Arctic Freezer 11 LP review

Arctic Freezer 11 LP Review

Manufacturer: Arctic
UK Price (as reviewed): £17.99 (inc VAT)
US Price(as reviewed): $17.99 (ex tax)

The last cooler we looked at from long-time heatsink and thermal goo manufacturer Arctic, was its Freezer i30. It turned out to be a true return to form and is putting many more expensive coolers to shame, offering superb cooling on LGA1155 and LGA2011, while not making too much of a din.

Arctic has released a plethora of other coolers this year too, and with plans to cover more in the way of mini-ITX and HTPC goodies, it also makes sense for us to take a look at more low-profile CPU coolers. We start proceedings with one of its low-profile offerings, the Freezer 11 LP. Depending where you look, it either has a cooling capacity of 90W or 100W, and Arctic claims it has more than enough grunt to deal with an Intel Core i7-3770K at stock speed.


To do this, it uses a 92mm PWM fan, copper contact plate and a dinky heatsink that consists of 50 aluminium fins. It comes pre-applied with Arctic MX-2 thermal paste and has has two 6mm heatpipes - not quite what we're used to but as always we'll reserve judgement until we see the results. LGA1155, LGA1156 and LGA775 are the only sockets that are supported, but using an LGA2011 motherboard in a low profile system is a slightly crazy thing to do anyway.


Installation proved to be a game of two halves. The Freezer 11 LP uses an elaborate push-pin method of securing itself to the motherboard. The push-pins themselves come in two parts - you mount the cooler and insert the expanding pins into the motherboard mounting holes first. Next you use the secondary pins to slot into the expanding ones, prying them open and securing the cooler to the motherboard, much like a reference cooler does.

This would be extremely easy, however the mounting plates are so large and sit so close to the motherboard that we had to do some serious persuasion to get it to squeeze past our test motherboard's VRMs.

Another millimetre or two and we wouldn't be writing this, so make sure your motherboard has plenty of free room round the CPU socket, and keep your receipts just in case.

At 53mm high, it's a couple of millimetres taller than a reference cooler for the likes of the Core i5-3570K, with the side extending around 5mm or so outside the dimensions of the Intel cooler.

Specifications

• Compatibility Intel LGA 775/1156/1155
  
• Weight 0.4kg
  
• Size (mm) 109mm x 106mm 53mm(W x D x H) (heatsink)
  
• Fan 1 x 92mm (PWM controlled)
  
• Stated Noise 0.3 sone