ARCTIC Freezer 34 Esports Duo - Tower CPU Cooler with BioniX P-Series case Fan in Push-Pull, 120 mm PWM Fan, for Intel and AMD, LGA1700 Compatible - White

I know this cooler has been reviewed to death, but I wanted to make a review for those of you who wanted some empirical data to look at when deciding. This cooler will be installed on a Ryzen 3700x, B450 Tomahawk motherboard, and it's replacing the stock Wraith Prism AMD cooler.Firstly, I chose to go with the black/grey version and the cooler looks great. So much better than the bare copper/aluminum Hyper 212's I ran previously. The fit and finish is nice, the fans look great with their braided cables, and everything was packaged well.Installation was very straightforward. Honestly it took me longer to remove the old thermal compound than it took me to install the new cooler. You'll have it swapped in less than 30 minutes. A few quick things to note here: 1) Run your PC for a good ~30 minutes or so before you take off the old cooler so that the old thermal compound is warm when you remove it. 2) When you remove the old cooler, disconnect it, TWIST it ~45 degrees, then pull it off of the CPU. This keeps you from ripping the CPU from the socket. 3) The B450 Tomahawk will not hold the backplate in place when the 4 screws are removed, so be sure you can access the rear of your mobo if you're swapping coolers. 4) For AM4, you will use the included stand-offs that have 1 notch cut in the sides of them. 5) When you apply the included thermal compound to the 34 Duo, you'll want a line along each heat pipe, 4 lines total. This is per manufacturer recommendations.At first the included "1 notch" standoffs appeared to be too short, but I just had to put more pressure on the backplate to start the threads. I tightened in a crisscross pattern and made sure all 4 screws were snug to slight resistance. Once on, the fans are daisy-chained and installed. These went on fine without having to remove the RAM.Now... what some of you may have come for: THE DATA. For the following tests I made sure that both cooler tests were done at the same AMBIENT room temperature, which was 74F. Now on to the data:3700x with PBO ENABLEDIdle Wraith Prism at Desktop: 34CIdle 34 Duo at Desktop: 29CPrism Cinebench R20 Run 1: 78.9c MAX34Duo Cinebench R20 Run 1: 69.1c MAXPrism Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 80.4c MAX34Duo Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 69.2c MAXPrism AIDA64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 60.5c MAX34Duo AIDA 64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 55.4c MAXPrism AIDA64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 83.4c MAX34Duo AIDA 64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 79.6c MAXFinal thoughts & summary... the 34Duo provided a 5C cooler Idle temperature, a 11.2C cooler max temperature during R20 runs, and a ~5C cooler max temp at CPU/FPU stress testing which is a worst case scenario. The MOST IMPORTANT thing to note here is that on average the 34 Duo is 5-10c cooler while also being much quieter and it never allowed the CPU to break above 80C.In my opinion these are highly impressive results and I definitely recommend this cooler above it's other similarly-priced competitors.

I have the Ryzen 5, 3600 with 6 Cores, and 12 processing threads bundled with the AMD Wraith Stealth stock cooler with Max Temps 95°C. My Motherboard was the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4. I built this system in December 2019. I was happy with it for a few months, but I consistently watched the CPUID HWMonitor and noted that my CPU temperatures could reach over 80°C. There were a couple of days they even went up to 90°C. I started to research for an after-market CPU fan to replace the stock cooler. I noted that many YouTubers had reviewed the Freezer 34 series of CPU fans and they all gave these fans high marks in the categories of price-to-performance, Noise level, ease-of-installation, ram-clearance, and case fitting. After installation, my CPU’s temperatures from minimum to maximum were reduced by more than 10°C each. I ran Cinebench, and my CPU temperate reached a high of 79°C. I didn’t run it while I had the stock cooler so I wouldn’t know what could the CPU temperate had been.The Freezer 34 cooler came with one fan. I had an old Cougar Vortex PWM 120 case fan lying around. I was able to fit this fan onto the Freezer 34 with the extra set of brackets that were included in the package. I believe this 2nd fan created the push-pull condition that matches the more expensive models in the Freezer 34 series that are sold with dual fans. There was no problem fitting this CPU fan in my case, an Antec Gaming Series Three Hundred Two Mid-Tower case. Also, there was no problem with ram clearance. And this Arctic 34 cooler operates very quietly.I had a few issues while installing this CPU cooler. First, I had to remove the motherboard out of the case before I could install it because there was not enough space to maneuver inside the case frame. Secondly, when I installed the cooler onto the motherboard, I encountered the same problem the other reviewer Aaron had. In his March 30, 2020 review of his Freezer 34 CO, which he titled: “I wanted to like this.”, Aaron stated that “The threads on the mounts for the AM4 socket are too short making threading the nuts onto them for final mounting and tightening impossible unless the metal brackets are bent down a bit. This is difficult to do because one hand needs to hold the backplate for pressure while you need to get the screw into the nut and apply presser on the other end, the slightest slip would lead to stabbing the mobo with the screw quite aggressively. The thread should be about 2 mm longer and the nut should be 2mm deeper so that the mounts can be preinstalled and then the nuts loosely threaded by hand…” This exact thought came across my mind when I was doing the exact same steps during my installation. It took me a few tries to screw in the nuts and I had to press hard to make the nuts to fit and latch onto the threads.And lastly, after the cooler was fixated onto the motherboard with the two above mentioned fans, and it was ready to go into the case, I had a very hard time plugging the CPU power cord into its 8-pin connector! I had to ask my wife for help as she has smaller hands than I do. Even after she lined up the plug with the socket, she wasn’t able to press it all the way down. I had to use two chopsticks to do that for me! Next time, when I need to remove the cooler for cleaning or for any other reason, I would buy a CPU power 8-pin extension cable. This way, I can pre-plug in the extension cable to the motherboard connector, and then I would have all the flexibility to connect it to the cord coming from the PSU - outside of the tight space that was originally limited by the cooler.After the installation, I turned on the PC and pleasantly found that the temperature was lower by more than 10°C, I finally felt relieved and thought to myself all these efforts were worth it. Also, I want to mention: in place of thermal paste, I used a 40mm X 40mm Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad. I believe it works just as well as any good brand of thermal paste in the market.