Review: Arctic Cooling Freezer11 Low Profile CPU Cooler

Posted by Will Smith

Sunday, 20 March 2011 23:03

Article Index
Review: Arctic Cooling Freezer11 Low Profile CPU Cooler
Specifications and Features
Photo Gallery and Closer Look
Installation and Test Procedure
BIOS and Windows Temps
Idle Temps
Load Temps
Overclocked Temps
Verdict and Conclusion

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Introduction

Recently in the past few months, we've seen an increase in the amount of low-profile CPU coolers available on the market. This actually tells us two things ... firstly, users are now more aware of today's nettops, mini-PCs, media center PCs and HTPC. Many are using these devices as an alternative to the traditional PC, which are usually in a form of a bulky tower or desktop. Enclosures and chassis for these media PCs and HTPC tend to be small, compact and low-profile. Secondly, today's processors are more power efficient than ever before, producing less heat which means you don't need to use a massive CPU cooler to efectivel cool your processor.

To cater for the growing number of mini-PCs, media center PCs and HTPCs, manufacturers have turn their attention in ramping up production of their slim cases, mini-ATX and micro-ATX chassis. However, there's a problem. Large CPU coolers will not be able to fit in these chassis. So what's the solution? Yes, you've guess it ... the answer is to use low-profile CPU coolers, and this is where Arctic Cooling and numerous others have identified a niche, but growing market.

Arctic Cooling, as the company name suggests, specialises in cooling products. They have a range of CPU coolers, one of which we already reviewed - the Freezer 13, which we thought was a pretty good CPU cooler offering decent cooling performance. They produce a variety of accessories including headsets, headphones, USB devices, notebooks coolers, as well as GPU coolers for graphic cards. For those who are not familiar with Arctic Cooling or their products, here's a little blurb taken from their website ...

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"ARCTIC COOLING is a privately owned company founded in 2001 with headquarters in Switzerland, offices in Hong Kong and the USA and production facilities in Asia. The ARCTIC COOLING team consists of international highly educated people with business, technical and communicational skills. The attitude to work is based on Swiss principles of innovative spirit and high standards of workmanship for which it is recognized internationally. This striving for excellence is integrated in all processes as a matter of course. ARCTIC COOLING´s core competencies are multifarious including systematic noise reduction,copper and aluminum heatsink development, customization of thermal solutions, as well as designing quiet fans. More recently quiet and cool PC Cases and Power Supplies have been developed."

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Today, we'll be taking a look at the Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 Low-Profile CPU cooler. It's designed for Intel processors only (sorry there's no mention of support for any AMD processors). Compatible sockets include LGA 775, 1155 and 1156, but no LGA 1366 support. The heastsink features two copper heatpipes with a thickness of 6mm, a solid copper base and a fairly large array of Aluminium fins. The CPU cooler is pretty small and compact, measuring just 115 L x 106 W x 53 H mm ... it's definitely one of the lowest profile CPU coolers we've come across.

The whole heastink is cooled by a single ultra-quiet 92mm fan (PWM) spinning between 900-2,00rpm, giving a maximum air-flow of 27 CFM. According to Arctic Cooling, the Freezer 11 LP can offer cooling capacity of upto 90W. It's not exactly huge, but then again it's not meant for overclocking or high-end CPUs for that matter. Still, it should effectively cool a whole range of desktop processors. For a complete list of compatible CPUs ... go here.

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It will be interesting to see how well the Freezer 11 LP will perform against other coolers we've tested ... in particular the Evercool HPKC, which is also a low profile CPU cooler. My feeling is that it might struggle against the bigger CPU coolers, that's probably because of its maximum cooling capacity of only 90W. Having said that, the Freezer 11 LP should provide adequate cooling for our Intel Core i5 - 650, which has a default clock speed of 3.2Ghz.

We'll be testing the Freezer 11 LP low-profile CPU cooler on our test rig which consist of an Intel Core i5 - 650 @ 3.2Ghz, Gigabyte P55-USB3 motherboard, Geforce GTX 560Ti, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 and a Adata HM-650W power supply. It's the same system we've been using to test other CPU coolers.

OK, let's take a closer look at the specifications and features of the Freezer 11 LP low-profile CPU cooler, on our next page ...