ARCTIC Freezer 36 A-RGB Black CPU Air Cooler Review

Table of Contents

ARCTIC has released a new cooler in the Freezer series lien of air cooling category. It is Freezer 36 that is available in multiple configurations. We have got our hands on the Freezer 36 A-RGB Black.

This is a single tower cooler with black coated assembly featuring 4x heat pipes. This cooler comes with two P12 PWM PST A-RGB fans. This cooler is compatible with Intel LGA1700 and AMD AM4/AM5 sockets only. This is in line with the Liquid Freezer III series of liquid coolers.

The cooler has an MSRP of €50.99. At this time it is heavily discounted to €24.95. You can find it on Amazon UK for £22.32 at the time of this review.

Specifications

Packing and Unboxing

The cooler is shipped inside a cardboard box.

The following are provided with the cooler:

1x Cooler
1x Intel LGA1700 Contact Frame
1x Allen Key
4x Screws for Contact Frame
2x AMD Brackets
4x AMD Spacers
4x AMD Screws
1x Tube of MX6 thermal paste
1x ARCTIC Sticker

Closer Look

It is time to take a look at the cooler.

The cooler has a dimension of 104x126x159mm (LxWxH) where 159mm is the overall height of the cooler. The weight of the cooler is 917gm with the fans. The cooler has a black color finish.

The top has an aluminum plate that is screwed to the heatsink. It has ARCTIC branding in the center. The heat pipes are terminating under this plate. This plate gives a clean and neutral look to the cooler.

The left and right sides are identical in layout. The fans have more interleaving gap that would be helpful in the airflow through the heatsink. There is no groove or an inset to catch the fan clips. This cooler does not use fan clips design. I will come to that shortly.

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Front View

Looking at the front side of the heatsink, we can see triangular hive design that helps in generating more airflow and reducing the noise from air turbulence. The cooler has 59 aluminum fins each having 0.4mm thickness.

The rear side of the heatsink has a different layout. The outer areas have a straight line pattern with triangular hives on both sides. There is an inside curvature on the fins in the center.

The ARCTIC Freezer 36 A-RGB Black packs 4 black coated copper heat pipes each having a 6mm thickness. The count of heat pipes is same as on the Freezer 35 series.

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Pipes layout

The above picture shows the placement of heatpipes inside the heatsink. The complete assembly is soldered.

The ARCTIC Freezer 36 A-RGB Black uses a continuous direct contact technology. The heat pipes make a direct contact with the heat source. The base area roughly measure 30x42mm.

The mounting is convenient on this cooler. There are pre-installed fan clips that have sockets. The push pins on the fans are simply inserted into these sockets and fans are mounted easily. I appreciate this design from ARCTIC but there is a certain risk of damaging the socket due to pressure. I hope ARCTIC would address this in the next iteration. Don’t worry, you have 6 years warranty on this cooler.

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Fan Mount Clip

The fan mount clips are attached using screws. This is a wise move as once can easily swap the damaged clips with the new ones if required. There is no more fan clip requirement and fan installation issues what so ever on this cooler.

ARCTIC uses two P12 PWM PST A-RGB fans with this cooler. These are rated for up to 2000 RPM and can come to a stop below 5% PWM. These fans use FDB bearings. They are rated for 0.11A at 12VDC. I am not going into details since we have done a dedicated review of these fans in past.

Take a look at the screws on the mounting corners. These are attached to the fan clips for convenient installation.

The power cable uses 4-pin PWM connector and has a 3-pin socket for daisy-chaining.

The 12x A-RGB LEDs on each fan are powered by a standard 3-pin 5V A-RGB connector.

Installation

We are not covering the installation part any longer. Please refer to the illustrative online manual on ARCTIC website. I have tested the cooler on the AMD AM5 platform. Installation is simple and convenient.

Clearance

The cooler does not overhand the DIMM slots.

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Clearance PCIe

There is no clearance issue for the PCIe slot.

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Clearance Motherboard

The cooler leaves ample room for the motherboard top and rear area.

A-RGB Lighting

The Freezer 36 A-RGB Black is compatible with the common A-RGB standards of leading motherboard manufacturers. The A-RGB LEDs were responding well to the GIGABYTE RGB Fusion 2.0 app.

Testing

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Test Bench

I have used below-mentioned configuration: –

AMD Ryzen 7950X
GIGABYTE X670E AORUS MASTER
Kingston Renegade Fury 32GB 6400MHz CL32 DDR5 kit
ASRock Phantom Gaming RX 7600 Graphics Card for Display
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB NVME SSD
Be quiet! Straight Power 11 1000W Platinum PSU
Open-Air Test Bench

Here is the settings table for testing:

Clock (MHz)	Auto
Voltage (V)	Auto
PBO	Advanced
PPT	165000 and 200000mW
TDC	480000
EDC	640000
Boost Clock Override	Auto
Platform Thermal Throttle Limit	Auto
Thermal Paste	Noctua NT-H1
Thermal Paste Application	Dots Method
Test Run Time	30 minutes
Idling Time	10 minutes
All Fans Speed	100% PWM Duty Cycle
Stress Software	CINEBENCH R23.2
Monitoring Software	HWINFO64

The testing is done on an open air bench system. Once inside the chassis, the temperatures are expected to rise and would largely depend upon the optimal airflow inside the chassis.

Result

ARCTIC Freezer 36 A RGB Black Thermal Performance

Our main test is testing AMD Ryzen 9 7950X with 205W package power. This is a daunting task and this cooler was not up to the task using this PBO configuration as it reaches 95ᵒC. However, the package power of 170W results in an 85ᵒC which is a good result from this budget cooler.

On top of this performance, this cooler runs silent despite using two fans. ARCTIC means business for sure.

Conclusion

Freezer 34 Duo has been my favorite cooler and it is no surprise that this cooler gives a tough time to the king of the ring; Noctua NH-D15. Then ARCTIC released the Freezer 35 which was just an ok cooler. This time ARCTIC has come out with what I can best describe as a best budget cooler in the form of Freezer 36. This cooler is available in multiple configurations and I have tested A-RGB Black edition.

The cooler has a dimension of 104x126x159mm (LxWxH) where 159mm is the overall height of the cooler. The weight of the cooler is 917gm with the fan. This is a single tower configuration with two 120mm fans in push/pull. The cooling solution comprises 59 aluminum fins (0.4mm thick) forming dense fin-stack and 4x copper heat pipes. The complete assembly is in black color coating and soldered.

ARCTIC has provided an aluminum plate on top which hides the terminating ends of the pipes to provide a clean look. There is no shroud design as ARCTIC has kept the design to the basic which is a wise move. Unlike the Freezer 35, this cooler uses continuous direct contact method on the copper base.

The compelling feature of the design is the fan mount. There are pre-installed fan clips with socket mounts. The screws are pre-installed on the fans’ mounting corners. These screws are inserted inside the socket for a simple and convenient fan handling. I love this idea provided the plastic socket remains durable.

ARCTIC has provided two P12 PWM PST A-RGB fans. These fans use fluid dynamic bearing and run silent. They are rated for 200 to 2000 RPM. They feature auto stop function below 5% PWM provided your motherboard supports it. These fans use 3-pin socket connector for daisy-chaining. I appreciate the standard connectors.

The installation on AMD AM5 requires 10 items and overall installation is convenient. This cooler is only compatible with Intel LGA1700 socket using a contact frame which is provided with the cooler. This is in line with the implementation of Liquid Freezer III coolers.

This cooler could not handle the 205W thermal load on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X but it easily handled the 170W load on the same CPU. We hardly saw any significant performance drop. The cooler literally runs silent despite using two fans. This is a good performance package if you are a budget user and looking for a decent cooler costing you only €24.95 with a 6-year warranty. I am not sure the reason for this price drop but if it continues it makes sense.

Pros: