Arctic Freezer 7X Review

Introduction

If you thought the Arctic Freezer A13x was small, wait until you see the Freezer 7x. This 1:43 Miniature of a cooler stretches the word tower to a degree that we did not believe would be possible.

What's in the Box?

Arctic's mini Freezer 7x comes in the usual Arctic-styled packaging.

In a blue box containing the standard imagery and spec sheet we will find the cooler accompanied by the usual amount of goodies.

Once everything is removed from the box we will be left with the following items:

• Arctic Freezer 7x Heatsink with Fan
• Mounting Hardware Intel
• Mounting Hardware AMD

Although quite rare nowadays, the Freezer 13 Series comes with some of Arctic's MX-4 Thermal paste pre-applied on the base of the cooler.

Down below we also added a short summary of the most important specs:

Compatibility

Funnily enough, although the 7x is considered the smallest Arctic Air Tower cooler, it comes in a much more compatible package than its bigger A13X counterpart.

Down below we added a full compatibility list. Here keep in mind that coolers produced after mid- 2022 will include an LGA 1700 Mounting kit.

Individual Components

Heatsink

To our very surprise, the A13X was NOT the smallest that Arctic was able to go.

Looking completely identical from far away, the Freezer 7x model uses the same grey single tower design with copper direct-touch heat pipes at its base, just like the A13X and A35.

However, it is even smaller. At just 132.5mm, even the already funnily looking A13X appears regular-sized.

At the bottom of the cooler, Arctic went with their usual approach of a Direct-touch copper-Heatpipe base. However, on this model, there is only 2 Heatpipes present. This mix of ridiculously small form factors with only 2 heat pipes might actually throw the 7 X far behind the A13X alternative.

Fan

Although it is clearly built after the iconic Arctic P12 fan, this mini 100mm diagonal and 2000RPM fast-spinning version is trying to push the biggest amount of air possible through that tiny heatsink.

Similarly to the Freezer 35 & A13X series of coolers, the 7 X's Fan comes with the same all-frame Fan design. Instead of using tried and tested fan clips and thus making the fan easily replaceable in case of a failure, the 7 X's fan is permanently built into a plastic frame which is then clipped onto the whole cooler.

Appearance

The all-frame Fan design mentioned above comes with its pros and cons. Surely not being able to replace the fan with a simple clip might be an issue for some. But we have also heard of enough people that not everybody is a fan of looking at a heatsink all day long. For these people. having a big frame that not only keeps the fan in place but also covers a big chunk of the cooler might be a refreshing change.

It might be not our taste, but it is a taste.

Benchmark

We used the Arctic Freezer 7 X on our usual Testbench. While cooling down our 3900x, the 7 X managed to keep the CPU at 67°C, 6°C behind the Freezer A13X, and 4°C behind the (free) AMD Wraith Prism.

On the Noise-to-Performance graph, the story doesn't look any happier.

Not only does the 7 X lead the list as THE worst cooler we have until now, but there is no "graph" to be seen as there is exactly a single fan speed amount that doesn't let the CPU thermal throttle. 100% PWM. 

Conclusion

Although we found it funny that Arctic managed a Tower cooler that small. The only word that we can find to describe the 7 X would be: unnecessary.

Not only did the 7 X utterly lose against every cooler on our list, but it also managed to be beaten by a cooler that comes for free with your CPU, a devastating result.

However, the most important fact for us was the direct comparison to an Arctic Freezer A13X / i13X. Not only is the Series 13 Freezer a lot better than its 7 X counterpart. But they are available for pretty much the exact same price.

The only argument to be made here is that the A13X is bigger than the i13X, and that would be true. However, we doubt that there exist more than 1-2 cases that come with an <135mm high CPU cooler requirement. Additionally, there are quite a lot of Ultra-SFF coolers that would outperform the Freezer 7 X while being built even smaller.

Due to there being no apparent positive aspects to go for a Freezer 7 X instead of an A13X, or possibly even an A35 if the budget and size allowed it, we would recommend having a closer look at other Arctic Freezer coolers.