Hm .. after further research about the water cooling issue, my brain hurts.
Turns out, that the Artic Liquid Freezer II apparently isnt compatible with the mainboard I want to use, ie. the Gigabyte Z690M Aorus Elite AX DDR4. Arctic states this on their website, which differs from the information - including a screenshot from the original press / news release - found on the net. Said screenshot shows an image of the pump casing, with the lower part of the pump / cooling plate combo casing removed, and a short list of boards that are affected by this issue.
So its back to Silent Loop 2 for now. Maybe with different fans - got 2x Arctic P14 PWM PST sitting around, that never made it into my current system (Phanteks Eclipse P360A). Would give these a first try; other option would be Noctua NF-A14 industrialPPC-2000 or SilverStone Air Penetrator / FHP 14x. Ie. something with a lot of oomph, but also a lot of headroom (and PWM, obviously).
BTW: These are the current mainboard candidates (incl. URLs to geizhals):
- Gigabyte Z690M Aorus Elite AX DDR4 - https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-z690m-a-elite-ax-ddr4-a2625190.html
- Asus Prime Z690M-Plus D4 - https://geizhals.de/asus-prime-z690m-plus-d4-90mb18q0-m0eay0-a2625586.html
- MSI MAG Z690M Mortar WIFI - https://geizhals.de/msi-mag-z690m-mortar-wifi-a2625650.html
cu, w0lf.
