CPU Cooler Push vs Push-Pull Test on i7-13700K & Arctic Liquid Freezer ii 360 AIO 

Great video by the way! Very informative and straight to the point

If you have a small form factor build, the fan configuration will in many cases matter greatly.

Thank you for doing this video

I'm using the Arctic 420mm in a push-pull config at the top of my 7000D Airflow full tower. Makes my 4090 look tiny in comparison lol.

good job danny!!

Was looking at whether push pull was worth it for this aio that I have. Thanks for the answer!

thanks mate, you saved my time!

straight to point good

With a push-pull setup using the 360mm Arctic in a Corsair 4000D case at 26c+ ambient room temperature (I don't have an ac running all the time) I get 45c-55c idle and intense gaming with fan rpm speeds kept at or around 800-1000rpm. At or around 23c room temperature (with ac on) I get 32-55c idle and intense gaming. It does amazingly with my undervolted amd 9 5900x which is known to idle at around 55c. Overclocked however I get idle and gaming temps at 65c+ all the time.

Maybe test at slower fan speeds? A good number of people run their fans slow for ambient noise reasons. I'm curious if the reduced fan speeds would make a difference in the two setups.

I wonder what the temp difference is of the coolant on push pull config vs push or pull I have a Corsair aio and the coolant temp can get to 35 F I did not see a temp difference in pump speeds between performance or balanced so I kept it at balanced (2500 rpm). My CPU is a Ryzen 7 7700x

What are the fans you installed for radiator? Cause there's a difference between flow fans and pressure fans. Static pressure fans are the ones used by coolers while air flow fans are the ones used for cases.

Your vcore is at 1.29v under full load at 55p/45e/49r in cb23?

Push-pull configuration makes sense for the intake only. And for a decent -to-good fan/s rotation speed. For exhaust combined with low noise rotation makes no sense for performance. That’s because when used as Intake and at high rotation the “pull” row of fans will blow fresh air into the case ( the air has no time to get hot ) over all other components ( motherboard ) simply said : push-pull = intake = noise = performance

Hello I had some questions pertaining to your test and about Arctic coolers I would really appreciate your response. So first off for your testing what paste did you use and did you use something like a thermalright1700 bracket that is known to drop temps? I'm just wondering if it would be under 90c with a bracket or if you used them in this test. I don't care much for the push-pull just 13700k and 360 results. Secondly and my mainly, I am wondering with the Arctic Liquid Freezer ii 360 vs 420 for high end CPU's like 13700k and 13900k that can pull 250w-300w and over if the 420 works start to show a significant performance increase and temp drop compared to the 360 cooler, there isn't much info on this and I have searched extensively. Gamer Nexus test only up tp 200w and the general consensus is at the 360 and 420 only show a marginal temp difference, however I wonder if at higher wattages the 420 might shine.

I had my 13700k hit 95-100c on cinebench with the msi coreliquid 240 v2 to cool it but it just wouldnt get any cooler. I then had some high pressure static fans from corsair that i decided to add to push pull and i got a 15~20c decrease in temps.

From what I understand: If CPU-temps are a priority, you should mount your rad as an intake with the fans sitting on the inside and sucking outside air in through the radiator. Personally, I have mine set up as a front-intake but with the fans towards/on the outside, blowing fresh air in and through the rad. Gotta see those RGB-fans through the front mesh, after all. Temps on my non-UVed 14700KF are pretty great like that, but I haven't tried the "suck" method, so I can't compare. I'm actually a bit annoyed at the fact that they now pre-install the fans at the factory. From what I can tell, all manufacturers do this in a manner that supports an exhaust installation, meaning the fans are on the inner side of the radiator (the side to which the hoses connect), set up to push air through. My case only supports a 360 in the front (top max is 280), so even if I had wanted to mount the AiO as a top exhaust, I couldn't have. Meaning I had to take off all the fans and since the fans on my Lian Li Trinity (standard) are daisy-chained with semi-internal leads that are very short, it all felt a bit like a Three Stooges routine. I could've undone the internal connections between the fans but that would've also been a bit fiddly (the instructions in the manual don't make it look like an easy operation). So mounting everything meant on one side of the front of the case I was juggling around three 120mm fans that are all wired to each other, while trying to hold the radiator in place on the inside of the front-panel and trying to get all the screw-holes to line up. Basically: Trying to mount this thing with the fans on the outside and rad on the inside of the case's mounting rails is a bit of a nightmare. And I don't think I could've mounted one fan after the other and then do the daisy-chaining after, because once mounted, you can't access any of the fans' internal wiring. Added bonus: The daisy-chain connections on the fans can only run on one side of the fans which means that in my scenario, they either run on the rear panel/motherboard-side but then have to exit towards the bottom of the rad - or, if I had re-connected them all, they would've run on the glass-panel side and would've exited the fan-stack at the top. Both of which aren't ideal for cable-managing the PWM/RGB connections and getting to the CPU/FAN headers.

Can you flip the fans around on this particular radiator? Im new to this and stressing breaking anything lol

Push pull will have more benefit in front of case to help with pushing some air into case. I use af2 420 in front and it works really good

What if i use front pull aio ?

How did you do this? did you have to buy extra screws for the other 3 fans or did the screws come with fans or the cooler? Thanks been looking for an answer for this I’m trying to get this aio ASAP

did you ever reseat the cooler?, it's odd that you're thermal throttling with a 360 phat boy radiator in the first place, maybe synthetics hit harder than I'd imagine but still seems weird.

funny question: how do you mount those to your case if all the rad screw slots are filled for mounting it to the fan?

Should I get 13700k or 13900k for gaming? I'm using 12900k

I just flipped the 3 fans to the otherside of the rad so its pulling in cold air from the front of the PC and 3 top mounted 120mm fans exhausting the hot air out and 1 120mm fan in the rear exhausting hot air out as well using MX-6 and the rev 4 offset brackets worked way better than the config you have temp dropped dramatically never went over 60c in anything granted my house has an AC set to 69f 24/7 which helps but this is the best config I did it your way and it topped out at 77c idk why Arctic positioned the fans like that.

It is time to join the PCMR watercooling club. "Once you get WET, you're all SET!" Lol.

Would be really awesome if you could remake this video with the Liquid Freezer 3 and test the difference between stock fan config and having 3 P12 Max on each side. P12 Max would be the ideal upgrade since it's 2800 RPM is also about where the LF3 maxes out on pump speed. Would be maximizing the AIOs potential.

get a 420mm freezer II and get thermaltake ex14 toughfan pro's and do the push pull running at full speed

Odd. I have a 360mm on my o11 evo as an intake with a push pull method and I did see a 4c difference with lower fan speeds.

I have the same AIO only 420mm and with R23 with i9 13900K I also have 95-100C. Forza 5 games, Assassins running 55-70C max. Only BF 2042 runs around 80C because it consumes up to 255W. I saw a max of 368W with the R23.

Should use Noctua

How do you connect all those fans to the CPU fan header?

do you think these arctic liquid freezers are the most reliable AIOs with how well they seem to be built? and would you recommend someone to replace a freezer 34 with one of these if they’re rocking an 8 core or higher CPU?

i use pull at a 120mm aio befor it was push now i have 10C less then befor

i5-13600k 23c with my 360mm aio on pull

I drop my aio in an ice bath when I wanna do heavy testing🤣 stays at 80c until the ice melts 🤣🤣🤣🤣🔥🔥🔥🔥

I'm over here searching for if my aio broke getting 93c at stock on cinebench. Thinking my setup has a prob. So these temps are normal with a freezer ii 360 with the 3 stock fans?

I just built a new rig with an i7-13700k and an RTX 4080. Quite the upgrade over my old i5-4690k and GTX 970. Anyways, what exactly does it mean to have a push-pull configuration? My Lian Li 216 case came with 2 front mounted fans that are sucking air into the case. I then installed the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360. I plugged the pump fan into the CPU_FAN, so it should be blowing at full speed all the time. I have the 3 fans on the radiator installed on top of my case and they are sucking air out of the case. The case also came with 1 fan on the back of the computer that is sucking air out of the back of the case. Is that how I should have it set up? Seems like it cuz otherwise if the top fans were pulling air into the case, it seems like that would just make the air inside the case bounce around instead of cold air being pulled in the front of the case and warm air being ejected out of the top and back of the case.

im doing this config for lower fan speed i'll put the specs in when i have my cpu in 3 months oh and the pull fans are p12 max if you wanna know

How did you overclock your CPU? I want to overclock mine.

Hi everyone, I already have the 240mm version but I have a Lian li o11d mini with atx configuration so I cannot go with 360mm aio... Would you think the 240mm version hold the future i7 13700k? Shall I upgrade to 280mm maybe? Thx

I just did this. You can have same temps with lower noise. They dont need to work as hard to cool. I allergic to noise or any sound at all. My 5800x held 78c on cinebench with 800-1000 rpm but after push/pull its still 78c but with 400-600 rpm Edit: Arctic freezer II 280 mm

I’m curios what about push/push? Both sides push?

Turn off thermal velocity boost tbv enhanced, name can slightly vary depending on the motherboard. 13900k allcore oc with a fixed vcore at 5.6 and pcore at 45 using the same cooler nut the 420 rad my temps are in the 70s. And I'm assuming you did go into the bios and optimize some settings at least. So over this. 12th gen "I can't keep it cool" "it runs so hot" blah blah etc. Nope 12gen same as seat cpu correctly with the 12/13 gen contact a decent 360 (you dont need to have aut cpu direct die coolong witha chiller openl loop to oc 13th gen or keepnit cool) manually tune bios oc and ditch the garbage power save settings and turn off the settings that instructions send it to maintenance clocks as high for ad long and as close to tj max so if it senses head room its going to utilize as much as it can tbv is design to do this but turn this off and it wont throttle

The non rgb fans have a lower rpm and no fan frame Imagine this but with the 420 I wonder how toasty the 13900ks will run it

Was this AIO front or top mounted?

Don't these results show that neither cooling solution was capable of taming this CPU? If you tested on a CPU which did not generate so much heat the results may have been different thus indicating having push pull could have some benefits.

I've always installed my rads in a front-mounted push/pull setup. The benefits here are that the fans on the front are not only drawing in cool air for the radiator but the fans on the back are ensuring that that cool air is also making it to the GPU. I've seen differences in GPU temps of up to 10C while using this configuration.

Strange, my LFII 360 came with pull configuration (behind the rad, pulling cool air from the outside through the rad, instead of pulling hot air from the inside of the case). Then again, mine isn't ARGB, so that my be the reason why they changed it for ARGB, so you can see the rgb vomit better. PS. it was ~98e euro when I bought it. That's cheaper than Noctua NH-S12 or thereabouts. LFII 360 a-rgb was ~125eur, and it has about ~1C worse performance than non argb variant. Probably because it's pulling hot air from the case, but you get the rgb vomit that you like.

What where temps on the 13700k not over clocked

i would have liked to see the cinebench score and the fps from tomb raider, intel said at one point, that their CPU is made to aim for that heat limit, so in many cases the temp would probably be very close, but you might see it clock higher and give a better score. its not all about bad CPU design, they have purposely made it, so it will try and hit its temp limit no matter what, by pulling as much power/mhz it can, sure at some point you might see it struggle to hit that limit, but that will req some pretty sick cooling, like some other youtubers have shown, like with the EK direct die cpu block, but that req delidding, and ofc not many wanna go through that :)

Thanks for helping me save 80bucks 😂🎉

Ai use Arctic LF III 420 ,in my opinion the problem wath Arctic AIO have is the pump, the pump have to low rotations.If they have a pump with 3500 rpm they have 100% better performance with 5 degree

Hello, I hope someone answers me please. I have the aio in the front because of space reasons it doesn't fit on top. What is recommended? draw cold air from outside or push it from inside. I'm currently pushing from the inside and I notice that my GPU is getting hotter.

noooo... use static pressure fans on the push, and airflow fans for the pull

too thin a rad to make any difference

I thought u were doing push vs pull not push vs push pull

If you want a game that puts a HUGE load on the CPU then play New World. I've never played a game that pushes CPU temps as much as it does.

push pull is never really the way to go tbh. It adds far more wires to mange ( depending on fans of course ) and is usually no better than just standard push or pull.

bIGGER rad is more important than fans . A car has only one sometime 2 fans max and its more than enough , The size of the rad and material is the most important.

what this shows is their pumps arent great

You have a KF not a K

Any configuration that included "pushing" air through the radiator is a bad idea. Unless your computer is in a 'clean room' it will build up dust and debris on the side of the rad that the air is flowing in to. If you pull fresh air into the rad any build up is a simple wipe on the outside to restore efficiency. If you push air through the rad, you will need to remove all the fans to clean and restore efficiency to the system. And with most systems, this also requires you to remove the rad from the system.

Personally tower coolers look way... cooler than aios

Bro lol 😂 optimize your fans in bios i get up to 70 in R23 and i get like 28k score also i have my case fans plugged in to motherboard

Yeah push-pull is overrated

Push pull is always better - its been proven for gaming as cpu isnt locked at 100%

you added cheap fans.. so there is no point to have better cooling solution those fans are chepeast and goes nowhere, i gave those fans for free... to someone that i do not know him.. Those fans are worst. When i added better fan there is huge difference. It is not only CFM it is important how much pressure can hold at rpm.. So better fans have better pressure. Bad movie presentation.

I have a 13700k on a Taichi z790 with an Artic Liquid Freezer II 420mm in Push pull and still hit 100'c on the cpu doing R23 (ambient temps are 24'c) Fractal Torrent case (my cpu refuses to undervolt, even -.10v will crash R23). Not only that I have 7200mhz CL34 32GB and it'll never boot, have to drop all the way down to 6600mhz with tigher timmings, this round of cpu/mobo totally suck :(. Wish i didnt upgrade from my 10700k @5.3ghz all cores with 32gb 3600mhz DDR4, never broke a sweat and was stable af. 🥲