![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , March 11, 2010
- Author:
- Marc Adams
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Budget Cooler Roundup
Lots of CPU cooling to do for LGA 1366 or LGA 1156? Not a lot of money? We take a look at three sub-$40 CPU air coolers and see what we get. If you are looking for a speedy build on a budget, maybe one of our somewhat under-the-radar coolers will help you out.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
Arctic Cooling is well known throughout the industry as they consistently bring solid products to market. Today we are looking at one of their original design in the Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2. It uses an open fan design with three heat pipes and aluminum fins to cool down your CPU. It even comes with its thermal paste pre-applied for your convenience.
Package & Specs
Right off the bat we see a potential problem. The molded plastic shell casing used for packaging leaves a lot of opportunity for bad things to occur during transit. I’m sure this helps to cut down the cost of the cooler but what is a broken cooler worth to you? Make sure you check the unit as good as possible before opening it.
Dimensions: (L)104mm x (W)58mm x (H)126.5mm
Weight: 520g (w/ Fan)
Material: Copper heat pipes & base with aluminum cooling fins
Heat Pipes: 3 - full length, 6mm heat pipes
Compatibility:
- LGA 1366
- LGA 1156
- LGA 775
Intel
- AM2
- AM2+
- AM3
- 939
AMD
Fan:
- Size: 92mm
- Speed: 900~2500 RPM
- Noise Level: No DATA
- Max Air Flow: 45 CFM
Flatness & Contents
As mentioned before the cooler comes with its thermal paste applied at the factory. We remove the paste for our testing purposes.
The Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 comes with a surprisingly small amount of accessories.
Photos
Installation & Contact
Installing the cooler doesn’t require the removal of the motherboard if you are able to remove your previous cooler without taking out the board.
At first I was curious at the odd push pins employed by the Freezer 7 Pro cooler. After testing I noticed that the contact was so strong it was actually difficult to remove the heat sink from the CPU. Once installed the fan bracket encroaches on the first DIMM slot. If you use Ram with heat spreaders beware, though standard height RAM won’t have this problem.
Contact with the CPU was excellent and created an almost vacuum seal effect. The base covers the entire CPU just barely as seen from the last image.