The Freezer 33 is a Threadripper CPU cooler from Arctic that can be picked up for just
$40 USD, but how well does it perform?
Let’s test it out with a 16 core 1950X while overclocked to 4GHz and find out!
After finding out about this cooler I reached out to Arctic to see if they’d be able to
send one over for review, and they kindly agreed.
Inside the box we’ve got the heatsink, fan, thermal paste, and mounting pieces.
The aluminium heatsink is painted matte black, which I think looks pretty nice compared to
the usual silver metal options, and it comes with a 120mm fan, black and red in this case,
but it’s also available in black and white.
With the fan attached, the dimensions of the cooler are 123mm in width, 89mm in depth,
and 155mm in height, so it’s not too big at all, and it weighs in at 705g all up.
Interestingly I found that the copper plate doesn’t actually cover the full Threadripper
IHS, initially I was concerned with how that would affect the cooling performance.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about, as you’ll see later in the benchmarks.
Installation is fairly straightforward, and Arctic have a good step by step video guide
on their channel with the full details, I’ll leave a link to it in the description.
Basically you screw in two mounting plates to the motherboard, then screw in the mounting
clips to the base of the heatsink.
At this point the cooler is ready to install, remove the fan and apply the thermal paste
to the bottom of the heatsink.
Arctic also sent me some of their MX-2 thermal paste which is what I used here.
I tried to run it down each copper pipe as they show in their video, and yeah I may have
used a bit too much but it doesn’t end up being a problem, so please don’t call the
thermal paste police.
After placing the cooler above the CPU, simply screw the mounting clips into the mounting
plates, and then attach the fan.
Something to be careful of is the fan clips, while taking off the fan one of mine popped
out and the metal scratched the paint on the cooler a bit.
Finally plug the cable into the CPU header on the motherboard, I liked that the cable
here was fairly long compared to other fans I’ve tested, and it also had a connector
allowing you to plug a second fan in.
Speaking of second fan, the heatsink also supports an optional fan on the back, however
I didn’t test with this as I just had the one.
It’s difficult to see here, but I was able to see a fair bit of the CPU which wasn’t
covered by the heatsink, here’s what it looked like after removal, so we can see the
areas the paste actually came into contact with.
All testing was done with an ambient room temperature of 23 degrees celsius, and I’m
using an AMD 1950X CPU, so the 16 core and hottest variant of Threadripper.
It’s also running in my Thermaltake View 71 case, which as you can see is fairly breathable
with these large openings between the case and glass panels.
I’ve tested both stock speeds, and with all cores overclocked to 4GHz at idle, and
under full load using the Aida64 stability test.
With that in mind let’s take a look at the temperatures.
Just as a point of reference, I’ve also re-tetsted my Noctua U14S using the same Arctic
thermal paste, the largest and most expensive Threadripper cooler that Noctua currently
offer, and included the results here too as it’s what I was previously using.
This isn’t meant to be a detailed comparison between the two, but it does show how well
the Arctic cooler is performing, I was seriously impressed.
Especially when you consider that the Arctic cooler is $40 USD while the Noctua cooler
is $80 USD, so double the price.
The Arctic cooler doesn’t just cool well, I personally think the matte black look of
the heatsink looks better too, at least in my primarily black build and I’m probably
going to swap to using the Arctic cooler instead given how close the temperatures were.
Just out of interest I also used my thermal camera on the heatsink both at idle and under
full load at stock speeds, I didn’t do the same while overclocked.
We can see the heatpipes getting warmer as designed, and the exposed part of the CPU
which is warmer, pretty cool.
The temperatures aren’t the only important factor though, how loud does the cooler get?
In this test I’m measuring the overall system noise level, and my case has 3 additional
fans which are contributing to the overall volume.
I didn’t unplug them for testing, as I don’t think that represents a real world example,
I didn’t want the case to overheat without any exhausting air.
Additionally as mentioned the Thermaltake View 71 case is fairly open, so you’d probably
get better results with a fully closed case.
Again the results were quite close, I didn’t think it was loud and had no problems with
it at all, I was expecting it to run louder to compensate for being a smaller cooler,
but other than a little increase it was fine.
So what did you guys think of the Arctic Freezer 33 Threadripper CPU cooler?
Overall I was really impressed, it’s a great cooling option for Threadripper at a great
price, and I think it looks pretty good too, especially when you consider that my testing
was done with the 1950X with all cores overclocked, the temperatures weren’t an issue at all,
you should get even better results with the 1900X or 1920X CPUs as they produce less heat.
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like if you found
the information useful.
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