Introduction 

Lately there have been a flurry of CPU coolers released on the market, from water/liquid based coolers to traditional air coolers. But what's really interesting is that the cost of CPU coolers have also risen in recent times. Take for example, the award winning Noctua CPU coolers ... the Noctua's impressive NH-D14 can cost as much as USD $90.00. But it does offer excellent cooling performance. For other high performance CPU coolers, they average between USD $50-70.00. So with this, we can see that the demands of the user have increased. Some users want uncompromised cooling performance no matter what the cost, some want silence, while others want coolers that can handle the occasional overclocking. These demands ultimately mean one thing .... increased cost. The design and the extra raw materials need to create a better heatsink, along with the special silent fans ...all add to the total cost.

However having said that, not all CPU coolers have to be that expensive to achieve similar cooling performance. More often than not, lower temperatures can help to give you better stability and longevity for your processor. This doctrine has given everyone the idea that the lower CPU temperature the better, but did you know that modern Intel desktop processors can actually handle temperatures of upto 90 degrees Celsius with no problems at all.

In today's ever changing PC industry, if a CPU cooler that can offer operating temperatures between 35-55 degrees Celsius, then that's more than acceptable as far as I'm concerned. Of course, the lower the better, however I regard this as a bonus ... not forgetting that you also have to consider the cost as well.

Arctic Cooling are already pretty well known for their CPU coolers, but now it seems that they're expanding their product catalogue to include headsets, mice, keyboards and other accessories. For those who are not familiar with Arctic Cooling or their products, here's a quick blurb taken from their website ...

In this review, we'll be taking a look at the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler. This cooler is designed for both AMD (754, 939, AM2+, AM3) and Intel processors (LGA 775, 1156, 1366), and offers unmatched cooling performance upto 200 Watts. It features a solid Copper base with 4 Copper heatpipes and a large array of Aluminum fins, that's cooled by a ultra quiet 92mm PWM fan. The fan spin between 600-2,000 rpm giving a maximum air-flow of 36.4CFM. 

The actual cooler isn't much to look at ... it just looks like a standard air cooler. It is however, a lot smaller than previous high performance CPU coolers we've tested, such as the Noctua NH-D14 and the Thermaltake Frio. The included 92mm fan is proprietry to Arctic Cooling, meaning that you can't just add or replace it with a standard 92mm fan, which is a shame really. Because more often than not, it is the fan that usually needs replacing after 18-24 months.

I don't expect it to be anywhere near as good as the Noctua NH-D14, as this is monster cooler that's in a league of its own. However, I'm expecting to get some decent temperatures that I consider acceptable. What will be interesting to see, is whether the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 can handle our overclocked CPU @ 4.0Ghz.

We'll be testing the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler on our test rig which consist of an Intel Core i5 - 650 @ 3.2Ghz, Gigabyte H55N USB3 motherboard, Geforce GTX 460 OC, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer and a Thermaltake ToughPower 875W power supply. It's slightly different from our usual system we've been using to test other CPU coolers.

Right, let's see what what this CPU cooler can do for us. In our next page we'll take a closer look at the specifications and features of the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler.

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