ARCTIC Freezer i30 review

The ARCTIC Freezer i30 CPU coolers are the latest products to market from masters of cooling ARCTIC, and have been designed to support wattages up to a staggering 320 Watts. So, it doesn't just have a clever name then.

Usually anything than can provide that amount of cooling support comes with an impressive price tag. But not so the ARCTIC Freezer i30, which comes at a price that pretty much suits all budgets, of around £35 in the UK or $50 in the US.

Despite the relatively low price, the cooler is very well put together, with a build quality that shames many a cooler with much higher price tags.

Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 at a glance

CPU Socket:

IntelSocket LGA 2011/1156/1155

Number of Heatpipes:

4 x 8mm Copper direct contact

Cooling Fan:

1 x 120mm (300-1,350pm)

Dimensions:

139 x 100 x 161mm, 905g

Notice the 'i' in the name. That is a pretty important thing to takes notice of, because the ARCTIC Freezer i30 comes with installation parts for Intel CPUs (LGA 2011, 1155 or 1156) only.

But fear not AMD fans, if you want to use the Freezer cooler then choose the ARCTIC Freezer A30, which is a specifically AMD (FM1, AM3+, AM3, AM2+ or AM2) cooler.

Performance

To test the coolers we used an Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard and one of the new Intel Core i7 3770K (3.5GHz) Ivy Bridge CPUs, which we overclocked to 4.5GHz for some of the tests.

To stress the CPU we ran the Small FFTs test in Prime95 for 20 minutes, using the RealTemp utility to measure the core temperatures, averaging out the temperature for all the cores.

Benchmarks

CPU standard clock (3770K @3.5GHz)
CPU Idle (Windows 7 64-bit, all power saving turned off, temperature measured after 15mins)

Degrees C: lower is better
ARCTIC Freezer i30: 22
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 26
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 26

CPU standard clock (3770K @3.5GHz)
CPU 100% (Temperature measured after 20 min. run of Prime 95 - small FFTs)

Degrees C: lower is better
ARCTIC Freezer i30: 58
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 60
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 65

Time from peak to idle

Seconds: Faster is better
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 61
ARCTIC Freezer i30: 119
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 127

CPU Overclocked (3770K @ 4.5GHz)
CPU Idle (Windows 7 64-bit, all power saving turned off, temperature measured after 15mins)

ARCTIC Freezer i30: 23
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 30
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 31

CPU Overclocked (3770K @ 4.5GHz)
CPU 100% (Temperature measured after 20 min. run of Prime 95 - small FFTs)

Degrees C: lower is better
ARCTIC Freezer i30: 77
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 98
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 98

CPU Overclocked (3770K @ 4.5GHz)
Time from peak to idle

Seconds: Faster is better
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition: 96
Arctic Cooling Freezer i30: 152
Be Quiet Dark Rock2: 160

Considering how little it costs, the performance of the Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 at stock speeds is very impressive.