need to be reversed as I need to use the unit in pull mode, and it comes from the factory in Push mode (manual shows an expectation of top mount vs front. Only question mark, it felt like the pump head was connected to the hoses upside down, as the natural ark of the hoses seemed to want the VRM fan pointed at the GPU (in hind sight, i should have mounted it that way, to blow air on the back of the GPU since my board has properly sinked VRMs (AC Carbon Pro). Alas, i did mount it with the fan facing the VRM's, and it was a little tough as the backplate wouldn't stay in place and I had to put the box the pump was shipped in under the case to hold the plate so I could get the screws in.
Performance: this is the all important part for most. As it good? does it work? the short answer, Hell Yeah!.
Prior to installation, i ran a couple benchmarks, plus I'd watched the CPU temps while gaming. Generally the CPU would be 70-80C while gaming at 4150 MHz (R5 3600, using standard AMD overclock). I also ran in "silent" mode, with the CPU under-clocked to 2800. CPU would get to about 50 in gaming with minimal loss of FPS. In both bench tests, impact of about 2 - 5 FPS. Heaven benchmark saw less than a 2 FPS change between this speed and max of 4150. also benched with AC Odyssey's built in benchmark. Here, there was a 5 FPS difference.
Temps: idle - while typing, I'm in silent, temp is 36C, fan 20%/365 rpm. During Heaven, with the AMD cooler, 45C base, 57C during benchmark. With the AC280, it was idling at 34C and peaked at 42.3C. So under load, didn't reach temp the AMD cooler was at idle. At MAX CPU speed (note the test program, Heaven or AC Odyssey, is still running when I change the CPU setting), Heaven on the AMD cooler was idling 52C, during bench saw 74 max with an avg in the mid 60's. on the AC280, idle ~39, max was 60.1, yet avg is 50 or less.
AC Odyssey, AMD cooler on silent has an idle ~50, max of 63, and avg between 60-62C. With Max CPU speed, idle ~52, max of 85.9, avg in the mid 70s with lots of spikes to over 80. On the AC 280, CPU silent mode idle ~37, max of 48, avg of 41-43 (so 20C less than stock!). at Max CPU, idle is ~40-42 (noticed, the cpu fan indicates 1500 rpm and 100%, which doesn't match my fan curves, so not sure. I can sort of hear the fans, though they aren't even as loud as the white noise I play when sleeping). Max temp was 60.9, avg in the low 50's, ~53. So more than 20C cooler than stock!
Conclusions: Clearly, this thing performs. if you can get a 280 to fit, I'd recommend it for the extra $10 just because. Otherwise, if you can only fit the 240, I'd expect the same awesome performance. DO NOTE, the Arctic radiator is about 50% thicker than most other brands. This unit requires room. Quality of the build is surprising, considering the packaging looks like a standard low cost OEM manufacturer. I love they are spending money on R&D more than marketing. Let word of mouth do your marketing. Bravo.
I'd like to give some other temp results as well. Setting my CPU to Balanced (stock 3600MHz mode), temp is 32C fans 35% (front cover removed). Temp increased 1C when I put the cover back on. Setting to Silent (2800MHz), the fans drop to 20%, temp hovers between 32/33. Setting to Extreme/Max (4151MHz) temp jumps to 38C with fans at 100%. Using a custom fan curve, CPU still at 4151, temp gets to 38, then jumps to 48 then drops to 38 then pops back up. Perhaps my curve needs some tweaking now. At 38 the fans are at 37%, at 48 they are running 50%. Can't hear them at all. My work Surface 2 Laptop fans are louder (it kicked in while I had these fans running 100% to observe the noise level).
So, should you consider this over all the other CLC AIO units on the market? if you couldn't care less about RGB, yes. If you want RGB, buy the others unless you just want a rad this large. Clearly Arctic is following in the Hyundai/Kia mold of producing a good product with a better than standard warranty, yet spending minimal on marketing to keep costs below anyone else in the market and letting word of mouth do their marketing. Arctic is putting a 10yr warranty on their fans now, and while this only get 2, it's still 2 years on something this complex with their own internal pump design, not the same ole rehashed pump everyone else uses from a 3rd party. You could be forgiven for thinking Arctic is the Microcenter house brand for fans, their boxes are 2 color, blue/while, with little marketing gimmicks. I applaud that approach. So combining that approach with exceptional pricing, I had to give this a try. I do not think I'll be disappointed long term. I hope not at least.
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July 2021 update
Still going strong, absolutely no issues to date. Fantastic cooler. Runs 24/7, as I almost never turn my system off.
