[section_title title=”Installation”]
Installation
This is going to be a pretty short piece. The Arctic Liquid Freezer 120 is manufactured by Asetec and they have used a fairly familiar construction for the pump; it’s simply a case of fitting the pump to the crown-shaped hole and then attaching it to the back piece. Nothing challenging, nothing unusual and nothing time consuming – even for a first-timer. There’s also not a lot to talk about when it comes to build quality as Asetec have been doing their thing for over a decade and have pretty much fine-tuned the process of making AIO loops. Nothing was out of place and everything was aligned properly on my unit and I feel confident in saying that all others would be the same. Sorry if you were hoping for a big read, but there we have it…
At least, that’s the case on my testbench. Fitting this into a standard or small case though, if you only have the rear exhaust port, is going to be a challenge of origami pipework and jammed fingers because while the pump side of things is easy-peasy, the radiator is Huge (it might even qualify as HUGE!). It’s a full 50mm thick, and that’s without the fans. With the fans attached you are going to be looking for 100mm of clearance, and if the rear exhaust is in line with the pump then you’re going to have problems with those vertical pipes getting in the way unless the pump is installed with those pipes as far away from the back panel as possible, even then it will be a tight fit.
To have this beast firmly embedded into your case I would recommend a dedicated fan vent with enough clearance for a for the 50mm rad, two fans and the pipework, and of course, that usually means having a ‘gamer targeted’ case perhaps getting the old Dremel out. It will fit in the rear exhaust but that means the pipes block some of the air flow as well as it being a really tight fit. Or you can just leave everything out in the open on a unit and poke your cat with a pen every time it comes close to sitting on it. Anyway, with such a big radiator and push-pull out of the box we should be looking at some amazing temps when we get on to the Thermal Performance section. With that said, let’s go and look at those thermal charts.
