I think you got tricked into buying AIO. Especially when you didn't want to buy one.
Though, Arctic Cooling Liquid Freezer is good AIO when it comes to AIOs. But AIOs have several downsides compared to air coolers.
As far as AIOs vs air coolers go, as i said earlier, you won't gain any cooling performance if you go with AIO over air cooler since both are cooled by ambient air.
For equal cooling performance between AIOs and air coolers, rad needs to be 240mm or 280mm. Smaller rads: 120mm and 140mm are almost always outperformed by mid-sized air coolers. Single slot rads are good in mini-ITX builds where you don't have enough CPU cooler clearance to install mid-sized CPU air cooler.
Here are the positive sides of both (air and AIO) CPU cooling methods;
Pros of air coolers:
less cost
less maintenance
less noise
far longer longevity
no leakage risks
doesn't take up case fan slots
additional cooling for the RAM
CPU cools down faster after heavy heat output
Pros of AIOs:
no RAM clearance issues*
no CPU clearance issues
CPU takes longer time to heat up during heavy heat output (about 30 mins)
* on some cases, top mounted rad can give RAM clearance issues
While how the CPU cooler looks inside the PC depends on a person. Some people prefer to see small AIO pump in the middle of their MoBo with tubing going to the rad while others prefer to see big heatsink with fans in the middle of their MoBo.
Main difference between AIO and air cooler is that with AIO, you'll get more noise at a higher cost while cooling performance remains the same.
Here's also one good article for you to read where king of air coolers (Noctua NH-D15) was put against 5x high-end AIOs, including former king of AIOs (NZXT x61 Kraken),
link:
http://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/noctua/nh-d15-versus-closed-loop-liquid-coolers/1
Personally, i'd go with air coolers every day of the week. With same cooling performance, the pros of air coolers outweigh the pros of AIOs considerably. While, for me, the 3 main pros would be:
1. Less noise.
Since i like my PC to be quiet, i can't stand the loud noise AIO makes. Also, when air gets trapped inside the AIO (some AIOs are more prone to this than others), there's additional noise coming from inside the pump.
2. Longevity.
Cheaper AIOs usually last 2-3 years and high-end ones 4-5 years before you need to replace it. While with air coolers, their life expectancy is basically unlimited. Only thing that can go bad on an air cooler is the fan on it. If the fan dies, your CPU still has cooling in form of a big heatsink. Also, new 120mm or 140mm fan doesn't cost much and it's easy to replace one. While with AIOs, the main thing that usually goes bad is the pump itself. And when that happens, your CPU has no cooling whatsoever. Since you can't replace pump on an AIO, you need to buy whole new AIO to replace the old one out.
3. No leakage risks.
Since there's liquid circling inside the AIO, there is always a risk that your AIO can leak. While it's rare, it has happened. It's well known fact that liquids and electronics don't mix.
What AIO essentially does, is moving the heat, via liquid, to the radiator, where the heat transfer then takes place. But radiator is still cooled by ambient air. So, you will not get better cooling when using AIO. Though, it takes time for liquid to heat up fully, ~30mins or so. Due to that, you can't see CPU temps to spike as soon as high load starts. With these short workloads, many people think AIO gives better cooling, but it isn't so. Let the workload continue for longer time, until liquid in AIO heats all the way up, and then you'll see the actual cooling performance of an AIO.
On top of that, when high workload on CPU ends, the AIO will feed the heat back to CPU, since liquid in it is still hot. That can have adverse effects.
Air cooler, in the other hand, is all metal (copper pipes and aluminum fins), and it will heat up fast. Hence why you see CPU temps climbing as soon as you put a load on CPU. But as soon as load on CPU stops, heatsink cools down fast and will not feed the heat back to CPU, as AIO does.
Yes. There are actually several Noctua coolers that do fine with your CPU, and not only the king itself: NH-D15;
Noctua compatibility for 12900K:
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/Intel-Core-i9-12900K-1577
I'd go with NH-D15/NH-D15S (or chromax.black version for better looks), compared to e.g NH-U14S. You'd have better cooling with NH-D15/NH-D15S.
But NH-U14S still does the job;
12900K with NH-U12S temps:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alder-lake-12th-gen/21.html
That, and 12th gen and 13th gen CPUs are designed to run 100C without damage to CPU. Getting 95C or above, is the new norm with latest high-end CPUs.
Source:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-13900k-i5-13600k-cpu-review/3
Btw, i checked the Focus 2 case and it has 170mm CPU cooler clearance, meaning that NH-D15 will fit into it just fine.
NH-D15 RAM clearance is another issue. Under front fan, there is 32mm of space. If you remove the fan and clip it instead at the 2nd tower, at the back, then under heatsink, there is up to 66mm clearance for RAM. I don't know how tall your RAM is.
Funny question.
First off: in the fan world, anything below 20 dB(A) is considered as silent. 20 - 30 dB(A) is audible, 30 - 40 dB(A) is loud and anything over 40 dB(A) is very loud.
The thing with PC cases is that it isn't the case that makes the noise but instead the case fans you put into there.
If i were to take a "quiet" case like
Corsair 400Q and put a
Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-3000 PWM fan into it which outputs 43.5 dB(A), then you can be certain that the PC won't be quiet at all, despite the claims it being quiet.
To get the best possible airflow with the least amount of noise, install as many fans in your case as possible. Preferably 140mm rather than 120mm since 140mm fan moves more air and does that more quietly than it's (same spec) 120mm counterpart.
While installing 5x to 7x fans in your PC may look like that you'd get extremely loud noise out of your PC, it's actually vice-versa. The trick is that the more fans you have inside the case, the less each fan has to work to maintain the airflow and the less noise fans produce.
And that is also a main reason why i have 7x high-end case fans in my Skylake and Haswell builds (Corsair ML Pro LED and NZXT AER140 RGB). Mostly 140mm but few 120mm as well. Full specs with pics in my sig. Since i have that many case fans, i can keep all of my case fans spinning between 800 - 1100 RPM and thanks to this, my PCs are very quiet while still having proper airflow inside my full-tower ATX cases.
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