Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

Today we are testing the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 CPU cooler, which has a tower heatsink, three 6 mm heatpipes, and a 92 mm fan. Check it out!

The Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 box is actually a transparent plastic blister, that shows the entire cooler, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Package

In Figure 2, you can see the cooler and the accessories that come with it: manual and installation hardware.

Figure 2: Accessories

In Figure 3, you can see the Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2.

Figure 3: The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2

In the next pages, you will see this cooler in detail.

[nextpage title=”The Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2″]

In Figure 4, you see the front of the cooler. The most distinctive feature is the rubber-suspension white fan, which we already saw in the Alpine 11 Pro and in the Alpine 64 Pro.

Figure 4: Front view

In Figure 5, you see the side of the cooler. Note the three copper heatpipes.

Figure 5: Side view

In Figure 6, you can check the back of the cooler.

Figure 6: Rear view

In Figure 7 you see the top of the cooler. Here we can see the simple fin design.

Figure 7: Top view

[nextpage title=”The Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 (Cont’d)”]

In Figure 8, you can see the base of the cooler, which comes with preapplied thermal grease.

Figure 8: Base

In Figure 9, you can see 92 mm PWM fan that comes with the cooler. As we mentioned before, it is similar to the fan used in the Alpine 11 Pro and in the Alpine 64 Pro.

Figure 9: Fan

In Figure 10, you can see the suspension mechanism that holds the fan, absorbing any vibration.

Figure 10: Fan suspension

In Figure 11, you can see the frame for installing this cooler on Intel CPUs. There is no backplate. For AMD processors, the cooler is attached to the existing motherboard frame.

Figure 11: Intel frame

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

The first step of the installation is to attach the plastic frame to the motherboard, which is a very simple task. You can see it in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Frame installed

After that, the heatsink is set in place by screwing it to the frame. You must to remove the fan before doing this, in order to grant access to the screw.

Figure 13: The heatsink installed

After that, attach the fan to the heatsink and connect it to the motherboard.

Figure 14: The Freezer 7 Pro installed in our case

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.

We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 (in this version, the software uses a
ll available threads) with the "In-place Large FFTs" option.

We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.

Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core i7-860
• Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
• Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
• Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
• Video resolution: 1680×1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool

Operating System Configuration

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Software Used

• Prime95
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 °C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.

[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]

The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.

		Idle Processor			Processor at Full Load
Cooler	Room Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.
Intel stock (socket LGA1156)	14 °C	44 dBA	1700 rpm	46 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	90 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1	14 °C	47 dBA	2050 rpm	33 °C	56 dBA	2900 rpm	62 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme	14 °C	45 dBA	1400 rpm	27 °C	53 dBA	1950 rpm	51 °C
Thermaltake Silent 1156	14 °C	44 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	49 dBA	1750 rpm	69 °C
Noctua NH-D14	14 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	27 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	53 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Performa	14 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	28 °C	52 dBA	1950 rpm	54 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	50 °C
Thermaltake Frio	14 °C	46 dBA	1450 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	50 °C
Prolimatech Samuel 17	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	40 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	63 °C
Zalman CNPS8000A	18 °C	43 dBA	1400 rpm	39 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	70 °C
Spire TherMax Eclipse II	14 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	28 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	53 °C
Scythe Ninja3	17 °C	39 dBA	700 rpm	32 °C	55 dBA	1800 rpm	57 °C
Corsair A50	18 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	33 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	60 °C
Thermaltake Jing	18 °C	44 dBA	850/1150 rpm	34 °C	49 dBA	1300 rpm	60 °C
GlacialTech Alaska	18 °C	43 dBA	1150 rpm	36 °C	51 dBA	1600 rpm	60 °C
Deepcool Gamer Storm	18 °C	43 dBA	1100 rpm	35 °C	48 dBA	1600 rpm	62 °C
Corsair A70	26 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	40 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	65 °C
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro	23 °C	45 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	52 dBA	1500 rpm	64 °C
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2	23 °C	47 dBA	1750 rpm	44 °C	51 dBA	2100 rpm	77 °C

In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

The main features of the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 CPU cooler include:

• Application: Socket LGA775, 1156, 1366, AM3, AM2+ and AM2 processors
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Copper
• Heat-pipes: Three 6-mm copper heat-pipes
• Fan: 92 mm
• Nominal fan speed: 2,500 rpm
• Fan air flow: 45 cfm
• Maximum power consumption: not informed
• Nominal noise level: not informed
• Weight: 1.3 lbs (590 g)
• More information: https://www.arctic.ac
• Average price in the US*: USD 30.00

* Researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

The Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 didn’t reach the same performance level of the top-notch CPU coolers we tested so far. The good news is that it has far better performance than the Intel stock cooler, and its fan is very quiet. The installation is very simple, too.

The real problem with this cooler is that it doesn’t have a good cost/benefit ratio. There are cheaper coolers with similar performance, and there are coolers that cost a little more but present far better performance.

Anyway, the Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 does its job: cools your CPU better than the stock cooler, while keeping your computer quieter.