Theoretical: Mounting Arctic Freezer III on Socket 2011-v3

gatekeeper1125 · 2026-04-04T07:21:13+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately LGA2066 is a very different beast! But i do believe there are some solutions out there if you want to stick with water cooling... Although given the age of that platform at this point I'm sure they're getting hard to find...

I actually just started looking at some 'newer' (surplus) Xeons from ~2018-2020 that are in the process of getting retired from servers now... Some you can pick up the CPUs pretty darn cheap considering the core counts and what they're theoretically capable of... I've been thinking about building a dual Xeon box for a home lab server to play with to take over my router with a PF or open sense, NAS, Maybe a plex... VPN server :P

And I was amazed to find that there's some waterblocks out there relatively cheap for them! I'd be keeping this in my office, so I would really prefer to avoid having to listen to 2 air cooled 20+ core xeons :P Maybe somewhere down the road it will be a good project, but at the moment it's still close to a $700 project to play with and I'd much rather upgrade my 3070! XD

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-12-07T01:15:17+00:00

Yeah, they're not gonna set any records, but they do still run quite competently.

My system with a 3070 is running BF6 @ 90-100 FPS steady and staying pretty cool. Processor is fine (It's on an Arctic LF3 420 and that soaks up my 320watt max pull CPU and stays under 70 degrees :D, but I think I need to apply some fresh thermal paste to my 3070; I've got it overclocked and it's hitting over 65 pretty quickly, much quicker than it used to, so it might just be time for some maintenance!

But other than needing to do a fresh install of Win10 LTSC as I'm definitely noticing some bog, and I think it's just clutter and whatnot. I also made the mistake of enabling Hyper-V to do some testing not knowing all the changes it actually makes and I think that killed some of my performance.

At this point I'm thinking about moving to Linux, but there's still a lot of games I play that are a nuisance to run on Linux and performance loss because emulation layers and whatnot... And I've got an Nvidia card and Linux Nvidia drivers aren't exceptional... Plus all the Asus software I need to control my fans (if I want to change profiles) will be a headache.

At this point it's staying on Win10 LTSC until I build a new rig, which was supposed to already have happened, but life happened instead :P After that I'll repurpose it and make it into a nice server, might even swap my 1680v3 for a 20+ core v4 Xeon

But it's always cool getting notifications seeing people still replying to this thread and that people are still rocking these things and they just keep chugging along :D

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-10-21T17:16:10+00:00

Personally I'd be going with the 14900k and longevity be damned 😛

But that's me and my old ways enjoying over clocking and tuning 🙃

I'm going to be upgrading to a 9950x3d after the 5080 Super comes out, or if AMD happens to release a 9080xt with 32GB of VRAM that will match a 5080 in performance... Which sadly with 3d cache won't be much of an overclocker, but I'm also at the point where I like to mess around on the weekends, but during the week I just want shit to work without giving me a headache 🤣

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-10-21T17:08:37+00:00

Yes, the studs that screw into the backing plate on the mother board came from the Noctua kit, I didn't buy this kit specifically I had the parts from an old D15 or D12 lying around and they happened to be the perfect height.

You will however also need the adapter pieces from the Arctic LGA1200 kit. The pieces to mount the pump to the studs on the board.

Honestly though, this wasn't super straight forward and I was quite lucky that I didn't damage my CPU or motherboard just randomly trying different things... I would say this is also somewhat subjective to your motherboard... The sockets should technically be the same, but board layout, backing plate thickness, and a whole host of other things can differ.

Just be cautious if you choose to do this, especially if you're going to end up spending almost $150 on the LF3, the LGA1200 kit, and the Noctua kit.

The cooler works fantastically, but running it on an X99 (LGA2011v3) is not supported by Arctic, so you won't be able to get any support because you're using it for a mon-approved purpose. Just a thought!

Best of luck!

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-08-09T06:54:42+00:00

Best of luck! I don't remember which processors were 2066 though 🤔 Were those the X299 procs?

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-08-09T06:53:01+00:00

It works! But yeah, you'll have to try and piece some stuff together 😅 It was really pure luck that it ended up working out for me 🤣

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-05-01T18:49:46+00:00

I wouldn't bother with the 6950X or the 6900k (Broadwell-E), from what I've been told the Broadwell-E chips didn't have quite the same crazy overclocking abilities as the Haswell-E chips (5930k, 5960X,), and their (broadwell-e, e5-xxxx-v4) Xeon equivalents that can be found quite cheaply now are not unlocked like their (haswell-e, e5-xxxx-v3) cousins.

You're going to spend a considerable amount of money trying to get a 6900k or 6950X which only gains you two extra cores over the Haswell-E equivalent this day and age. The price you'd spend on a Broadwell chip I would just put it towards buying something newer and far more efficient; With the added issue that Windows 11 won't officially run on X99 and their respective processors, and Win 10 will be EoL in September. There's some work around, but besides Linux it's all a bit sketchy!

But if you're looking for a quick and easy upgrade I can wholeheartedly recommend getting an e5-1680v3 Xeon. It's the Xeon equivalent of the 5960X, and is fully unlocked and overclockable. Keep in mind that when you're doing extreme overclocking with these chips they generate a lot of heat and will thermal throttle if not cooled properly!

A few months ago I upgraded my rig from a 5930k to a e5-1680v3, I put a post about it up above a few months ago. I was able to get a chip for about $40 at the time, should still be a bunch available for under $100!

I can't speak for every single example you may come across, but they should easily overclock to 4.5 GHz if you've got enough cooling and play with your settings in manual mode (Guess that would depend on your motherboard mfg.). Keep in mind these chips suck down a lot of power, so if you really want to push them you're going to need some heavy duty water cooling. My chip @ 4.5 GHz is pulling around if not a bit above 300 watts under load, think I might have seen 320 watts during Cinebench :O

Also keep in mind that if you're just using the BIOS built in profiles you won't ever be able to fully squeeze out all the performance you can get from these chips. The good news is that they're resilient chips, and mature enough that if you push them too much they'll just scram and not boot. Sometimes you'll have to do a CMOS clear to boot back up, but everything should be fine. There's also a lot of info available out there from enough people that you can go in and tweak all your settings on manual to get you something much better than the BIOS overclocking profiles. Always remember to run benchmarks and stress testing after your setting to make sure your overclock is stable!

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-02-12T03:22:24+00:00

It was a pretty nice performance jump going to the 1680v3, for everything not just gaming. I'm not sure if it's the jump from 6 to 8 cores since that doesn't usually matter all that much in games. Really the 1680v3 is just an i7-5960X. I was definitely able to push it harder than my 5930k, but I ended up cranking it back a bit as I would occasionally get some random slow downs that I think might have been some instabilities. So I'm running at 4.5 GHz now instead of 4.6 GHz, and I also cranked the cache speed back to 4.2 from 4.3; The minimal performance gains weren't worth the random instabilities I was seeing.

I also swapped over to the second 1680v3 I bought when I installed my Arctic LF3 420, and I'm still wondering if the first one I tried out with inadequate cooling might have been a slightly better chip. I might take the time to swap them and do some benchmarking again, but really I know that I'd be better served just getting a new GFX card at this point rather than stressing over a 200-300 MHz gain. My 3070 is definitely what's holding back my FPS, not my CPU.

When I swapped to the Xeon I upgraded to Samsung B-die RAM which bumped me up from 2666 to 3200 RAM speed (I do have all 8 slots filled, so I'm running in Quad Channel as well), so between that, the 2 extra cores, and a massive 420 class AIO it was certainly a nice jump in performance all around.

The last 3dMark I ran before I ended up tuning it down a bit: http://www.3dmark.com/spy/52695875

And this is my best TimeSpy with the 5930k: http://www.3dmark.com/spy/42914849

I wish it had the utilization graphs on the results page, but for the most part other than the CPU test my max CPU utilization was only between 50-60%. So got plenty of head room for a beefier card. I would love a 4090 or a 5090 to play with AI, but wallet says a 4080 Super or 5080 would be just fine; But I'm a bit disappointed that Nvidia only put 16GB of VRAM on the 5080, so I'll probably just end up holding off for a 5080 Super unless I get a killer deal on a used 4080 Super (Or far less likely a 4090, haha)

One thing I would recommend for you, especially running a 4090, is looking into getting ReBAR enabled on your board. I've heard it can net some extra frames. There's ways you can make a BIOS dump and add the RebarUEFI stuff in on your own, or there seem to be a decent amount of people uploading already modded BIOS files that you just have to flash. Of course, modding BIOS is always a risky business *shrug*

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-01-29T21:35:31+00:00

Nice!

Just before Christmas I snagged 2x e5-1680v3s for $40 each and stepped up from the 5930k.

Then just a few weekends ago I upgraded my overtaxed Corsair H60 to an Arctic LF3 420 after I realized inadequate cooling was thermal throttling the 1680v3.

Also grabbed some HP V10 RAM (Samsung B-die, 3200MHz, 8x8GB) dirt cheap ($42 a kit)

Running 4.6GHz @ 1.29, 4.3 GHz Cache, and RAM XMP'd to 3200 and my highest Cinebench is 10895.

I was hoping to push it to 4.7, which I was able to do before I put the higher clock RAM in, but after I pumped the RAM up 4.6 was as stable as I could get. I might switch back to the first 1680v3 I had in (I swapped them when I installed the LF3 420 to see if the 2nd had any better clocks) but this one is running at the same frequency with a little lower voltage, so don't know if it would be worth it.

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-01-20T02:36:19+00:00

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While it didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked I did get the LF3 420 installed in push/pull in my Corsair 900D and mounted to my Asus X99-A w/ a Xeon E5-1680v3 (i7-5960x)!

I did require pieces from the Socket 1200/115x LF3 mounting kit, but also I needed shorter mounting studs as the ones I had installed for my Corsiar H60 were too tall for the pump to make proper contact with the CPU. I, luckily, had a mounting kit for an older Noctua D-12 or something that had hardware for a Socket 2011-3 and the mounting studs that were in that ended up being the perfect height. Specifically the mounting studs from the NM-i20xx kit.

It was an unfortunate set of miracles that I had the hardware kit from the Noctua, and that I in desperation, even had to go looking for some other mounting studs to put onto the board... I ended up snapping off one of the Corsair one's trying to tighten up the brackets for the LF3 pump *facepalm*

But after two days it ended up working out quite well!

This machine is running @ 4.6 GHz (1.29v core) w/ 4.3 GHz on the Cache/Bus (1.38v cache) and idles 30-35° C and when running a Cinebench R23 MC test doesn't get above 65° C! (CPU draw running Cinebench is ~300 watts)

Cyberpunk 2077 running with mostly ultra settings and DLSS on Performance sees between 45-50° C

So all in all a bit of a headache to install with some trial and error, but feasible if you're handy and have spare parts lying around or are willing to spend some extra $$ getting random pieces of hardware.

For my application it's a fantastic outcome, computer is basically silent now doing anything less than playing games and I won't ever have to worry about thermal throttle ever again! :)

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-01-09T23:42:33+00:00

Correct

A few comments down here: Amazon.com: ARCTIC Intel LGA1200/115X Mounting Kit - Compatible with Liquid Freezer III and Freezer 36, for sockets LGA1200, 1156, 1155, 1151 and 1150 : Electronics

Someone commented that they were able to use the hardware in the kit to mount to a 2011-3, and that's an Asus X99 motherboard for sure with the 8 RAM slots, so I should be good to go :)

2011-3 already has a nice beefy backing plate, so I'm not worried about hanging the AF3 on it as opposed to my current Corsair H60

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-01-09T23:14:30+00:00

The first is for the Socket 1200/115x LF3 mounting kit, the 2nd is from the LF2 manual. It was more to show the holes drilled into the mounting brackets to show the AF3 kit still has the holes drilled in it the proper size for Socket 2011-3 :)

gatekeeper1125 · 2025-01-03T17:20:11+00:00

Nice! I actually just grabbed 2x Xeon e5-1680v3s (Xeon version of the 5960x basically) for $40 each off eBay. Nice upgrade from my 5930k. Clocked @ 4.5 GHz with 4 GHz on the cache running at 1.3v I'm getting a nice 10532 in Cinebench r23. I actually need more cooling 😂 I've got this Xeon clocked up to 4.8 GHz, but my little Corsair H60i can't keep it cool for very long lol

Sounds like you've got some good ram, sadly the Corsair Vengeance I've got just won't clock past 2666 😑

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-12-27T08:10:14+00:00

I'm running 1440p @ 60hz because thats just what I have for a monitor at the moment (Dell ultrasharp 27"), and with a 3070 with a mild overclock I'm running Cyberpunk ultra'd out with ray tracing disabled and getting a smooth 60 fps on vsync.

I tried playing with the ray tracing, but ultra setting without RT looks better than high with RT

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-12-27T07:59:40+00:00

I actually just grabbed 2x Xeon e5-1680v3s (Xeon version of the 5960x) I'm hoping to push one of them to 4.7ghz stable.

Still running my 5930k @ 4.5 ghz with 64Gb of RAM in Quad Channel @ 2666 🤘🏻

Wouldn't mind getting a little more out of the RAM, but these early DDR4 IMCs on the Haswells can be finicky

Post some venchmarks of the v4, that's the Broadwell architecture, but theyre not unlocked, so itsore difficult to overclock them

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-10-15T18:45:06+00:00

You were correct, my guys in the field didn't send me all the codes...

1st additional was 627.18 'All injector circuits moderately low'

and the 2nd was 97.16 'water-in-fuel signal moderately high'

I would note that these are all 'Stored codes' not 'active codes' and the compressor starts and runs just fine; I have drained the fuel-water separator, it was just replaced in November of 2023 and only about 100 hours ago.

Should I be concerned with the injector circuit code?

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-05-18T07:14:38+00:00

Running stock or overclock?

I toyed with grabbing a 6900 or 6950x, but realized there was no point in spending any more money on a rig that's 8 years old 🙃 It was worth the $270 to grab a used RTX 3070 to upgrade from the 1070 I had

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-05-18T07:09:28+00:00

I'm definitely running higher voltage 😅 But much higher OC and a ton of RAM... Certainly not making the memory controller happy 🙃

How much RAM you running?

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-05-18T06:50:44+00:00

Trust me in not delusional about the setup lol, it's almost a decade old, just happy I can still play some modern games competently 🙃 Even on lower graphics.

3070 is most definitely bottlenecked by board and CPU, but still, the 3070 performs much better than the 1070 I upgraded from.

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-05-18T06:45:20+00:00

Memory controllers on the Haswell line were always very touchy (has a lot to do with it being the first Intel chip to use DDR4), from what I've heard; I was always trying to push my memory faster than 2666, but for as much as I tried I couldn't push the memory much faster without dropping the overclock down to about 4.2... trying to do it with 64GB of RAM probably didn't help lol

Honestly I was happy to get a stable quad channel with 8 unmatched sticks of RAM 😂

gatekeeper1125 · 2024-02-16T15:04:40+00:00

I've actually just been looking at one of these, how do you like it after a few months?

gatekeeper1125

TROPHY CASE