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.
That push pin idea is not going to be liked by the enthusiast high end users, but for a guy moving up to his first 3rd party product it makes a lot of sense. its easy to fit and performance is really good. £15? fuck me.
What a great little product that is. I can see a lot of people picking this up for a good first move into the more serious market. Thermaltake Contact29 is a good one also.
That is an impressive cooler, cant get over the 20 euros price point. my lunch cost me more today. they seem to deliver good mainstream, but affordable products.
Great value for money, even if it has a few faults imo.
It is hard to fault this product. there are a few things I would change, such as the 92mm fan for instance, and I dont think you can mount two fans looking at the other side of the design, but for the price, what the hell.
I like this, I used the older 7 cooler for a long time and it did the job, very well too I might add.
People slag arctic cooling off for no backplates, and its the reason I buy them. I assume a lot of other people who cant be bothered with backplates also like it. im not into getting every mhz out of my processor, but I got great overclocks with the last cooler of theirs I used. this looks like a win-win.
I have been buying arctic cooling for years. I still want that accelero but can find it nowhere over here.
These are great coolers so people can bin their reference cooler without having to learn a whole bunch of mounting crap. After all, if you bought a system, didnt now much about building a PC, imagine getting home and realising you had to remove the motherboard and rebuild the computer? Its all well and fine being a kitguru – guru, but most people dont want this hassle. seriously.
Thumbs up from me. its not a high end peformance cooler, but it also doesnt cost £65 quid. you could get almost 4 of these for the price of a noctua NH D14. nevermind the coolit vantage at £100 !
I wanted to thank you for this excellent review. I bought a system from dell and it has an intel reference cooler. I have been learning a lot by reading this site, but im not confident enough yet to mount a watercooler or something high end which means I have to rebuild the pc. its working fine, but my CPU is hitting 85c when i overclock it, and I dont want that. £15 well spent I think. when is this available ?
Comparing price of this fairly low budget cooler with Noctua D14 is completely bonkers. Both products are – pretty much – at the opposing ends of the scale. Used twice AC coolers on very low budget builds, and both while delivered (when compared to stock Intel heatsinks) satisfying results were incredibly loud when at full tilt. Since then used only high end coolers and never looked back. Worth every penny/cent/[put here whatever currency you like].
36.4CFM airflow is far too little for even medium OC. Pretty much any decent 120mm fan will beat that easily delivering 50+CFM at much lower rpm/noise ratio. And almost 40dB is out of the question, unless you enjoying work in “industrial zone” environment. Honestly, if you want to do some OC and don’t want to spend fortune on cooling I understand, but look only at models with min. 120mm fan(s). There is plenty of choice there with some really good stuff for little money. I’m frankly amazed that 80/92mm fans didn’t died altogether. Simply not good enough for anything but low budget/office/home media builds.
Hakuren, it is like you selectively read parts of the reviews then focus on something you aren’t even actually reading right.
The reason the noctua price was mentioned was because the reviewer didn’t want to compare them, head to head. due to this fact. Also I think your comments about simply not good enough for low budget office builds is ludicrous. The testing showed otherwise. I suggest you start your own tech site and see how it goes. 40db is not loud at all by the way. If you want to spend 65 quid on a Noctua NH D14, thats great, but this review is not for those people. There is a NOctua NH D14 review here, and I think it was compared against H70 also later on.