Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Review

1. Introduction2. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 133. Installing the Cooler4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Acoustics Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

Arctic Cooling have been releasing some great products lately and we have covered most of them on KitGuru – such as the excellent Accelero XTREME Plus. AC are a company who combine high performance with ease of installation at reasonable prices.

Today we look at the follow to the excellent Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2) CPU Cooler – the Freezer 13. The Freezer 13 has been redesigned from the ground up and features many improvements, including a new maximum cooling capacity of 200w (from 160w). Surprisingly in this age of ever increasing cooler sizes, it is also smaller, and features an incredible $25 price point. It also follows the tradition of Arctic's high performance mainstream processor coolers by not requiring a backplate mounting system.

Heatsink	123 (L) x 96 (W) x 130 (H) (H) mm
Fan	92 mm
Fan Speed	600 – 2,000 RPM (controlled by PWM)
Air Flow	36.4 CFM / 61.8 m3/H
Max Cooling Capacity	200 Watts
Bearing	Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Weight	695g
Compatibility	Intel Socket 1366, 1156, 775 AMD Socket AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939, 754

In the same fashion as all Arctic Cooling products we have reviewed to date, the Freezer 13 is shipped in a tough plastic container.

The back of the package lists specifications, mounting compatibility, as well as some internal test results. We take these with a pinch of salt and will look at that in more detail later.

The Arctic Cooling packaging while bright and cheerful is an aspect of their range which we feel could do with some improvement. It is fine for a PC World display, but we aren't sure it is the best option for maximum protection during heavy handed shipping.

The bundle includes a short installation guide, with a mounting bracket and necessary screws. This cooler uses a traditional push pin mounting system which won't appeal to the hardcore audience, but has proven to be a really ‘easy to fit' system for the majority of enthusiast users.

The Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 is quite a compact design, with the 92mm fan being attached by a hood system, similar in design to the Corsair A50 and A70 coolers we looked at recently. Arctic Cooling incorporated a 120mm fan with their latest Freezer Extreme Rev 2, so we hope this 92mm fan isn't noticeably louder, but more on this later.

The angular design is slightly unusual and the reason for the edge design is for greater heat dissipation.

The eight copper heatpipes expand from the main copper block upwards through the fins to the top of the cooler. The image above right shows the older Freezer Extreme Rev 2, which is noticeably larger.

The cooler is supplied with a layer of ARCTIC MX4 thermal paste pre-applied. and above left you can see that the mounting bracket is also preapplied out of the factory. The eight copper heatpipes are well manufactured, although there are a few rough edges when compared with the most expensive coolers on the market. Above right the angular heatsink design is particularly noticeable and we will test later how well it works in the real world.

A criticism of the Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2) was that the cooler was very heavy and rather large to be relying on a simple four push pin mounting system. The Freezer 13 is lighter and smaller and while this will immediately alienate a portion of the audience reading this, it is rather refreshing to use such a simple system for installation.

It took literally 30 seconds to fit the plastic mounting bracket and the four push pins are strong enough to feel as if they could deal with heavy handed abuse. They can be used for both AMD and Intel platforms, although we are using an Intel Core i7 920 and ASROCK 1366 slot motherboard, seen above.

Once the plastic bracket is fitted, then the cooler needs to be positioned for two screws to be attached. At this stage we need to remove the 92mm fan bracket to get access to both sides.

Once both screws are tightened then the plastic fan shroud can be refitted. It is important to ensure that the fan is pointing either upwards or to the right in your chosen chassis to create a strong down/up or right/left airflow. As you can see in the image above right, the cooler doesn't block any of the ram slots either (regardless of mounting position), a problem with some of the bigger heatsinks, especially with memory using oversized heatspreaders.

Above, we can see the Freezer 13 paired with an overclocked HD5870 and Accelero EXTREME Plus. Above, installed inside an Xigmatek chassis.

For testing today we are using an Intel Core i7 920 D0 stepping with an ASROCK X58 Extreme 6 motherboard (review forthcoming). While we tend to clean and reapply with Noctua NT H1 thermal paste, today we are using the preapplied MX4 compound which was a recent award winner on KitGuru.

We normally compare against a wide variety of coolers supporting a 970 or 980X Core i7 but this time we wanted to focus on a more mainstream, yet capable enthusiast configuration.

There is no point comparing this against a Noctua NH D14, we know the Freezer 13 will get destroyed, but it also costs over three times the price.

Test System:

Coolers

Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Thermaltake Contac 29
Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (Rev.2)

Chassis: Xigmatek UtGard (review coming soon)
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 (D0)
Motherboard: AsRock X58 Extreme 6
Memory: Crucial Ballistic Tracer 6GB (3x2GB)
Storage: GSkill 60GB SSD
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 750W

Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit

At reference clocks and voltages, the AC Freezer 13 is delivering the same performance levels as the larger Freezer Extreme Rev 2 which is impressive.

At our maximum stable overclock of 4.1ghz, the Freezer 13 performed slightly better than the Freezer Xtreme Rev 2 – if only by a single degree. The fact it is smaller, lighter and is using a 92mm fan however makes this achievement all the more impressive.

We now want to measure the return to idle state. This is an often missed aspect of a coolers performance. For instance the Noctua NH D14 takes much less time to return a fully loaded overclocked processor to idle resting temperatures than a reference cooler.

When overclocked the Arctic Cooler Freezer 13 was able to return the CPU temperature to the idle state in around eight seconds. This was repeated many times to gain an average. The Xtreme Rev 2 was often around a full second faster to achieve the same results, although this would not really be that noticeable under real world conditions.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run Furmark. Ambient noise in the room is around 20dBa. We measure with a SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter (6-130dBa) from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Under load conditions the Freezer 13 is slightly louder than the Xtreme Rev 2, mainly due to the fact that the 92mm fan is working a little harder than the 120mm unit on the previous design. We aren't sure its really that noticeable to the naked ear, however our recording equipment highlighted a single dBa difference. The cooler is quiet and only really audible when under 100% load conditions.

Arctic Cooling products have been faring well on KitGuru and there is a reason for this – they are delivering very impressive results at extremely competitive prices.

The Freezer 13 has been built with the average enthusiast in mind (if there is such a thing) who wants good cooling performance without the mounting hassles normally associated with the elitest high end products. Sure, the push pin mount will never compete with a hardcore backplate system, but if you frequently rebuild your PC, or just want a quick fit solution then it won't get any easier than this.

Performance is a little better than the Freezer Xtreme Rev 2 which doesn't sound that impressive on paper, however when you factor in that it is physically more compact and is using a single 92mm fan then you can see that Arctic Cooling have released a product which is very special indeed.

While many will debate the merits of the reduced size and smaller fan, in this specific market it all boils down to the price and while the product is not yet available in retail stores, Arctic Cooling have informed us that the cooler will be on sale for $25 dollars in the US and around 20 euros in Europe. This translates to around £15 in the UK making this an extremely appealing price point indeed.

For £15 this means it will be an ideal first step up from that shoddy reference cooler in your system. You don't have to deal with a huge physical size, strain on the motherboard or fiddly backplate mounting systems. You simply plug and play and enjoy excellent cooling performance with low noise levels.

KitGuru says: This easily earns our must have award as one of the best all round cooling packages in the sub £20 price bracket.

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