On my 2nd Arctic Liquid Freezer III which has become noisy - am i doing something wrong?

thefunkygibbon · Monday at 14:39

Ok I bit the bullet and went liquid cooling a couple of weeks ago, bought a LF3 360mm. Fitted it the correct fashion on my AM4 cpu with the rad at the front as intake and the pipes at the bottom of the case (fractal north)
After 1 week exactly it started to have an annoying rattle type noise coming from my case, which I deduced it down to being the pump (ie turned all other fans off). so i returned it and got a new one.
now one week later again i'm getting the same sort of rattle noise which appears to be the pump.
Is this normal? it feels too much of a coincidence that 2 different ones are showing the same issue, unless its a known problem with them or something? should i expect a non-quiet pump? is the week that i'm getting of silence the actual outlier here?
I don't want to return it again just in case it is something that's specific to my set up (really isn't anything crazy different to what you would expect it to be, only got this cooler, a few other fans, a amd 7900xt gpu and a few HDD's).

I can't honestly in all fairness send it back and get yet another Arctic freezer AIO can i? that seems a little silly.
Am i potentially doing something wrong? I was definitely carefull with fitting them and i'm leaving the control of the pump speed to the bios (as fan control doesnt seem to see or control it)

thefunkygibbon · Monday at 15:27

alec said:
is that motor vibration rattle or more like air bubble gurgle?
sounds to me that with this install pump is the local high point in the loop, some air will collect there and make noise (and some damage?) in impeller. Maybe at full speed it could push the air into rad, but most of the time it won't be running at full rpm

motor i think. certainly not gurgling.

thefunkygibbon · Monday at 15:35

pastymuncher said:
Return it for a refund and go back to air cooling with a Thermalright Peerless Assassin or Phantom Spirit, they are much cheaper and far less hassle.

not really much cheaper by the looks of things (45quid compared to 65 for the aio).
my setup is one that i need to be as silent as possible as its a HTPC. having tortured my components in a very cramped and hot space for a while with an aircooled (fanless) setup, i figured going water cooled given how cheap and simple it is these days would be the way to go. and for the most part its been fine.

i guess considering a top mounted one or a different brand completely is an option too.

thefunkygibbon · Monday at 18:57

well as mentioned, its a fractal north, so its not a small case. but silence is key and when i last used a fan on my air cooler it was definitely audible.
i respect your opinions, but why are you recommending air cooled but are in a watercooled sub?

thefunkygibbon · Monday at 19:00

hornetstinger said:
I guess it's a good idea to test run it out of the case for a few days? Not only test for leaks but to get all the out of the pipes/block?

its 2 weeks old! i'm not going to dick about with maintenance tasks on something less than a year old let alone less than DOA timeframes.

oddly its not made the noise for a couple of days (it was noisy on saturday), so will give it the benefit of the doubt for a little while longer, and guess i'll return and get another make/model if it comes back (maybe do 240mm top mounted instead... would i notice much cooling ability by going from 360 front intake to 240 top exhaust?)

thefunkygibbon · Tuesday at 10:45

clone said:
My pump is noisy when I first start up but it goes quiet after a bit, artic freezer 3 420 mm.

is that because your fan control (app or bios) takes over and slows the pump/fans down? I understand that the pump header always starts up as 100% until other curves/controls take over.
for me, this isn't the usual sound of a pump, its more a rattley kind of noise.

thefunkygibbon · Tuesday at 13:08

Bubo said:
That cooler appears to have a pump impeller in he main body of it but also a secondary fan behind the top cover. The exploded pics of the cooler looks like it is one of those whiny looking 40mm fans that the bearings can go on, though maybe not after a week. Assuming that wasn't one of the fans you switched off before you could try to pop off the fan cover part of the cooler, which looks like it houses some RGB lights, and put you finger on the fan to stop it. Then at least you will know if it is this fan or the actual pump that is making the noise.

yeah its not the little fan on the pump, thats powered by the "vrm" header which I unplugged and that fan stopped. the rattley noise did not stop.

thefunkygibbon · Tuesday at 13:29

hornetstinger said:
Can't understand whole point of WC is quietness, but then use a small fan on pumps. Those things make a racket. No way to replace with standard fan, ie 60mm/80mm either.

i think Arctic are the only ones to do this , and to be fair, its not 100% needed, you can simply pull the shroud off if you need to. and unless you have it going full whack then you can't really hear it at all anyway. especially not over the sounds of other fans which would be running when loads are that high.

thefunkygibbon · Tuesday at 13:30

Drumroll said:
EKWB Nucleus is genuinely quiet. Fans aren’t great but is a possible fix.

I'll bear it in mind, although i can't see anyone who has it in stock (360mm non LED version)

thefunkygibbon · 2024-11-20T21:41:13+0000

100% sure, i've stuck my ear in there any the sound is coming from where the CPU is

thefunkygibbon · 2024-11-21T11:46:01+0000

I don't know what the beef was with the mounting? it was no problem at all. It may have been the v1 version which was worse, but mine is v2 and had no problems mounting it at all and took about 2 minutes.

interesting about the arbg version? could you elaborate on that? why is that version not going to suffer from humming?