Arctic's striking $39 aircooler has fine build quality and surprisingly quiet performance, and it can cover the bulk of the TR4-socket AMD Threadripper. (That said, if TR4 support doesn't matter, the Freezer 33 eSports Edition is just a few dollars more and covers almost all current CPU sockets.)

Features & Specifications

A staple denizen on the PC-cooling and thermal-solution landscape for many years, Arctic has produced countless new products in the form of system fans, CPU coolers, and syringes full of thermal compound to be used by the PC DIY masses the world ‘round. The Freezer 33 TR represents a sporty segment of the Arctic Freezer CPU cooler line for PC-gaming- and performance-minded users, aimed directly at a cooling market willing to pay for striking looks and purpose-built quality.

The Freezer 33 TR is a quad-heatpipe, medium-size tower cooler with aluminum fins. It comes coated in a black satin finish that Arctic claims to provide better thermal transfer over all cooling surfaces. A single fan (a 120x25mm BioniX F120), highlighted with brightly hued, rubberized fan mounts and blade duct, accompanies the cooling tower to provide motivation for the ambient air. Included mounting hardware is minimal; the only supported sockets are Intel 2066 and 2011-v3, and TR4, SP3, and AM4 for AMD, meaning Arctic is looking squarely at high-end desktop/workstation CPUs, and nothing else.

The fan mounts to the cooler via a pair of "swinging" snap braces that attach to both shoulders of the cooling tower and affix the fan in a front-mounted push configuration. A second pair of snap mounts is available if you wish to add another fan down the line to run a push/pull dual-fan configuration. The fan cabling is a braided-mesh sheathing and runs the entire length from the fan housing down to the four-pin PWM header. The sides of each of the aluminum tower fins are folded and interlocked over one another to create a thermal airflow duct through the Freezer 33 TR. It would seem to indicate an airflow "tunneling" path, to prevent moving air from escaping out the sides of the structure.

Like most other tower coolers in this class, Arctic uses four copper heatpipes (6mm in diameter) that run parallel at the cooler base and vertically up the sides of the tower fins. The base block (presumably aluminum) mates with the heatpipes and provides the leverage and stability once the cooler is installed.

Since the Freezer 33 TR is a direct-contact heatpipe solution, the base block and the heatpipes are milled for better thermal contact with the CPU heat spreader. Mounting plates are secured directly to wings protruding from the base block with screws, which helps with cooler installation alignment and simplicity. If you’re noticing that the milled patch of the Freezer 33 TR’s direct-contact heatpipes seems a bit longer than usual, you’d be correct. That indicates Arctic purposely designed this cooler to span the lengthier Threadripper CPU socket.

Like most quad-heatpipe tower coolers, the Freezer 33 TR sits centered atop the CPU. The only offset is that of the cooling fan, depending on which side it is mounted. The tower is installed and secured before attaching the cooling fan with the snap-mount brackets, and it has plenty of clearance for most memory DIMM heatsinks, save for those with very tall solutions.

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