Rage3D Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Review Rage3D Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 ReviewArctic Cooling gained widespread respect for their classic VGA Silencer videocard cooler. The cooler helped Arctic Cooling earn a name for themselves as a manufacturer of high performance parts that operated at the threshold of pure silence. With the goal of enforcing that reputation, they've recently released updates to the Silencer line, and have a brand new line of silent cases, and CPU coolers.
In this review I'll take a quick look at one of the new CPU coolers, the P4 Socket 775 part of the Freezer line known as the Freezer 7.
Rated to cool a P4 CPU up to 4.4GHz, the Freezer 7 is physically a very large cooler but surprisingly light-weight. The relatively small base is made of two pieces of copper between which are sandwiched a twin set of heat pipes. The heat pipes can draw up to 200w of heat energy from the CPU and move it to the large array of 40 metal cooling fins which, combined, have a surface area of 5,000 square centimeters.
The 80mm fan is held in place by a patented assembly which Arctic Cooling claims practically eliminates the buzzing noise most 80mm fans typically make. Essentially they've reduced the number of fan supports to the bare minimum in order to reduce any noise created by turbulence as air is forced through the fan. The design does not have any significant protection to prevent stray wires or anything like that from getting tangled in the fan, so extra caution is required there.
I think the cooler base could have used some extra attention as well. It's not as polished and shiny as some other bases I've seen, and there were some minor scratches on it as well. I don't think it would affect performance all that much, but it would certainly help the appeal of the cooler to the average enthusiast who pays attention to those kinds of details.
The cooler itself is held in place on the motherboard by an assembly of 4 push pins identical to those found on standard Intel Socket 775 retail CPU box coolers. To install the cooler you need to push pretty hard on the pins to get them to hold securely which can be pretty hard on the nerves if you don't have the proper motherboard supports on your case to support the new Intel SocketT motherboards.
Specifications:
As I mentioned already, at the heart of the Freezer 7 is a twin set of heat pipes whose purpose it is to extract the heat generated by the CPU and whisk it away to the cooling fins.
A heat pipe is essentially a passive heat transfer device with an extremely high effective thermal conductivity. The two-phase heat transfer mechanism results in heat transfer capabilities from one hundred to several thousand times that of an equivalent piece of copper.
A heat pipe in its simplest configuration is a closed, evacuated cylindrical vessel with the internal walls lined with a capillary structure or wick that is saturated with a working fluid. Since the heat pipe is evacuated and then charged with the working fluid prior to being sealed, the internal pressure is set by the vapor pressure of the fluid. This low pressure environment allows the fluid to be vaporized at a much lower temperature than if it were under normal pressure, thus the heat generated by even relatively cool running CPUs is enough to vaporize the fluid (in fact, fluid in a complete vacuum can vaporize at room temperature). Once the fluid is vaporized, it creates a pressure gradient in the pipe which forces the vapor to flow along the pipe to the cooling end of the cooler. The vapor then condenses back to a fluid and gives up its latent heat to the cooling fins. The fluid then travels in the reverse direction back through the heat pipe via capillary action through the wick. Once the liquid reaches the evaporator end it is re-vaporized by the heat of the CPU and the process repeats.
The illustration below should allow for an easier understanding of this process:
For the tests I setup a system as a typical computer enthusiast would with a relatively fast CPU, good quality memory, dual hard-drives, optical drives, a good quality case, a decent videocard, and a good quality PSU.
Test SpecificationsThe Stacker case isn't a very typical case, so to give a more realistic representation of a more common case I disabled most of the fans that come with it, save the 120mm rear fan.
For the acoustic performance test I disconnected all fans from the case. I also disconnected the north-bridge cooling fan and installed a fan-less Radeon X300SE. Besides the CPU cooling fan, the only other fan still spinning was the single 120mm low-speed fan in the Antec NeoPower PSU.
To give a better representation of a typical gamers case for the cooling performance test, I setup the case with the rear 120mm fan installed and replaced the Radeon X300SE with a Radeon X700 Pro. I also reconnected the northbridge fan.
Cooling Performance
Arctic Cooling recommends that you use their MX-1 thermal compound which is included with the Freezer 7. They mention that the thermal compound will reach maximum efficiency after about 200 hours and that it should be applied in a thin film over the processor (good luck with that, it's virtually impossible to spread into a thin film). After 200 hours the thermal compound should be hardened and offer the best cooling performance. To test the effiency of the MX-1 thermal compound, I put it up against some Arctic Silver 5. The results, along with the performance comparison to a stock Intel P4 retail box CPU cooler, are in the chart below:
Acoustic Performance
When I read Arctic Cooling's comments on the acoustic performance of the cooler I didn't think much of it. The stock P4 fan is pretty quiet itself after all, and has a fan mount assembly very similar to the Freezer 7s. Typical PR marketing speak, I thought.
However, after installing the cooler, I was surprised to immediately find it noticeably quieter than when I had the stock P4 heat-sink installed. Not only that, but as the fan spun up to around 1500 rpm under 100% CPU load, it stayed quiet, quieter even than the stock P4 fan spinning at its lowest speed. I'm impressed by the acoustic performance of the Freezer 7, to say the least.
The only complaints I have about the Freezer 7 is that it has a fairly big profile and may cause some installation problems for some people. On my test system there was plenty of room however. I would have liked to have seen a better finish to the base as well, but that I don't think is a big deal at all.
Finally I was really impressed with how quiet the cooler is. Even with almost all the other fans in my system disabled and the side panel removed the Freezer 7 was a barely audible, even when running at 1500 RPM it's nothing more than a whisper. In all honesty I think it's the quietest CPU cooler I've ever used on any platform.
Cooling performance is decent too. I don't think it'll replace your liquid cooling setup, but it's significantly better than the stock P4 box cooler I tested it against.
Arctic Cooling has impressed me again. If you're looking for a quiet, affordable, and good performing Socket 775 cooler, the Freezer 7 should be on top of your list.
