Arctic Cooling’s Freezer 7 Pro has been around for 10 years. In that time it’s seen Intel’s legendary Sandy Bridge, the introduction of DDR4, and AMD igniting a core count war with Zen. Now though, as a new decade starts, Arctic have seen fit to finally replace it. The new Arctic Freezer 7 X aims to outshine its predecessor with a host of tweaks and improvements.
Meet the Arctic Freezer 7 X
One interesting change for the Freezer 7 X is the move from three 6mm heatpipes to two. On paper a downgrade, Arctic have offset this by offsetting the heatpipes. With the heatpipes staggered rather than in a straight line, they have their own area of fin to transfer heat to and get the full benefit of the airflow. The straight line seen previously, on the other hand, leaves the second and third heatpipes in a “dead zone”. This seems like a very smart way to improve the design at the same cost.
The 0.4mm thick aluminium fins have small dimples to add surface area. When manufacturing the fins Arctic probably use a stamping process, where fins are cut from a sheet of aluminium like cookies from dough. This would make it possible to add the dimples without any extra steps in the factory, another clever bit of engineering.
The new 92mm 5-blade fan has PWM control up to 2000rpm and uses a fluid dynamic bearing. Arctic prefer to use “sone” for their noise ratings, a unit that reflects how obtrusive noise is, rather than physical sound pressure. The claimed 0.3 sone should be unobtrusive, and around the level of normal background noise in a calm room.
Compatibility
Arctic list compatibility with Intel sockets 775, 115X and, interestingly, 1200 – the upcoming Comet Lake socket. On the AMD side FM1/2/2+, AM3/3+ and AM4 are officially supported. Since the brackets are the same, older AMD sockets would presumably work as well. Being only 132.5mm tall, clearance shouldn’t be an issue in all but the smallest of cases.
Availability
The Arctic Freezer 7 X is available at time of writing from amazon.co.uk for £16.99. Arctic are also planning a “CO” Continuous Operation variant, which will feature upgraded bearings, in the near future. The Freezer 7 X hasn’t made it to amazon.com yet at time of writing, but you can search to see if that has changed.
