Roughly half a year after the release of the Freezer 36 and Liquid Freezer III, Arctic has reconsidered its decision to support, or rather not support, older Intel platforms. Initially, you couldn’t even install these coolers on Rocket Lake processors. But that is now changing. However, you need to be careful and add a new mounting kit to your cart in addition to the cooler if you want to use it on LGA 1200 or even older LGA 115x processors.
The discontinuation of support for older sockets for the Arctic Freezer 36 and Liquid Freezer III coolers released this year was quite surprising. And as part of the Freezer 36 (A-RGB) tower cooler tests, we had to respond by changing the standard test platform to use the Core i9-13900 (LGA 1700) instead of the Core i7-11700K (LGA 1200). But now it would not be necessary anymore, as Arctic now allows optional mounting on older Intel motherboards as well.
For most users, it will be the LGA 1200 support that will be interesting, as these are still relatively powerful processors and mainly ones that really need a powerful cooler. For example, the ABT (Adaptive Boost Technology), approaches 300 W.
Along with Intel LGA 1200 support, support for LGA 1151, LGA 1150 and LGA 1156 platforms has also “caught the ride”. This brings us to 2009 processors, but considering those use the same mounting hole spacing (and meet other requirements, for offset and mounting pressure) as LGA 1200, it’s only natural.
It should be noted that Arctic will not be making any changes to the standard Freezer 36 and Liquid Freezer III coolers packages. Accessories will stay with the new ILM designed for Intel LGA 1700 (AMD platforms are also supported – AM4 and AM5) and the mounting kit for LGA 1200 and LGA 115x must be purchased separately. And it’s probably a good move to keep it separate. After all, most users will pair the coolers with their current platforms and there will be no waste of material, as a significant part of the accessories would remain unused in many cases.
The fact that you have to pay for a mounting kit for older platforms can be considered a definite disadvantage. Noctua would send it to you for free. Arctic coolers are often significantly cheaper when it comes to Freezer 36 models though. For the Liquid Freezer III, this might not be the case though, but, well, Arctic has it worked out this way. If you want to install their latest coolers on Intel LGA 1200 or Intel LGA 115x platforms, that’s for an extra price of 9.50 EUR, for which the mounting kit with the product designation MPSAS01117A is sold (also in their e-shop at arctic.de).
The table below provides a complete overview of the Freezer 36 and Liquid Freezer III cooler models that are relevant to Intel LGA 1200 and LGA 115x platform mounting kit support.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
| Overview of coolers with Arctic MPSAS01117A* support | |
| Freezer 36 | Liquid Freezer III |
| ACFRE00121A (base variant) | ACFRE00134A (240) |
| ACFRE00123A (Black) | ACFRE00142A (240 A-RGB Black) |
| ACFRE00122A (CO) | ACFRE00150A (240 A-RGB White) |
| ACFRE00124A (A-RGB Black) | ACFRE00143A (280) |
| ACFRE00125A (A-RGB White) | ACFRE00143A (A-RGB Black) |
| * The product designation of the mounting kit for Intel LGA 1200, 1151, 1150 and 1156 platforms | ACFRE00151A (280 A-RGB White) |
| ACFRE00136A (360) | |
| ACFRE00144A (360 A-RGB Black) | |
| ACFRE00152A (360 A-RGB White) | |
| ACFRE00137A (420) | |
| ACFRE00145A (420 A-RGB Black) | |
| ACFRE00153A (420 A-RGB White) |
