Arctic Freezer 13 Pro Review

1. Introduction2. Arctic Freezer 13 Pro3. A closer look4. Installation5. Testing methodology and Performance6. Final Thoughts7. View All Pages

Since opening in May 2010 we have looked at a variety of items from Arctic and we have found that their range of products often deliver high levels of performance for very little cost. In September 2010, Henry reviewed their MX-4 Thermal paste and it was the first product to receive a perfect KitGuru 10/10 rating.

Today in the KitGuru lab we have the Freezer 13 Pro which is the latest CPU cooler offered by Arctic. The Freezer 13 Pro features their Cross-Blow cooling technique and claims to have the maximum cooling capacity of 300 watts. That kind of cooling ability should be able to tame pretty much any CPU currently available. With that in mind we have high hopes that this solution on test today will really deliver the goods.

Product	Arctic Freezer 13 Pro
Compatibility	Intel Socket 1366, 1156, 775 AMD Socket AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939, 754
Heatpipes	8mm x 4
Cooling Capacity	300 watts
Weight	902 grams
Fans	120mm and 50mm
Rated Fan Speeds	120mm / 300-1350 RPM 50mm / 700-2700 RPM
Airflow	49.7 CFM / 96.8 m³/h
Limited Warranty	6 years

The Freezer 13 Pro comes packaged in tough molded plastic which allows us to see what we are purchasing and should be sufficient to protect the cooler from any shipping damage.

The view from the front provides a good look at the 120mm white fan and the molded plastic shroud that secures it. Turning the package around we are presented with some internal performance and noise comparisons conducted by the folks from Arctic, as well as the relevant product specifications.

Once we have removed the contents from the retail packaging we get a closer look at the different mounting solutions for both Intel and AMD platforms. Arctic offers a wide range of compatibility with Intel Socket 775, 1156, and 1366; as well as AMD socket 754, 939, AM2/AM2+ and AM3. This broad range of compatibility increases their potential consumer market which can only lead to higher sales figures.

The contents consist of a black mounting bracket that replaces the one that comes on your motherboard for Intel installations.

The 4 grey plastic clips attach to the cooler retention bracket before it is secured by 2 screws to the motherboard. The 4 black plastic push pins insert into grey clips to secure the cooler in place. For AMD setups there are just two metal brackets that fit on the lugs of the standard retention bracket, attaching to the base of the cooler with 2 screws.

The front on view provides a good look at the white 120mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan and the molded plastic shroud that secures the fan to the heatsink. The fan has 9 blades and is rated at 49.7 CFM.

With the cooler turned around we get a clear view of the 47, 0.5mm thick aluminum fins that dissipate the heat traveling through the 4 U shaped 8mm copper heatpipes. The edge of the fins are bent slightly to direct some of the airflow over other portions of our motherboard. This angle also gives us a look at the 50mm PWM controlled fan that sits directly above the base of the heatsink. This small fan adds additional airflow as the new Freezer 13 Pro uses an innovative Cross-Blow technology. This technology provides a new level of cooling power for users with high end and overclocked systems.

The base of the Freezer 13 Pro is copper and has a machine finished surface. The surface finish is not polished but appears to be completely flat. Arctic applies an even layer of their MX-4 thermal compound to efficiently transfer heat from the CPU to the copper base of the Freezer 13 Pro.

Above is a top down image of the Freezer 13 Pro. We can see each of the heatpipes extending through the top row of aluminum fins and the top edge of the plastic shroud that secures the 120mm fan to the heatsink.  The side view shows a good view of the overall structure of the Freezer 13 Pro.

We are using an AMD setup for today's testing.  To simplify the installation of the heatsink the first step is to remove the fan from the front.  This allows us unimpeded access to the mounting hardware that in turn screws on to the 2 metal retention brackets that secure the Freezer 13 Pro in place.

The plastic that houses the 120mm fan is quite sturdy and as always, we have high expectations for the quality of the fan used.  Any fan used on previous Arctic CPU coolers covered by KitGuru were very quiet, even at their maximum rated RPM.

The images above are the step by step guides for AMD and Intel installations. Under normal situations we would remove all the components from the chassis to mount a heatsink of this size, however this time we decided to just remove the graphics cards and try a fitting in the chassis.

What we did was just start the threads of the screws through the mounting hardware into the retention brackets so that they would stay attached. Then very carefully we placed the Freezer 13 Pro in position above the processor making sure the retention brackets stayed in place as we tightened down the 2 screws. We thought it would be interesting to cover this method.

Also worth mentioning is our particular orientation chosen for our install. The Raven 2 chassis that I used for a long time was designed so that everything exhausted out the top which makes total sense … after all heat rises. The NXZT Phantom I am using for this build is currently configured with 2 x 120mm fans exhausting out the top.  This is why we chose the direction in which we mounted the Freezer 13 Pro; however this may not be ideal if different hardware were used.

These images show the mounting bracket in place and the Freezer 13 Pro fully secured and operational. This installation method only takes a couple minutes and was stress free when compared to some other cooler installs we have experienced in the past.  The only area of slight concern would be the pressure generated on the stock retention bracket.

Today we are going to test the Arctic Freezer 13 Pro with a very inexpensive yet versatile AMD PII X2 555 Black Edition CPU. This particular CPU ships at 3.2ghz but can easily hit 4.0ghz and above. Another reason we are using this particular CPU is the fact that it can be unlocked to a fully functional Phenom II X4 B55 Black Edition. We are running this CPU @ 4.017 ghz 24/7 and have not seen any negative impact on performance after unlocking the 2 additional cores.  This however comes with strings attached because we lose the ability to monitor the individual cores of our unlocked processor.

We like to try and mirror ‘realistic’ conditions when ever possible, so instead of the open bench concept, we are mounting the system inside the NZXT Phantom Chassis. Room ambient temperatures were maintained at a steady 20c throughout testing.

AMD System:
Processor: Phenom II X2 555BE / unlocked Phenom II X4 B55BE
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H v2
Thermal Paste: Arctic MX-4
Power Supply: Corsair HX850W
Chassis: NZXT Phantom
Memory: GSkill RipJaws DDR3 1600mhz 4GB Cas 6-8-6-24- 1T
Graphics Card: PNY Nvidia GTX570

When overclocking any CPU validation that our system is 100% stable remains very important here at KitGuru. There are several different apps out there that will load a processor to the max while running through a series of complicated calculations to determine system stability.  For today's testing we are going to use the latest version of IntelBurn Test.

IntelBurn Test 2.5 is a program that simplifies the usage of Intel(R) Linpack. Linpack by Intel(R) is an extremely stressful program that will put even the most powerful X86/X64 CPU in the world at its knees. Load temp under Linpack will be up to 22*C higher than the competing software Prime95. This program will make usage of Linpack easier and more practical.

Maximum Stable Overclock

System validation can be viewed here

We will run two separate sets of tests today. The first set will use the CPU fans PWM feature which we enable in the system BIOS. This will automatically control the speed of the fan based on a pre defined temperature cycle..  The second set will be done with this feature disabled in the BIOS and the fan running full speed.

Our results with the CPU fans controlled by the built in PWM feature were very good. The unlocked Phenom II X4 B55 Black Edition running at 4.22ghz never passed 54c while running IntelBurn Test which is very impressive. The fan on the Freezer 13 Pro never surpassed 1150 RPM, which is well under the maximum rated 1300 RPM's.

Setting the fans to 100% showed some additional improvement by taking another 1 or 2 degrees Celsius off both our idle and load temperatures. While this does not sound like much every drop in temperature is appreciated and the Freezer 13 Pro did a fantastic job cooling our highly overclocked Phenom II X4 B55 Black Edition CPU.

After spending a few days testing the Freezer 13 Pro we were impressed by Arctic's latest offering.  The AMD heatsink did a decent job but the Freezer 13 Pro is easily superior. With the Freezer 13 Pro installed we transformed our sub $100 AMD 3.2 GHz dual core processor into a stable and rather impressive QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition B55, with 128K L1 Cache, 512K L2 Cache, 6MB L3 Cache @ 4.22 GHz.

Installing this heatsink was extremely easy, yet for precautionary reasons we would recommend removing the motherboard from the chassis prior to installing the Freezer 13 Pro. Intel installations require a few more steps but should also be very simple indeed. We do have some concern regarding the weight (902g) being supported by the default retention bracket when configured for  AMD processors. So far we have not seen any negative effects but only time will tell.

The fans on the Freezer 13 Pro are extremely quiet and when using the PWM to control fan speeds the noise level was never an issue.  Even with the fans set to 100% the noise was never intrusive.

One of the most impressive things we noticed was how well heat was dissipated once load was removed from our processor. Within a second or two 12-15 degrees Celsius was gone and before long our processor would be back to idle temperatures. The Freezer 13 Pro @ 100% kept our overclocked CPU temperature at 52c. This is with all four cores unlocked and a full 1 GHz increase over the stock speed. In comparison the AMD heatsink hit the same 52c with our Dual Core  Phenom II X2 555BE running at stock speeds.

It's hard to find fault with the Arctic Freezer 13 Pro. The construction of the unit is top notch and the results speak for themselves.  We feel that the suggested retail price of $59.99 is warranted for an item of this quality and would highly recommend it if you are looking for a new, performance cooling solution.

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