Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO Review

Let us start with the large and angry elephant in the room. The Freezer 34 eSports DUO sent for review is simply not going to be optimal for all builds. This is not due to the usual issues such as cooling performance or noise or even price (or some combination of the three). No. The issue is the color scheme Arctic Cooling opted for (or at least opted for in the review sample). While yes we down right love the deep, deep black and the thick, durable, and downright robust paint on the heatsink… using veritable neon green as an accent color on the black fans does mar an otherwise darn near perfect cooling solution. It is like putting onions on your PB&J sandwich. Sure, some may love it… but most will be less than enthused with the end result.

This is a shame as this cooler offers a veritable ton of value, value that the pictures we have shown you do not do this cooler justice. So much value that the green color can actually be overlooked… and sometimes it may actually be the right choice. For example, if you are doing a custom gaming PC with ‘nuclear waste’ theme… it will be hard to beat this bad boy. For more conservative builds, the green will simply clash with the typical grays, whites, red, and other similar color pallets more typically used.

The reason we can say with complete certainty that this cooler and its controversial color palette is good enough to work around this issue is three-fold. Firstly, the base. HDT bases do have a reputation for being less than perfect. Polishing thin wall copper is tough. Polishing it enough to get a mirror shine without burning through the thin and already stressed copper side wall is even tougher. Arctic however shows how it can be done and done right. This smooth base will simply need less TIM than most HDT’s and this in turn increases its already excellent thermal transfer abilities. Mix in four 6mm heat pipes in a decently sized cooling array and for 95% of users it is a great solution (that last five percent really need to opt for either Noctua D15 sized air coolers or water based solutions).

Next is those fans. These BioniX P120 fans are powerful, reasonably quiet and surprisingly efficient even at ultra-low RPMs. This combination means that darn near every owner can create a custom fan profile that will be both silent enough and powerful enough to keep temperatures in check. Better still, Arctic included two of them instead of the typical one. This further makes building a ‘silent’ PC system around the Freezer 34 eSports DUO rather easy to say the least.

Lastly and most importantly… it comes in multiple colors… thank the gods of cooling. So, if you cannot see neon green working you have options. Maybe the red, yellow, gray, or white option will indeed work. This level of customization and flexibility is really rare in this price bracket and just underscores how big a bunch of over achievers Arctic’s design team really are. Even if they did overlook black with black accents for the ultra-conservative crowd.

As the cherries on top… Arctic include their famous TIM, and give this bad boy a full ten year warranty. Both of which are so above average for this market that it is not even close. Once again, the only issue we have with cooling solution is the green color option and only the green color variant. So, if you are looking for a rather good cooling solution that will not break the bank, nor require buzz saw fan speeds to get the job done, the Freezer 34 eSports DUO is indeed a great, borderline marvelous choice. Just understand that you will have to pay careful attention to which variant you are buying… as otherwise you will have to figure out how to work neon green into your custom color scheme.