10 reviews for ARCTIC Freezer 34 Esports Duo – Tower CPU
Fan with
Rated 5 out of 5
diep –
I never thought I would need a cpu cooler if ryzen provided an official one for me. Usually if something comes with a product, you would assume it is something recommended by the manufactures to use it. This was what I thought and so I never opted to purchase a third party cpu cooler to replace the official AMD stealth wraith cooler that came with my ryzen 5 3600. Recently, I started playing call of duty warzone. Though that game is graphically intensive, I have an RTX 3080 so I am able to full blast the settings and still reach triple digit fps. Unfortunately for some weird reason, my resolution would randomly scale down. Also, sometimes the character textures would start looking like PS1 graphics characters, though the images were clear and fps was alright. It was actually kind of funny looking. But nonetheless, worrisome. Because my gpu was very powerful and everything still ran smoothly, I made an educated guess that the problem could be my cpu, but more specifically its temperature. I remember when building my computer, people recommended you get a third party cpu cooler to replace the stock one, but I felt it was unnecessary as why would the company put a cpu cooler in their product if it wasn’t up to standard. I downloaded temperature monitoring software and found that my cpu was hitting 90-96 degrees Celsius when I was playing triple A games like Call of Duty Warzone. I didn’t know what that exactly meant until I researched average temperature that your cpu should be around while underload which was like 70 to 80 degrees Celsius at most. 90-96 deg cels was considered very hot and possibly damaging to the cpu. I was shocked as I had kept my cpu with the stock AMD cooler for almost a year while I drowned myself in video games to my suppress my depression and keep busy while quarantined. Thus, I opted to purchase a third party cpu cooler. I did tones of research online and found that this Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo was a really good cpu cooler that had great performance and didn’t rival the cost of my cpu (pre-covid prices). I installed this immediately and sure enough, the problem with the funny graphics went away. My temperature monitoring data also indicated that now my cpu temps range from 60-76 degrees while I play warzone, so I am quite pleased with it’s performance and consider the problem solved. No real complaints, but if I had to pick out something, I would advice that you be careful when removing the rear fan from the cpu cooler during the install. There are rubber spacers on that one as opposed to the front fan, so don’t get them mixed up and watch them in case they fall off, cause mines did but thankfully I caught it. Also, the white paint around one of my copper tubes leading to the fin stacks was slightly dented and chipped with a slight cracking of paint around that area. Not a big deal because you’ll never see it, but I was dyeing trying not to start picking at that chipped paint. Overall, great product. Reliable and consistent results. Did exactly what I needed and solved my problem. Price isn’t to high like a Noctua fan and comes in super clean white color to match my all white build.
Rated 5 out of 5
Mike M –
I have to tell the world how amazing this inexpensive piece of hardware is. My son’s PC was overheating while gaming and, spec wise, it should not have been. Did a little research and discovered this gem, Arctic Freezer 34 esports duo. We went from a stock cooler, crashing because of 90+ temps to never going over 50c with this installed (about 42-45 consistently while gaming). I couldn’t be more shocked and pleased.
System is an iBuyPower tracemr223i, Intel i7 11700F chip, GeForce RTX 3060ti. Was horribly under cooled and is now epic!
Rated 5 out of 5
AmazonConsumer –
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.
Rated 5 out of 5
David –
I was noticing some thermal throttling on my Ryzen 5 3600 with its stock cooler, and I heard good things about the Arctic 34 eSports DUO.
First, let’s get the most important part out of the way: The cooling is excellent and the price is great! Extremely happy with the performance and it’s whisper quiet at normal speeds — a huge upgrade in both sound and cooling over the stock Ryzen 3600 cooler.
SOME GRIPES: – Fans’ spring mounting system and mounting screws can make things a bit difficult if installing within the chassis, which I tried to do. It was somewhat of a nightmare, but I can see how it would be easy if you took your board out first. I didn’t have to remove it, but it was a fight.
– There is no written manual included, or even a descriptor of the multiple screws supplied. Instead, the manual comes in the form of a QR sticker that you scan to deliver you to an online PDF. It worked fine, but it took a while before I realized the instructions came through the QR code and I hadn’t simply misplaced them somewhere when opening the box.
– Size of the heatsink was very slightly taller than I’m used to, and it was just enough to prevent me from using the side fan in my case. That’s my fault for not measuring, of course, but I didn’t expect it’d be an issue. Even still, having removed my side panel fan, my temps were far cooler!
– Thermal paste comes in a small packet instead of a syringe, though it worked just fine despite a nervously uneven application — remember to apply the paste along each heatpipe, and not simply a small dot on your chip like you might be used to.
– The heatpipes on the heatsink don’t cover the entirety of my Ryzen 3600 chip, which was a little concerning at first but it doesn’t impact temps at all, so this isn’t really a gripe as much as a PSA. Apparently all the bits that matter inside the chip are under the heatpipe.
SOME PROS: – Cooling has been outstanding over my stock cooler. Previously I had been idling a bit hot at 50c and gaming at 70c+, but now I’m idling around 35c, and gaming barely cracks 50c — that, despite the fact that I used the new cooling to overclock while gaming. So I’m now performing better, and cooler!
– Despite my complaints about spacing difficulties while installing inside the chassis, the mounting system itself is wonderfully easy on an AM4 board. Simply screw the wings onto the Arctic, and then screw it through the board and into the backplate. I’ve never installed a cooler before with such an easy mechanism — no fussy X-shaped mounting monstrosities like on the Hyper 212s. Any and all issues I had were simply space related having installed while still inside the case.
– Fans are VERY quiet at normal speeds. They are so quiet that I actually went back and checked the fans after starting up because I thought they weren’t spinning! They do get respectably loud at max speeds (2100 RPM), but it hasn’t been necessary to use that much speed yet.
– Pull/push dual fan setup has really improved the overall airflow in my case, helping to kick the hot air out to my computer’s rear exhaust fan. Everything has been cooler, not just my CPU!
– I got the white and black version, and I personally think it’s gorgeous. No RGB is a shame because you can’t as easily see how pretty this cooler is in the case, but fresh out of the box it looks great!
Rated 5 out of 5
Mr. Tidwell Longbottom –
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 ENABLED Idle Wraith Prism at Desktop: 34C Idle 34 Duo at Desktop: 29C
Prism Cinebench R20 Run 1: 78.9c MAX 34Duo Cinebench R20 Run 1: 69.1c MAX
Prism Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 80.4c MAX 34Duo Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 69.2c MAX
Prism AIDA64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 60.5c MAX 34Duo AIDA 64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 55.4c MAX
Prism AIDA64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 83.4c MAX 34Duo AIDA 64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 79.6c MAX
Final 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.
Rated 5 out of 5
Jordan Moser –
I purchased a few weeks back and got around to installing this a few days ago. I am very pleased with this CPU fan. It was easy to install and is incredibly quiet. You can barely hear it running.
Rated 5 out of 5
Grady –
It wasn’t hard to install on my ROG STRIX B550-A Gaming board. My 5600X main temperature under load (Cinebench) dropped 20 degrees C. Excellent deal!
Rated 4 out of 5
Kevin –
Hi, firstly I’m a large fan of the brand and have used them for my cooling solutions since getting back into gaming PCs back in 2018. I bought one of the first generations of this cooler and was able to O/C my R1600 without skipping a beat.
I also want to note that I did not have my factory AMD backplate because I used another cooling solution. The backplate I’m using is an aftermarket one so everyone else’s experience might be different with the installation.
Product Boxing: product came boxed well and didn’t have any noticeable defects. The cardboard was thick and straightforward.
Parts: it seemed to come with all of the necessary parts for my AMD application. However, there were other parts there outside of the LGA bracket that I had zero clue what they were for. I can only assume it’s for LGA applications.
Pre-Install Prep: the two brackets were easy to set up.
Installation: here’s where the stars went down. The standoff screws were installed correctly (use the QR code for install instructions). But, as others have stated here, the screw length for the cooler side is WAY too short. My MOBO was already installed on the case, but I would imagine that even someone installing this with it out of the case will have similar issues. I had to press the cooler down pretty firmly to even get the nuts to thread onto the screw. I was worried for a little bit that I could damage my new R5900x.
Quality Control: Other reviewers have pointed out misaligned contact points and that was the first thing I looked at. I put my speed square on it and it was level so no issues there for me.
Noise: this cooler is Very Quiet for an air cooler. Even when the fans were going in the game, I heard the sound from the Arctic P12s more than this cooler. It’s a winner on the noise front. You can keep your fans low with your fan curve and still keep a quiet setup and temps fairly low.
Vanity/Looks: this thing looks really good in the case. I like the white cooler and the copper is white throughout. It’s not like the fins inside are metallic. Of course, they left the CPU contact points raw copper.
Conclusion: Overall, I’m happy with the purchase minus the piping issues in the photos. It’s quiet and does its job well without a fuss. I’ve loved Arctic products for over 5 years and am looking forward to when they can have a better-looking AIO. Keep it up Arctic!
Rated 5 out of 5
Courtney Lehrman –
Problem – AMD Ryzen 5 3600 was hitting 95C (max operating temp) and throttling while running handbrake batches. (Dangerous temp and throttling performance in attempt to not burn itself up)
Picked this up as a cooling solution after reviewing multiple products online where coolers were put head to head. This seemed to have the cooling chops as well as a look I enjoy, so I went with it.
Install notes: I installed this with mobo (MSI B450 Tomahawk) still in case. My case doesn’t expose the backplate, but several reddit posts had indicated they used the existing backplate. This did work for me and the cooler is quite secure (more on that later). Arctic includes a card with a QR code and a nice walkthrough of install instructions (some animation to aid in your task). Make sure you are using the correct standoffs (these are indicated by a hashmark (1 hash (AM4), 2 hash (Intel 2066/2011), No Hash (Intel 115x/1200)). Also, there is an up and a down for the standoff. The thumbnuts only fit on one side, so I tested this first.. the other side screws into the board/backplate. I ordered Arctic MX5 thermal paste which came in a nice syringe and applied lines on each of the tubes as instructed (they advise this in the instructions and its their cooler, so I didn’t do the pea method). The cooler lined up fairly easily. You’ll want to just get the thumbscrews to catch on ALL 4 standoffs BEFORE turning them down. If you don’t, there is enough play that you won’t be able to get the last one on. Then tighten them down gradually (I went criss-cross pattern similar to tightening lugs on a tire change to ensure even pressure as I went). Then the fans – I”ll admit this was the toughest part for me due to not removing anything (including graphics card), so I had to wrestle a bit to get the metal clips in place. (This is also as previously mentioned how secure the cooler actually was as I put a fair amount of somewhat controlled force on pulling those clips past the ends of the fans. Plugging in was fine (fans include a built in splitter so you don’t need to buy one). Also note the fans have an arrow telling you which way they’re blowing air, so make sure when you put them on you’re not making them fight. One should push air into the fins and the other should pull it out. I have front intake and rear exhaust so I aimed them both that way.
Additional notes: Purchased MX5 paste due to other reviews complaining about packet of paste, but Arctic included a small syringe of MX4. Older reviews indicated problems with AM4 standoffs, but more recent ones including me it worked. (possible product updates)
Performance: As stated before, I was hitting 95C with stock cooler running handbrake batches. Now the temp fluctuates between 76-82C when running handbrake. (keep in mind these are batches, so I’m kicking them off at night and handbrake is running them up to 8 hours of pedal to the floor on multiple cores). I also saw a boost in performance when I ran userbenchmark, so possible some throttling was slowing down other tasks.
Overall, I recommend this product as I’ve had a great experience with it and will definitely buy again. If you have an older case like I do, you’ll want to check clearance if there is a side intake fan. (It crowds the window, and I had to external mount my intake fan – Still worth it.) I also recommend taking the time to at least pull your graphics card to give you more space to work with.. if not pulling the entire board. The install took me probably 20-25 mins, but would have been a lot faster if I’d at least pulled the GPU.
– Husband Review
Rated 5 out of 5
Brandon Williams –
Solid cooler is doing a great job managing temps on my i5 9500f while gaming ( COD MWII, Raft, Fortnite…etc) and doing some light CAD work. It would have been nice to have a little more written instruction on the digital installation guide but not challenging to figure out at all. Would recommend it as a budget cooler.
diep –
I never thought I would need a cpu cooler if ryzen provided an official one for me. Usually if something comes with a product, you would assume it is something recommended by the manufactures to use it. This was what I thought and so I never opted to purchase a third party cpu cooler to replace the official AMD stealth wraith cooler that came with my ryzen 5 3600.
Recently, I started playing call of duty warzone. Though that game is graphically intensive, I have an RTX 3080 so I am able to full blast the settings and still reach triple digit fps. Unfortunately for some weird reason, my resolution would randomly scale down. Also, sometimes the character textures would start looking like PS1 graphics characters, though the images were clear and fps was alright. It was actually kind of funny looking. But nonetheless, worrisome. Because my gpu was very powerful and everything still ran smoothly, I made an educated guess that the problem could be my cpu, but more specifically its temperature. I remember when building my computer, people recommended you get a third party cpu cooler to replace the stock one, but I felt it was unnecessary as why would the company put a cpu cooler in their product if it wasn’t up to standard. I downloaded temperature monitoring software and found that my cpu was hitting 90-96 degrees Celsius when I was playing triple A games like Call of Duty Warzone. I didn’t know what that exactly meant until I researched average temperature that your cpu should be around while underload which was like 70 to 80 degrees Celsius at most. 90-96 deg cels was considered very hot and possibly damaging to the cpu. I was shocked as I had kept my cpu with the stock AMD cooler for almost a year while I drowned myself in video games to my suppress my depression and keep busy while quarantined.
Thus, I opted to purchase a third party cpu cooler. I did tones of research online and found that this Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo was a really good cpu cooler that had great performance and didn’t rival the cost of my cpu (pre-covid prices). I installed this immediately and sure enough, the problem with the funny graphics went away. My temperature monitoring data also indicated that now my cpu temps range from 60-76 degrees while
I play warzone, so I am quite pleased with it’s performance and consider the problem solved.
No real complaints, but if I had to pick out something, I would advice that you be careful when removing the rear fan from the cpu cooler during the install. There are rubber spacers on that one as opposed to the front fan, so don’t get them mixed up and watch them in case they fall off, cause mines did but thankfully I caught it. Also, the white paint around one of my copper tubes leading to the fin stacks was slightly dented and chipped with a slight cracking of paint around that area. Not a big deal because you’ll never see it, but I was dyeing trying not to start picking at that chipped paint.
Overall, great product. Reliable and consistent results. Did exactly what I needed and solved my problem. Price isn’t to high like a Noctua fan and comes in super clean white color to match my all white build.
Mike M –
I have to tell the world how amazing this inexpensive piece of hardware is. My son’s PC was overheating while gaming and, spec wise, it should not have been. Did a little research and discovered this gem, Arctic Freezer 34 esports duo. We went from a stock cooler, crashing because of 90+ temps to never going over 50c with this installed (about 42-45 consistently while gaming). I couldn’t be more shocked and pleased.
System is an iBuyPower tracemr223i, Intel i7 11700F chip, GeForce RTX 3060ti. Was horribly under cooled and is now epic!
AmazonConsumer –
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.
David –
I was noticing some thermal throttling on my Ryzen 5 3600 with its stock cooler, and I heard good things about the Arctic 34 eSports DUO.
First, let’s get the most important part out of the way: The cooling is excellent and the price is great! Extremely happy with the performance and it’s whisper quiet at normal speeds — a huge upgrade in both sound and cooling over the stock Ryzen 3600 cooler.
SOME GRIPES:
– Fans’ spring mounting system and mounting screws can make things a bit difficult if installing within the chassis, which I tried to do. It was somewhat of a nightmare, but I can see how it would be easy if you took your board out first. I didn’t have to remove it, but it was a fight.
– There is no written manual included, or even a descriptor of the multiple screws supplied. Instead, the manual comes in the form of a QR sticker that you scan to deliver you to an online PDF. It worked fine, but it took a while before I realized the instructions came through the QR code and I hadn’t simply misplaced them somewhere when opening the box.
– Size of the heatsink was very slightly taller than I’m used to, and it was just enough to prevent me from using the side fan in my case. That’s my fault for not measuring, of course, but I didn’t expect it’d be an issue. Even still, having removed my side panel fan, my temps were far cooler!
– Thermal paste comes in a small packet instead of a syringe, though it worked just fine despite a nervously uneven application — remember to apply the paste along each heatpipe, and not simply a small dot on your chip like you might be used to.
– The heatpipes on the heatsink don’t cover the entirety of my Ryzen 3600 chip, which was a little concerning at first but it doesn’t impact temps at all, so this isn’t really a gripe as much as a PSA. Apparently all the bits that matter inside the chip are under the heatpipe.
SOME PROS:
– Cooling has been outstanding over my stock cooler. Previously I had been idling a bit hot at 50c and gaming at 70c+, but now I’m idling around 35c, and gaming barely cracks 50c — that, despite the fact that I used the new cooling to overclock while gaming. So I’m now performing better, and cooler!
– Despite my complaints about spacing difficulties while installing inside the chassis, the mounting system itself is wonderfully easy on an AM4 board. Simply screw the wings onto the Arctic, and then screw it through the board and into the backplate. I’ve never installed a cooler before with such an easy mechanism — no fussy X-shaped mounting monstrosities like on the Hyper 212s. Any and all issues I had were simply space related having installed while still inside the case.
– Fans are VERY quiet at normal speeds. They are so quiet that I actually went back and checked the fans after starting up because I thought they weren’t spinning! They do get respectably loud at max speeds (2100 RPM), but it hasn’t been necessary to use that much speed yet.
– Pull/push dual fan setup has really improved the overall airflow in my case, helping to kick the hot air out to my computer’s rear exhaust fan. Everything has been cooler, not just my CPU!
– I got the white and black version, and I personally think it’s gorgeous. No RGB is a shame because you can’t as easily see how pretty this cooler is in the case, but fresh out of the box it looks great!
Mr. Tidwell Longbottom –
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 ENABLED
Idle Wraith Prism at Desktop: 34C
Idle 34 Duo at Desktop: 29C
Prism Cinebench R20 Run 1: 78.9c MAX
34Duo Cinebench R20 Run 1: 69.1c MAX
Prism Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 80.4c MAX
34Duo Cinebench R20 5 Run Max: 69.2c MAX
Prism AIDA64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 60.5c MAX
34Duo AIDA 64 CPU Stress Test @ 2m30s: 55.4c MAX
Prism AIDA64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 83.4c MAX
34Duo AIDA 64 FPU Stress Test @ 20s: 79.6c MAX
Final 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.
Jordan Moser –
I purchased a few weeks back and got around to installing this a few days ago. I am very pleased with this CPU fan. It was easy to install and is incredibly quiet. You can barely hear it running.
Grady –
It wasn’t hard to install on my ROG STRIX B550-A Gaming board. My 5600X main temperature under load (Cinebench) dropped 20 degrees C. Excellent deal!
Kevin –
Hi, firstly I’m a large fan of the brand and have used them for my cooling solutions since getting back into gaming PCs back in 2018. I bought one of the first generations of this cooler and was able to O/C my R1600 without skipping a beat.
I also want to note that I did not have my factory AMD backplate because I used another cooling solution. The backplate I’m using is an aftermarket one so everyone else’s experience might be different with the installation.
Product Boxing: product came boxed well and didn’t have any noticeable defects. The cardboard was thick and straightforward.
Parts: it seemed to come with all of the necessary parts for my AMD application. However, there were other parts there outside of the LGA bracket that I had zero clue what they were for. I can only assume it’s for LGA applications.
Pre-Install Prep: the two brackets were easy to set up.
Installation: here’s where the stars went down. The standoff screws were installed correctly (use the QR code for install instructions). But, as others have stated here, the screw length for the cooler side is WAY too short. My MOBO was already installed on the case, but I would imagine that even someone installing this with it out of the case will have similar issues. I had to press the cooler down pretty firmly to even get the nuts to thread onto the screw. I was worried for a little bit that I could damage my new R5900x.
Quality Control: Other reviewers have pointed out misaligned contact points and that was the first thing I looked at. I put my speed square on it and it was level so no issues there for me.
Noise: this cooler is Very Quiet for an air cooler. Even when the fans were going in the game, I heard the sound from the Arctic P12s more than this cooler. It’s a winner on the noise front. You can keep your fans low with your fan curve and still keep a quiet setup and temps fairly low.
Vanity/Looks: this thing looks really good in the case. I like the white cooler and the copper is white throughout. It’s not like the fins inside are metallic. Of course, they left the CPU contact points raw copper.
Conclusion: Overall, I’m happy with the purchase minus the piping issues in the photos. It’s quiet and does its job well without a fuss. I’ve loved Arctic products for over 5 years and am looking forward to when they can have a better-looking AIO. Keep it up Arctic!
Courtney Lehrman –
Problem – AMD Ryzen 5 3600 was hitting 95C (max operating temp) and throttling while running handbrake batches. (Dangerous temp and throttling performance in attempt to not burn itself up)
Picked this up as a cooling solution after reviewing multiple products online where coolers were put head to head. This seemed to have the cooling chops as well as a look I enjoy, so I went with it.
Install notes: I installed this with mobo (MSI B450 Tomahawk) still in case. My case doesn’t expose the backplate, but several reddit posts had indicated they used the existing backplate. This did work for me and the cooler is quite secure (more on that later). Arctic includes a card with a QR code and a nice walkthrough of install instructions (some animation to aid in your task). Make sure you are using the correct standoffs (these are indicated by a hashmark (1 hash (AM4), 2 hash (Intel 2066/2011), No Hash (Intel 115x/1200)). Also, there is an up and a down for the standoff. The thumbnuts only fit on one side, so I tested this first.. the other side screws into the board/backplate. I ordered Arctic MX5 thermal paste which came in a nice syringe and applied lines on each of the tubes as instructed (they advise this in the instructions and its their cooler, so I didn’t do the pea method). The cooler lined up fairly easily. You’ll want to just get the thumbscrews to catch on ALL 4 standoffs BEFORE turning them down. If you don’t, there is enough play that you won’t be able to get the last one on. Then tighten them down gradually (I went criss-cross pattern similar to tightening lugs on a tire change to ensure even pressure as I went). Then the fans – I”ll admit this was the toughest part for me due to not removing anything (including graphics card), so I had to wrestle a bit to get the metal clips in place. (This is also as previously mentioned how secure the cooler actually was as I put a fair amount of somewhat controlled force on pulling those clips past the ends of the fans. Plugging in was fine (fans include a built in splitter so you don’t need to buy one). Also note the fans have an arrow telling you which way they’re blowing air, so make sure when you put them on you’re not making them fight. One should push air into the fins and the other should pull it out. I have front intake and rear exhaust so I aimed them both that way.
Additional notes: Purchased MX5 paste due to other reviews complaining about packet of paste, but Arctic included a small syringe of MX4. Older reviews indicated problems with AM4 standoffs, but more recent ones including me it worked. (possible product updates)
Performance: As stated before, I was hitting 95C with stock cooler running handbrake batches. Now the temp fluctuates between 76-82C when running handbrake. (keep in mind these are batches, so I’m kicking them off at night and handbrake is running them up to 8 hours of pedal to the floor on multiple cores). I also saw a boost in performance when I ran userbenchmark, so possible some throttling was slowing down other tasks.
Overall, I recommend this product as I’ve had a great experience with it and will definitely buy again. If you have an older case like I do, you’ll want to check clearance if there is a side intake fan. (It crowds the window, and I had to external mount my intake fan – Still worth it.) I also recommend taking the time to at least pull your graphics card to give you more space to work with.. if not pulling the entire board. The install took me probably 20-25 mins, but would have been a lot faster if I’d at least pulled the GPU.
– Husband Review
Brandon Williams –
Solid cooler is doing a great job managing temps on my i5 9500f while gaming ( COD MWII, Raft, Fortnite…etc) and doing some light CAD work. It would have been nice to have a little more written instruction on the digital installation guide but not challenging to figure out at all. Would recommend it as a budget cooler.