The system we used for testing comprised of an Intel Core i7 920 CPU on an Asus P6T motherboard. For our tests we replaced the preapplied Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal paste with MX-3.
Test System
Coolers: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2), Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (Rev.2) (Review)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 (D0)
Motherboard: Asus P6T
Memory: 6GB (3x 2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 RAM
Storage: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB 7200rpm (HD103SJ)
Power Supply: Corsair HX850W
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
We noted a 6c improvement in performance over the Freezer Xtreme's little brother, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, under load. Despite this, the Freezer 7 Pro was able to achieve a 2c lower idle temperature. We managed to achieve a decent overclock of 3.8GHz within tolerable temperatures with the Xtreme which is reasonably impressive for cooler of this price.
These coolers are such good value, how would it compare to the 38 quid Thermaltake Frio you reckon? any ideas?
very good pricing as always from arctic cooling. I still cant over that extreme solution KitGuru tested for the 5870 last week. serious performance.
I would say this might be quite close in performance to the frio, slightly weaker, but close enough to warrant the 10-12 price difference 🙂
wonder why they didn’t go for the direct touch heatpipe design.
I have always bought arctic cooling products, they are so competitive priced and last a long time. this is great.
I like this design, their quality is very high for the price points they achieve. very good value product this. 28 quid now is cheap for a high end cooler.
the only problem I have with arctic cooling is their cheap packaging. our postmen here wreck everything. they need to get stronger boxes.
Hmmmmm
Push pins for a cooler branded “Xtreme”
*FAIL*
Point is well made Fisshy, only thing I will say is that many people actually like this as they dont have to mess around with backplates. its always been an arctic cooling design decision.
I have to agree with Fisshy. for an extreme cooler you just cant get the same mounting pressure as a dedicated backplate design.
What is the sound “quality” for this cooler?
I know that their fans are very quiet but not that good @ air flow not to mention static pressure…
The fan isn’t as quiet as a noctua and doesn’t seem to shift a lot of air. But it isn’t intrusive, especially if you use PWM.
Hmmm…
and I thought that arctic cooling fans were quieter than the noctua…
Its an interesting point Jordan. I know a lot of people find Noctua fans irritating – MKK for instance on the forums pointed out that the specific tone that noctua fans produce, annoy him. I find noctua fans very quiet myself but perhaps everyone has a different view on this. We will look at getting Henry a noise meter shortly for more analysis on these reviews. The arctic cooling freezer (not the extreme) I have here is reasonably quiet, their fans are normally quite good.
Indeed, fans noise is very subjective
I have only one noctua on my system – NF-P12. though very good fan I find its sound just OK… not pleasant but not too irritating too. I use it as front intake on my case.
I have 2 akasa apache and I find those bit better – air flow wise and noise wise. they are strapped on my IFX-14 (since they are PWM).
I also have scythe slip stream (exhaust) and 2 scythe s-flex (top exhaust) so all in all, system is cooling nice and it is not that noisy (for 8 fans in total – didn’t mentioned bottom intake slip stream and side panel scythe kaze mary).
I had my own fan research some time ago and those fans were the result out of it… 😀
Conning the advertisers with the impression of more hits than you really get?
You force me to look at 5 small pages rather than let me see one page.