There seems to be a trend lately with more and more companies releasing smaller and smaller CPU coolers that are aimed at the media center or HTPC crowd. These coolers must be small as space is very limited inside of most HTPC style cases, and since it's a media system noise levels are a large factor as well in their design.
Today for review I've got the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP CPU cooler, it's very small, and virtually silent. The Freezer 7 LP is aimed at the media center or HTPC crowd with silence and compact size as it's main features, but how does it perform? Read on to see how it compares to other CPU coolers when tested on C2D and C2Q processors…
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP Review
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Low Profile Intel CPU Cooler optimized for Slim Cases
Most small chassis users find it difficult to buy a suitable cooler replacement that fits the size of their PC case. Freezer 7 LP, a cutting edge Intel CPU cooler especially designed for media center users to fulfill their needs.
Main Features:
-Dual Heatpipes Design
-Optimized Heatsink Design for Low Profile Intel Systems
-80 mm PWM Fan
-Patented Fan Holder eliminates the Humming Noise
-Pre-applied High Performance Thermal Compound
-Easy Installation via Push Pins
-Light Weight, Transport Save
-6 Years Warranty
Application:
Intel socket 775 CPUs up to 90 Watt
MSRP (excl. VAT):
17,95 € / US$ 27.95
Slim Beauty
The revolutionary heatsink design of the Freezer 7 LP reduces the size of the cooler dramatically, leaving it only 40mm slim (to the air intake level) and 263g light, almost half the weight of usual CPU coolers. With this ultra thin dimension, the Freezer 7 LP easily fits into any small chassis with limited space.
Freeze and Breeze
Apart from its lightweight and low profile design, the Freezer 7 LP also performs excellent cooling execution. Two heatpipes, 40 fins and an 80mm PWM fan dissipate heat from the CPU core efficiently and rapidly. Together with the highly thermal conductive pre-applied MX-2 thermal paste and voltage regulator cooling, the Freezer 7 LP is 20% cooler (thermal resistance) than the generic E8500 low profile cooler, giving media center users an unexpected cooling experience.
The Art of Silence
Like other ARCTIC COOLING products, low noise impellers and patented fan holder are used to minimize the noise level. Even though spinning at full load, the Freezer 7 LP generates only 0.5 Sone of noise – 71% quieter than the Intel low profile cooler.
Specs:
Dimension: 109 L x 108 W x 42 H (to air intake level) / 53 H (with fan holder) mm
Weight : 263 g
Fan: 80 mm x 1
Fan Speed: 600 ?V 2000 RPM (controlled by PWM)
Air Flow: 28 CFM / 47.6 m3/h
Maximum Cooling Capacity: 90 Watt
Additional Information:
Cooling Performance
All Pentium 4 and Core 2 CPUs have an integrated "Thermal Throttling" i.e. in case of overheating risk, the number of working cycles is reduced, thus lowering performance however preventing the CPU from overheating. Therefore to reduce the noise level, a CPU cooler can work at its limit and this way drop the noise level significantly. The Thermal Throttling gets usually activated at 85°C core temperature.
Good system ventilation is crucial for the CPU cooling. The temperature inside the PC case should never exceed 38°C. Therefore we recommend to use a controlled case fan, like the ARCTIC Fan PWM series.
Thermal Compound
We ship our coolers with our latest ARCTIC MX-2 thermal compound pre-applied. MX-2 is a high thermal conductivity and low thermal resistance compound that optimizes thermal dissipation. It is ideally suited for use in CPU and GPU cooling where thermal conductivity is a major factor.
A Better Look at Things
:
The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP comes in a small plastic box, you can easily see the cooler itself through the front, and the specs and features are listed on the back and sides of the box.
Since the Freezer 7 LP is LGA775 specific that the only hardware that comes with it so there's not much included in the box only the mounting hardware, user manual and an Arctic Cooling case badge.
The cooler itself is rather small, and since the thermal compound comes pre-applied it was rather difficult to take pictures of without disturbing the compound.
That 80mm fan and its bracket just rest on the cooler, it's not attached at all.
The Freezer 7 LP is a heatpipes style cooler with just two heatpipes, the majority of the cooler is aluminum and there's a copper base. The quality is very good, but the fins are very thin and can easily be bent if not careful when handling the cooler.
The mounting system is something that I have never seen before, it's mostly plastic with metal screws and metal inserts in the plastic mounting bracket.
The white pieces go into the larger black mounts, the white pins go into the holes on your motherboard, the thin black pins are then inserted into the white pins to force them apart and lock the mounts to your motherboard. Then of course the screws are inserted into the frame of the fan and screwed into the motherboard mounts to secure the cooler to your motherboard.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
Installation is fairly easy, this new mounting system that Arctic Cooling has come up with is interesting to use but easy to apply.
The Northbridge heatsink on my motherboard is rather large and I found that I could only install the Freezer 7 LP one way after unsuccessfully trying other orientations. If the Northbridge heatsink had been manufactured differently than it is I would not have been able to install this cooler at all on my motherboard.
Here's some close up shots of how close the Freezer 7 LP is to the Northbridge heatsink, the heatpipes of the cooler actually overlap the heatsink. If my heatsink had not been made that way there is no way the Freezer 7 LP could have been installed.
The other side of the heatpipes stick out fairly far as well and come very close to hitting the power supply also, but there is room, a tight fit on both sides.
Here it is fully installed and running:
The test systems is:
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R LGA775 Intel G33 Bear Lake mATX Motherboard
2 gigs Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 Ram
Connect3d X1800GTO video card
1 HDD
1 DVD/RW
1x 120mm exhaust fan / 1x120mm intake fan
all housed in a Thermaltake Matrix VX PC Case
Testing was done with both C2D6420 and C2Q6600 processors. Each CPU was tested for 1 week, several times per day and then averaged out. Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound was used during all testing.
Orthos Stress Prime was used to achieve load on both CPUs, with two instances being used for the Quad Core CPU to achieve 100% load. The latest version of CoreTemp was used to record temperatures and then averaged out to get the results shown in the graphs.
We test CPU coolers both connected to CPU header or PWM controlled if applicable and connected to Molex or running at full speed, so you will see both results in the charts.
Ambient room temperatures during all testing was 19C (+/- .3C).
First up for testing is using the C2D6420 connected to the CPU header:
Considering just how small the Freezer 7 LP is we can see that the performance is very good overall. The fan is virtually silent when running connected to the CPU header.
Next up is testing with C2D6420 with the fan running at full speed connected to a Molex connection:
With the fan running at full speed we can see the temperatures dropped a few more degrees, in the graph the cooler that did better are much larger than the Freezer 7 LP, so here again we can see a nice performance from the Freezer 7 LP.
Now we have testing using a quad core CPU, a Q6600 to be specific, first set of tests is the fan connected to the CPU header:
Here we see the Freezer 7 LP really can't handle the heat from a Quad Core CPU all that well, but still it is below the the high temperature threshold for the CPU.
Now we have testing with the fan connected to Molex:
Not much of a difference here with the temps really, but well below the 72C rating from Intel.
We can see the Freezer 7 LP performs much better with the C2D than the C2Q, and this is fine really, the Freezer 8 LP is designed for small cases, and with HTPC setups in mind. I'm thinking that not many people out there are going to be running quad core CPUs inside of an HTPC, in my opinion that's a waste of CPU power really, but of course there are those out there that might do that….
Summary:
The Freezer 7 LP is small, lightweight, quiet and performs very well considering its size, it would work very well in an HTPC system where size and noise levels are of the greatest concerns.
If you're building an HTPC system, or even a regular system where size is an issue then this might be a cooler you'd want to look into getting, tough if you're using a C2Q based system you might want to look elsewhere for your cooling needs…
DragonSteelMods gives the Freezer 7 LP a 4 out of 5 score.
Pros:
-Lightweight
-Quiet
-Very small
-Decent performance on C2D
-Easy installation
-Well made
Cons:
-Might not fit all motherboards
-Performance is not the greatest with Quad Core
I would like to thank Arctic Cooling for the chance to review the Freezer 7 LP and for their continued support of DSM.
review# 451