Introduction

The ARCTIC cooling brand is not one that needs introduction to our readers, what with there being several reviews dating back to 2004 before the branding exercise from Arctic Cooling to ARCTIC recently. The company is most famous for its cooling solutions still, be it thermal paste that I used personally for years, fans that everyone here wants me to review, and of course AIO CPU liquid coolers that appear to buck the trend in offering value for money in an increasingly one-note market. It is that last segment that concerns this article, and makes for more a guide and PSA rather than a detailed overview this time round.

Many of you may well have seen the news report about ARCTIC having a batch of its Liquid Freezer II coolers having a potential flaw and associated media coverage that was, in my opinion anyway, handled in a good manner outside of the issue having been undetected/un-reported for nearly an year. I wanted to see whether ARCTIC could have gone about this sooner, and also go through the self-service process myself to ensure the average end user would not have any issues. What follows below is my own experience with an affected unit and the kit itself, and thanks to ARCTIC for helping arrange the two samples for TechPowerUp!

The title photo earlier shows the size of the service kit compared to the product box of the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 sent along with it, and it’s tiny by comparison. Service kits almost never get any fancy packaging, and this continues the trend with a simple monochrome box that has a QR code leading you to the online manual, which is also printed below for convenience. A double flap keeps the contents in place on their way to you, and here ARCTIC provides a 0.8 g tube of its new MX-5 thermal paste/TIM—the irony of MX-5 having gone through its own similar issue is not lost on me—in addition to a set of two replacement screws, a single wipe of its MX Cleaner to help remove pre-applied TIM, 10 mL of spare coolant in a tiny squeeze bottle, and the main two things here.

See, if I was one of the affected customers, I would have expected to see a replacement gasket for sure, which we do get here in the form of a silicone gasket that comes with raised ridges on one side which are to be noted for the eventual installation process. But it came alongside a whole new replacement copper cold plate complete with the skived microfins that make up for the increased coolant heat transfer area utilized in CPU water blocks. ARCTIC mentions that the whole reason for this service kit was because the EPDM rubber-based gasket used in the previously affected batch wasn’t vulcanized properly, and this in turn can lead to a chemical reaction between the sulfur residue on the gasket and the copper cold plate itself. Given this possibility, it certainly makes sense to throw in a replacement cold plate despite this adding to the cost borne by ARCTIC.

I had requested an available AIO cooler from the affected batch to go through the entire service procedure myself, and ARCTIC sent over one of the biggest in their lineup in the form of the Liquid Freezer II 360. I would encourage users to go through our review of the Liquid Freezer II 280 here to know more about the cooler itself, which is an impressive cooler based on my own experience having reviewed many different CPU coolers in the past. This uses a triple 120 mm aluminium radiator, three ARCTIC P-12 120 mm fans rated for up to 1800 RPM, and sleeved soft 1/2″ OD tubing connecting this side to the pump/block combo unit which also features a smaller 40 mm fan that is rated for 3000 RPM and intended for VRM cooling. While not the direct subject of this article, I figured I might as well show you the cooler here and also let you know that the 6-year warranty for any of the affected coolers will not be disrupted by the service procedure performed by the end user. However, if you wish to not perform the steps that will be demonstrated below, you can also ship over the affected cooler to ARCTIC’s service team in the USA or Germany. Lastly, newer batches that come with the fix already in place have a new “QC Passed” sticker on the radiator, as seen in the photo above provided by ARCTIC, as well as on the product box itself. This helps customers determine whether their cooler requires this service or not, but more relevant is the service kit request form that asks for your cooler purchase details which helps ARCTIC determine whether your unit is affected or not.

Now is the part where I mostly followed ARCTIC’s own service manual, which also includes a handy video going through the process. Given the nature of the CLC cooler and knowing that I have to replace the cold plate and internal gasket, I made sure to have the radiator placed on a table and the pump/block unit above it. This allows the coolant to naturally flow downward and any air pockets to rest immediately below the cold plate itself, thus preventing the coolant from spilling out and around the cooler. I also decided to use lab gloves I have easy access to, and also placed a towel I was okay with trashing in case of any mishaps. ARCTIC doesn’t get into specifics about the coolant used except in saying this is non-hazardous, and indeed its own demo video has no gloves used. A quick sniff of the coolant, once I had removed all four Phillips-head screws off the cold plate using a PH#2 screwdriver, indicates the use of a propylene glycol-based (1,2-propanediol) coolant used here. This would be a blend with distilled water and typically used in mixed-metal AIO coolers today. It is a clear solution that is indeed environmentally friendly and non-hazardous to humans in the typical concentrations used, and ARCTIC’s own MSDS further helps quench any fears, but I still recommend being careful either way.

Note that the screws used on the stock cold plate of the affected units have two different lengths, which is another way to say whether your unit is newer or not. Now carefully pry out the cold plate and get access to the black EPDM gasket, which also needs to be removed. EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) is a synthetic rubber that is commonly used as gaskets and O-ring seals in CPU and GPU water blocks, and is a good fit given its hardness, tensile strength, operating temperature range and relatively low coefficient of thermal expansion, and chemical stability in this use case. Vulcanization helps harden the eventual product by cross-linking the monomer using different precursors, of which sulfur is the most common. This is an established method and whatever went wrong with the affected batch resulted in excess sulfur residue on the gasket. Without knowing the exact sulfur source used, I can’t tell you what the exact issue would be. But it is plausible there will be copper sulfide formation on the interface between the copper cold plate and the vulcanized EPDM gasket, and that may eventually block some of the microchannels. It also won’t look pretty either, and the photos above show a greenish hue to both of the affected entities. Suddenly the replacement cold plate looks a lot more desirable to have, and the slower reaction here that also takes time to identify helps explain why ARCTIC wasn’t able to immediately stop the affected batch production and issue the service kit sooner.

The replacement gasket is not properly-vulcanized EPDM gasket but rather silicone as we saw before. Silicone is more expensive to manufacture and can be even more appealing in terms of the aforementioned properties over EPDM, but typically ends up being regarded as unnecessarily overkill as with the likes of Phanteks using Viton O-rings in its water blocks for no practical reason. ARCTIC using silicone here is more to help assure customers that they are getting an overkill material here too, and from a marketing point of view I certainly understand. Those who partake in this service kit will also be left pleased knowing it undergoes a different kind of vulcanization process that also prevents the same issue from happening again. Either way, place the new gasket with the ridges going down into the body of the cooler and add in some spare coolant if you’ve been using the cooler for a while. I added enough to where I could see it just below the surface of the gasket on the inner side.

Now simply place the replacement cold plate such that the warning sticker is facing you the right way when you have the same “Liquid Freezer II” printing on the cooler facing you correctly too, as seen above. Do not use the shorter screws from before and instead use the longer screws with two of the exact same type that came in the service kit. Align and then screw the cold plate in place in a diagonal manner going all the way in until you hit resistance at all four corners. The side view should confirm no gap between the cold plate and the cooler body itself, with the silicone gasket helping keep the coolant in place and going through the microchannels and around. Power on the AIO first to check there are no leaks, let it run for ~30 min, and then install it on your CPU. This is where the provided MX Cleaner comes handy to remove the remnants of the thermal paste from before, as well as the tube of MX-5 TIM to apply on the CPU IHS before clamping down the cold plate of the newly serviced cooler on it. It took me maybe 15 min to get everything done, and that includes the photos taken too. I’d estimate the average end user reading this article should be done in 10 min or less, and that it is simple enough to do so yourself and save the potential weeks of shipping the affected unit to ARCTIC and back. Overall, I am quite happy with how ARCTIC has gone about things here—especially considering no one had any idea about the potential issue that may not even have been identifiable unless someone took apart the cooler after weeks of running. Good on them for doing so, and the comments on our news post about this seem to agree as much.