Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Heatsink Cooler for Intel and AMD 1156/1366 AM2/AM3 W/ 120MM Fan

Comment:
The arctic freezer 13 pro is a decent heatsink. It's pretty quiet and does a decent job cooling. Unfortunately, the mounting bracket (which is connected to the heatsink with metal screws connected to a metal plate) is made of PLASTIC. Plastic which cannot withstand the heat, causing the mounting bracket to melt and your heatsink to fall off (damaging both the cpu and surrounding hardware).Be careful if you're using this one in a tower.

Comment:
I've installed this heatsink on a Athlon II x3 445 CPU. It's definitely quieter than the stock cooler and provides almost noiseless cooling. The CPU temps were down by a good 10°C, both on idle and on load.One thing that should be better is the installation manual. The pictures in it are for installation in an old socket 939, not AM2/AM3. You will have a hard time installing the cooler following these instructions. You have to search the web to find how to install it on AM2/AM3. Installation is then very easy when you know how to do it. For information, you have to, first, loosely screw the lugs on the heatsink before snapping it as you would with the stock cooler. Firmly thigten the screws after this. Hard to understand why Arctic Cooling have put pictures for installation on an obselete socket and not what is the standard AM2/AM3...The heasink pad is smaller than AMD CPU by a few mm, on two sides. I suppose it's not a problem since the temps are low, but it's a strange design decision anyway...Since this heatsink is quite large, it may block your first memory slot. On my board (Gigabyte GA870A-UD3), this means that I cannot remove or add a DDR stick in slot #1 without removing the heatsink first. Even then, it's a tight fit, and I would not be surprised if in another motherboard it will just completely block the slot.So, overall, it's a good cooler. Certainly an excellent choice if quietness if your first concern. However, you have to put the cons in the balance.

Comment:
Bought this to replace a stock heat sink for a slightly over clocked q6600. Processor bumped up 15% this cooler kept it at 40 degrees. Obviously is not a high end fan, but for a secondary PC running on a budget it fits the bill perfectly. Very quiet as well, can't hear it over the other fans in the system. Pleased with the results.