Arctic CPU coller

Arctic Cooling is one of the more well known manufacturers in the PC hardware industry, especially when it comes to smart cooling solutions. The company also manufactures power supplies and computer cases. The Swiss mark may be most known for the VGA coolers; "Accelero Xtreme" and "Accelero Twin Turbo" which are available for more or less all the medium to high end graphics cards on the market.
Today I will take a closer look at a CPU cooler from Arctic Cooling which has been given an overhaul and has been released under a secondary revision, the "Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2". This cooler excels in two ways; first: it's really cheap and second: it's compatible with a real long list of platforms including Intel's and AMD's newest sockets.
  

Here are the specifications of the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
Compatibility - INTEL Socket 1366, 1156, 775
AMD Socket AM3, AM2+, AM2 and 939
Construction - 3 Heatpipes double and 42 aluminum laminate
Dimensions - 104 xs 58 xs 126,5 mm
Fan size - 92 mm
Fan speed - 900-2500 RPM (it has PWM)
Air flow - 45 CFM/77 ms ³ /h
Max. Capacity - 130 W
Type of bearings - Dynamic Fluid
Weight - 520 g
Guarantee - 6 years

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The "Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2" comes in a 100% see through plastic box which lets you see all the details of the cooler. The included accessories are: a printed manual and two different setups of brackets and screws for installation either AMD or Intel systems No separate tube with thermal grease is included, instead it has been pre applied to the copper base of the cooler. The thermal grease used is the Arctic Cooling MX-2.

IN DETAIL: 7 ARCTIC COOLING FREEZER PRO REV.2
The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 is a tower type cooler of relatively small dimensions. It's one of the few CPU coolers compatible with the new 1366 and 1156 sockets from Intel. The cooler is made of 42 aluminum plates and the base is made of pure copper as are the three heatpipes.
In the following images you can see how the three heatpipes goes from the base to the top of the cooler.
The 92mm fan is pre fastened by Arctic Cooling but it is easy to remove for those of us interested in doing so.
The rotating speed of the fan is from 900 to 2500 rpm. It has a 4 pin PWM connector which is great because it allows us to control the rotation speed by software or alternatively the speed can be automatically controlled by the system, adapting the speed to the overall needs of the system.
The base is made of copper and it comes with a pre applied layer of the Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal grease. As you can see from the images below I have removed it to check out the finish of the base plate. Although the base hasn't got the mirror effect the polish is still quite good, far better than that of its closest competitors.

INSTALLATION AND TESTS OF 7 ARCTIC COOLING FREEZER PRO REV.2
I did this test on an Intel system. The anchorage system could not be simpler but I am more a fan of using a back plate together with classic screws because I feel it gives me a better feel for how tight the cooler is fastened.
In order to put some pressure on the cooler I overclocked the E6400 CPU to 3.0GHz (375Mhz x8) and to 2.66Ghz (333Mhz x8), increasing its voltage up to 1.4 V. Here are the components in the test setup:
Test equipment
Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, 2.13 Ghz
Cooler - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2
Motherboard - DFI Lanparty JR P45 T2RS
Graphics card - nVIDIA GeForce 8800 320 GTS Mb
Hard disk - Seagate Barracuda 7200,12 500 GB
Memory - Kingston 800 HyperX DDR2 2×1GB (4-4-4-12)
Power supply - Tacens Exchange of shots II 600
I used the software OCCT 3.0.1 to cram out the max of the system during 20 minutes. I did measurements of the temperature both before and at the end of this stress test. The room temperature was around 15 ËsC and the fan was PWN regulated during the test, i.e. the rotation speed of the fan was controlled by the system and adapted by the system load.
Here are the results of the test:
As you can see the from the graphs, the performance of the cooler is quite good. I don't expect you will find a cooler with a better performance/price ratio on the market.
I wouldn't recommend using this cooler for extreme overclocking but it does handle moderate overclocking excellent.
I was impressed by the low noise generated by the fan even at higher rotations speeds.

CONCLUSIONS
Normally you expect that if a product has a higher price, than either the performance or the quality is higher. Arctic Cooling is trying to tell us otherwise with the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Rev.2 turns out to be a great cooler, with spectacular finishing and a performance superior to many of its competitors.
Anyone looking to replace the Intel stock cooler with something else will do well to check out this cooler. It not only offers a great performance but what is really remarkable about it is the price level at around $30 (18EUR).