Introduction

Swiss Engineering, Rolex, Army Knives, Arctic Cooling? All of these companies make a play on their Swiss heritage, but only one can be considered true value. Arctic Cooling has mesmerized with their products released in 2008, starting with their Freezer XTREME line of VGA coolers. Not only were the two samples sent over last year worthy of a rave review, but the price was in some cases half that of lesser performing VGA coolers.

Arctic Cooling is back at it with another XTREME product, this time for the CPU. The new Arctic Cooling Freezer XTREME is closely linked to the VGA cooler line and design characteristics are shared between the two; mainly a large surface area to dissipate heat. The Xtra large Freezer XTREME uses four heatpipes to channel heat from the processor to a very large area of oversized cooling fins. If you have seen the VGA cooler line, this sounds and looks familiar.

This past month we have seen some really good coolers from Thermaltake and Xigmatek; let's see how the Freezer XTREME stacks up.