Arctic Freezer 36 A-RGB – In the spirit of bold innovation

Measurement methodology

The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Key features of the cooler

Traditionally, coolers from the Freezer series are among products with an interesting price-performance ratio and the Arctic Freezer 36 aims to continue this tradition. But it also comes with a number of interesting changes, which we will discuss in detail. At first glance, you may think that this is a classic cooler with a symmetrical design, but the devil is in the details. The orientation of the cooler is an important feature, as the intake side of the heatsink is straight, but the exhaust side of the heatsink is convexly curved with a few deeper notches in the vertical axis of the cooler. The aluminum fins of the heatsink have a saw-tooth profile on the edges, which should improve acoustics while increasing the performance of the cooler.

   

The cooler’s heatsink consists of a single bundle of high-density aluminum fins through which four six-millimeter copper heatpipes pass. These heatpipes are flattened at the base of the cooler and form a direct contact surface with the processor’s heat spreader. The cooler base also features a crossbar with mounting screws, which are equipped with integrated springs to achieve optimum pressure of the cooler on the CPU heat spreader. The ends of the heatpipes are hidden on the top surface of the cooler under a matte black aluminum plate with the manufacturer’s logo, which improves the visual impression.

   

   

And now we are finally getting to those interesting details I wrote about in the text above. The fans are no longer attached to the heatsink with metal clips, but you will find plastic dimples on the heatsink that hug the ball head screws that are pre-installed in the corners of the fans. This way the fans just snap into the cooler, which greatly simplifies their installation and also leads to a neater design that is not distorted by wires on the sides of the cooler.

   

Thanks to this innovative system for mounting on the Intel LGA 1700 socket, the accessories look perhaps surprisingly modest. In fact, you need nothing more than four screws to replace the original CPU bracket with the included Arctic frame. For mounting on AMD you will then find a pair of metal bridges and matching posts with screws. A small tube of Arctic MX-6 thermal paste completes the accessories. Paper manuals have been absent from Arctic coolers for a couple of years now, as they have been replaced by an interactive electronic form under a link that a QR on the back of the box will direct you to, as part of cost saving and environmental efforts. The installation of the cooler itself is easy with no hassle thanks to the small number of components and takes only a few moments.

   

Cooler and fan parameters

In terms of size, the Arctic Freezer 36 A-RGB doesn’t stand out from its class. Its height of just under 16 centimeters can sometimes exclude it from compatibility with some cases. However, its width and depth are not out of line with the established standards in this class of coolers, and you don’t have to worry about the height of the RAM modules, as this cooler doesn’t interfere with the DIMM slots. Now, the cooler is also extremely interesting with its price. The price in parentheses is for Arctic’s ongoing 23rd anniversary event and this event will run until June 5, 2024.

The P12 PWM PST A-RGB fan is not new on the market and is parametrically similar to the fans of rival coolers in the same price class. The fan impeller is equipped with ARGB LEDs for backlighting and the cables leading from the fan have the option of serial connection. So you will only need one PWM and one ARGB header on the motherboard. An interesting feature is the presence of a 0dB mode where the fan will stop if the PWM signal drops below 5%. For users who want to have a semi-passively cooled system this is certainly a welcome feature.

The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Testing methodology

As already mentioned in the introduction and explained in the text, I had to completely modify the methodology to test this cooler. For this cooler, as a test processor and heat generator, I used an Intel Core i9-13900 in an ASUS ROG Strix Z690-G Gaming motherboard. As always, the entire build is mounted on a Streacom BC1 frame with no fans to provide airflow.

Acoustic shielding (acoustic foam on OSB boards) is installed around the test rig to eliminate ambient noise. A calibrated Voltcraft SL-100 noise meter is placed perpendicular to the cooler in a fixed position relative to the motherboard at a distance of approximately 35 cm from the processor socket.

   

Stress tests were performed using Prime95 with a duration of 30–35 minutes. The cooler was tested at standardized noise levels (39, 42 and 45, as none of the coolers tested reached 48 dBA) and at maximum speed. Tests were conducted in one set with the PL1/PL2 set to 165 W. This is therefore a relatively high thermal load for the Arctic Freezer 36 and its rivals.

Out of curiosity, I also tried unlocking all the limits, but peaks above 300W and sustained loads around 250–270W were simply too much waste heat and the processor automatically reduced its clock speed in a matter of seconds to avoid overheating above Tjmax. I then recorded the highest temperature reached after the test was over. I have not corrected the measured values against the ambient temperature, so in the results you can see the absolute maximum temperature of the processor with the room temperature at 18 °C.

I have made several changes in the methodology with the clear aim that someone should not foolishly compare today’s (non-conceptual) tests with the conventional ones only in terms of the amount of thermal output or the temperature difference with the surroundings. The Intel Core i7-11700K and the Intel Core i9-13900 are two completely different processors, whether it’s the different size of the heat spreader, the different size of the silicon, or the different power management. You simply cannot compare apples and pears.

The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Results – 39 and 42 dBA

The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Results – 45 dBA and maximum speed

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The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Spectral analysis of noise

Of course, spectral analysis of the noise cannot be missing either. This is a simple real-time analysis at noise levels of 39 dBA, 45 dBA and at maximum speed. For the analysis I use a fixed microphone UMIK-1 from miniDPS in conjunction with TrueRTA from True Audio. The resolution of the analysis is 1/24 of an octave and the graph is an average of 100 samples acquired over 20–30 seconds.

The German company Arctic celebrates 23 years of its founding this year and to mark the occasion, new Liquid Freezer III AIO coolers were recently introduced. Today also sees the launch of new Arctic Freezer 36 air coolers. These coolers come with a number of bold innovations and one of them has led to some changes to the format of today’s review. Today, we’re going to take a look at the top model in this series with the A-RGB Black moniker.

Conclusion and evaluation

The Arctic Freezer 36 A-RGB Black cooler successfully builds on the traditional features of previous coolers in this series that offered very solid performance at a good price.

For an interesting price, which is now greatly improved by an ongoing discount, you get a very solid cooler with good efficiency that is not too noisy. As such, the cooler itself is quite quiet by objective measurement, but subjectively perceived sound performance could be better. This means that the sound performance of the fans could definitely do with some optimization. After all, this can be seen in the attached spectrograms, where several tonal peaks can be seen side by side.

It’s a rather bold move to stop supporting older Intel processor sockets, but it’s clear that Arctic had good reasons to do so, and the current mounting system for the Intel LGA 1700 socket strikes me as very good.

If I had to sum it up, you get a very solid product for your money that does its job well and you don’t have to dig too deep into your wallet for it. Moreover, with Arctic’s current anniversary promotion, this is an absolutely irresistible offer and so at the time of writing this review, the Smart Buy! award is an absolute must.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

• Contents
• Key features
• Measurement methodology
• Results – 39 and 42 dBA
• Results – 45 dBA and maximum speed
• Spectral analysis of noise
• Conclusion and evaluation