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This is a quick review of the ARCTIC Freezer i32, it won’t have all the performance figures you see on some reviews as it was an impulse buy by myself but I thought it was decent enough to review quickly.

I have recently had issues with my server, and also been fed up with the noise from the default Intel fan. Even though it is located in another room, whenever I walk past it, the noise bugs me. So I decided to rebuild and use the cheapest decent fan I could get off Amazon. This led me to the ARCTIC Freezer i32.

Priced at just £24 with an included 120mm PWM fan, this is a bargain, admittedly the universally praised Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is only £5 and what I actually use in my main rig after ditching my old AIO.

The Freezer i32 is a similar design concept as the Cooler Master, it is a basic stand up cooler with metals fins. The product specification from Amazon states:

GERMAN ENGINEERED: The Freezer i32 is a CPU cooler with a 120mm fan. It is more than 30% cooler than Hyper 212X at a low noise level of 0.3 sone. The perfect and affordable solution for CPU cooling.

SEMI PASSIVE COOLING: A F12 PWM fan that starts up at a higher load (40% PWM) because of its installed fan controller. The CPU can be cooled completely passively during typical Windows operation.

IMPROVED HEAT DISSIPATION: Off-Centered heat pipes dispense the heat better and the layout of 49 alu-fins creates micro vortices that boots the airflow and circulate it around the heat pipes.

ENHANCED BEARING AND OPTIMAL COMPATIBILITY: Fluid Dynamic Bearing ensures less heat development and less bearing noise for longer usage. Compatible with current Intel sockets 2011,1155,1150,1156,1151

EASY INSTALLATION & TRANSPORT SAFE: The screw-mount-system on a back-plate and a significantly lower weight makes it absolutely transport safe and ensures a hassle-free installation within seconds.

The stand out part of this cooler was just how simple it is to install. I think it is the easiest cooler I have fitted in a few years. You just need to screw the mounts to the cooler, then just screw them down into the supplied back plate through the motherboard holes.

The instructions are quite poor though, so it is just as well it is easy to install. The only things to be aware of is the 2 different sized screws and the 2-hole positions for the screws. A socket 115x board uses the longer screws with the inner holes. That’s it.

Fitting the fan was extremely straight forward, and the included fan has a fan extension header so you can run 2 fans in push/pull without using 2 fan headers. Arctic also include a 2nd fan mount for this too.

I also used the supplied thermal paste, I wouldn’t normal for a PC build, but this isn’t being overclocked and I am trying to keep costs as low as possible. It is easy to apply and just enough (possibly a bit too much) to cover the CPU nicely.

Performance is good, initial temperatures as the PC boots up are actually higher than the stock cooler, but I assume that’s because the stock was running at high speeds all the time. Temperatures settle down to around 30-degrees across cores, in a room at around 22-degrees. So 8 degrees above ambient. Under load, they go up to around 50 degrees.

Noise levels were slightly disappointing, it is not silent like my Hyper 212 using Noctua fans but it is significantly less than stock, and the sound profile itself is much more pleasant. Less of a jet engine more of a gentle hum. You should be able to improve this further using PWM profiles, but it works fine as is based on my needs.

Overall, if you are doing a cheap build then this looks like a great choice, you get a brand named product with good cooling at stock speeds. I am sure it would handle some basic overclocking well too.

 

 

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