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1 2 3 4 5 NextMarch 7, 2005 by Mike
Chin and Devon Cooke
Most of the products we review are targeted at the performance market,
which means they come with a high price tag. The products from Arctic
Cooling do not generally fit this performance-at-a-premium profile.
Arctic Cooling is the closest the silencing market has to a "budget"
supplier; its prices are generally near the bottom of the pack, and its products
aim at a compromise between price and performance rather than performance at
any cost.
The Freezer 4 is Arctic Cooling's "high-end" heatsink for Socket 478. At
US$34 it is still relatively inexpensive, but it appears to be targeted at the
performance market rather than system integrators. The challenge for Arctic
Cooling is to provide competitive cooling performance while maintaining
its reputation for low noise that established with the Super
Silent series.
Arctic Cooling
also sells the Freezer 7 for Socket 775 and the Freezer 64 for
Socket 754. Aside from the mounting system, these heatsinks are identical to
the Freezer 4.
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Specifications for Arctic Cooling Freezer 4
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Heatsink Dimensions
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92 x 72 x 120 mm
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Fan Dimensions
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77 x 77 x 42 mm
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Overall Dimensions
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92 x 114 x 120 mm
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Rated Fan Speed
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2200 RPM
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Power Consumption
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0.13 A
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Airflow
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32 CFM
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Weight
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488 g
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Noise Level
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1.0 sone
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A simple box that is no larger than it needs to be.
A specialized 80mm fan with 5 blades blows sideways across the heatsink.
The Freezer is one of an increasing number of heatsinks that make
use heatpipes to rapidly transfer heat away from the CPU. Like many of these
heatsinks, the Freezer is designed with the fan blowing sideways parallel to
the motherboard rather than the traditional top-down configuration.
The fan is a proprietary design: Rather than simply screwing
the fan directly to the heatsink, Arctic Cooling has designed a frame that screws
onto the top of the heatsink and suspends the fan in front of the fins about
half a centimeter away from the surface of the heatsink. This small gap between
the fins of the fan and the heatsink itself should help reduce air turbulence
and the noise that goes with it.
As a side note, without the usual box frame to protect the blades, the fan is much more exposed to shock damage; our sample of the Freezer
64 (with the same fan) arrived with the fan broken in shipping.
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