Question Should I send this back?

Thanks. It was indeed purchased as 'new' from amazon. If it wouldn't affect the performance then I'm considering keeping it but I would agree that it shouldn't be like that. It's my first time building a PC and I've nearly completed all of it now so I was wanting to give it a shot but maybe I should be patient and get a replacement.
 
Good. You'd not buy a soda that's been previously opened, you'd not buy a brand new car with a dent in the hood or a pair of shoes with a hole punctured through the sole.

I'd like to believe Arctic wants to keep you as a happy customer, covering warranty damages expeditiously is part of that.
 
Because I wanted it a little quicker I have ordered the same product directly from the site that was selling the item via amazon, cost £1.99 more but that's fine. I will send the damaged one back for a refund. I should probably receive the new one on Friday if it gets sent on Thursday unless they do business today (unlikely), then it would be here Thursday.
 
Yeah I would have normally done so but as it's a busy period at the moment I thought I'd try and do it this way, as it will most likely be quicker. I had assembled most of the PC so I was disappointed to have spotted this, I want to get it up and running ASAP.
 
@Karadjgne

Hi, so it seems this is out of stock everywhere. I'm thinking of just going for the Corsair H115i Platinum. Now there is a big difference in price here £80 vs £130 but would you say the Corsair would probably be a more reliable purchase? Also, I would hope it would perform similarly. It also has a 5 year warranty whereas the Arctic has only a 2 year warranty. I know at least Corsair is one of the main AIO providers. Alternatively the 360mm Arctic will be released on the 6th January for around £88 here, but I'm now not sure about their reliability so may avoid it altogether.
 
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CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X62 Rev 2 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£124.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£119.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H115i RGB PLATINUM 97 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£121.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S36 Blackout 87.6 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£114.86 @ More Computers)

Any of these would be my choice, depending on rgb or not, 280mm or 360mm

Thanks a lot, helpful as always :)
 
The fans as pictured have a directional flow from left to right of the picture. With the front of the case far right, that puts them as push/exhaust. If you leave that orientation left-right, and move the fans to the other side of the rad, you still have exhaust, but it's now pull/exhaust.

By flipping them where they sit, that would change the directional flow from right to left, putting them as pull/intake. If sticking them (flipped) on the other side, that would still be intake, but now push/intake.

Flow is either intake or exhaust, depending on direction. Orientation is either push or pull, depending on which side of the rad.

There's almost always an arrow on the fan showing flow direction, but easiest way is look for the wire. The wire goes to the motor. The side of the fan that has the motor/wire is the side that shoves air outwards, the pretty side with no wire sucks air inwards. Which side of the rad doesn't really matter to performance, only looks, cleaning etc.

Right now, according to picture, the top 2x fans are exhaust, the front 2x fans are exhaust. Just flip the 2x fronts to change airflow direction.
 
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Thanks for your help 👍

That's not a picture of my PC btw incase you were wondering, I was just using it for illustrative purposes 😊

I should have this all installed later, hopefully it performs well.
 
I've done that test on my i7-3770K @ 4.9GHz with gtx970 @ 124% OC (axial design), Kraken x61 and 2x 140mm stock fans in Fractal Design Define R5.

I took that test further than he did though, and changed orientations because what he failed to take into consideration was fan speeds and ability.

Every fan has a motor, and fans sitting that close to a radiator in push get a dead-spot directly behind the motor area. If the rad gets dirty, it becomes quite evident, you'll get a dirt 'donut'. This doesn't happen with pull as the vacuum created by the fan intake is universal across the entire surface area of the rad.

So fans at lower speeds, generally @ 1200rpm or lower, are more effective in pull. Fans at higher rpm, usually @ 1500+ are more effective in push.

Rads effect flow like a diffuser, the air still moves through, but looses a lot of its directional force.

This will affect temps on cpu and gpu. I ran my fans max at 900rpm. Used Firstrike and Prime95 small fft

Cpu-gpu:
Front push 74/84
Front pull 70/80
Top push 76/82
Top pull 72/82

Front-pull was the most effective for both orientations for cpu and for gpu. The top 140mm exhaust fans offered plenty of unrestricted flow for rising exhaust from the gpu. The gpu benefitted from unrestricted airflow from the exhaust side of the intake fans, literally getting more air. Pull at 900rpm is more effective than push. And that's only during stress testing, gaming rarely exceeded 650rpm.

Also, the biggest misconception is AIO's to begin with. With an aircooler, that's direct heat-heat transfer to the sink. The fan is cooling what the cpu is outputting. With an AIO, the fan is cooling the liquid temp not the cpu temp. And liquids have a massive ability to absorb heat, with very little actual affect. The coolant in an AIO very rarely ever sees 40°C or above, the cpu can't output the wattage to heat it further. So an AIO isn't cooling 70°C cpu, it's cooling 40°C coolant. Which honestly is barely higher than inside case temps, if at all.

So dude talks about all this 'hot air', it really isn't. Not if you size the AIO correctly. It's luke warm at best.
 
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@Karadjgne Just an update. I have everything set up and running smoothly, unfortunately I can't hit 5ghz on all cores, I get a BSOD very quickly during Prime95 tests. Best I can do is 4.9ghz all core which has kind of disappointed me a little.
 
Maybe. Depends on how you OC and the level of knowledge about OC, your bios, the settings etc. The best place I know of for OC tweeks is Asus ROG forums. Look up your cpu, see what others are doing to get 5GHz, then cross reference with your bios settings.

OC is OC. Vcore is vcore. LLC is LLC. Doesn't matter if it's on an Asus or Gigabyte or MSI motherboard, the theory is all identical, only the names might change according to vendor.

So go read. Research. Read some more. Google any setting you are unsure of. Figure out what changes can and can't be tried/applied etc. Many believe LLC should be just set to extreme/100 etc. It doesn't. 50-66% at best. Little things like that will make or break a stable OC.

Prime95 small fft, AVX technologies disabled = temp test. Prime hasn't been reliable as a stress tester for several years now, but is perfect for gaming equivalent max temps.

Asus Real Bench, Aida64 Stress test etc = Stess testers for stability.

But at the end of all that, the Silicon Lottery takes precedence. You may truly have hit clock or voltage or stability limits, no way to know for certain until all avenues are expended.
 
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Thanks, I'll take a look around. I've never OC'd a CPU in my life and didn't know what programs to test it with. If I can't get it to 5ghz all core I may return it to amazon for a replacement.
 
Read first. Everything you can on OC for that cpu. There's no guarantee on any OC above factory turbo so even if you did return it, you still could be in the same boat. It might just be as simple as clocks too high for the voltage, or ring voltage is off, or pll needs adjusting etc. OC isn't just a simple matter, you are fine tuning a hot-rod.

It took me a solid month to get my i7-3770K to 5GHz, 4.9GHz was easy, 5 minutes, what I didn't know was that just dropping one setting from factory 1.8v to 1.7v and bingo, stable at 5GHz.

So go get edumacated.
 
Okay, I'll keep it for now to see if I can reach 5ghz. I have until 31st January to send it back. I signed up to the Asus Rog forums so may ask around there. I downloaded Realbench and done both tests, all fine at 4.9ghz, not tried that program at 5ghz yet.
 
Looks like I can hit 5ghz afterall :) Getting averages of mid 70's on Cinebench and Realbench, with peaks of 80C on 1 or 2 cores. Reducing the uncore seems to have helped. I can run Prime95 but it has to be with AVX turned off. It seems like an unrealistic stress test though compared to the others.
 
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AVX tech is a very specific, very cpu brutal, set of instructions used primarily in uber professional software. There's occasional light use in some games dealing with high levels of physX, there might be 1 or 2 games that have tiny usage of AVX-2, but I've never heard of any game, nor rumor of any game, using AVX 512. You'll find AVX 512 in places like LucasArts, Disney Studios, Pixar etc.

It's included now in testing software, because those pro's using AVX regularly, are also using the same cpus as the general public who play games. So it should be disabled as it can run a cpu artificially at @ 130% loads, when the cpu is at 100%. Meaning temps go through the roof realistically, but give unrealistic gaming loads temps.

Prime with AVX (all 3) disabled will represent a 100% constant load using the same instructions games use. It's a worst case scenario, the absolute maximum you should ever see. Knowing that temp as maximum, any game you play should be under. If you ever happen to see that temp again, or more, then you know for certain there's an issue somewhere, with something, as normally you shouldn't be seeing 100% full core, full thread usage from any game.
 
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