ID-Cooling FROZN A620 PRO SE

[Vayra86]

Imagine buying a worse NH-D15 for three times this money. Or five times, if you get the new one.

For that you can place your own god tier fans on this one three times over as well.

 

[ARF]

For that you can place your own god tier fans on this one three times over as well.

Can you recommend good fans? Some with more interesting shapes, and higher airflow?

 

[Why_Me]

I don't see this on the official ID Cooling EUR Amazon store page yet, which is ID Cooling's highest-profile, first-party sales channel, and where most of their stuff appears first.

They're also selling the smaller, inferior A610 for €35 on their official page, which makes me think that this $29.99 price is BS. If the manufacturer isn't selling at their MSRP, how do they expect their MSRPs to actually mean anything? This just stinks of a manufacturer making an unreasonably low MSRP to get more favourable reviews, with no intent to actually sell it at that price.

Don't get me wrong, I like ID cooling's stuff and I've bought a lot of it in the past but their prices shot up and that means they're vastly inferior to Thermalright in most of Europe now, and the tiny A610 for €35 ID-cooling's own page, which competes with sub-€20 Thermalright offerings like the Burst Assassin 120 means that the EUR price of this A620 Pro is likely €50 at the very least.

At €50 it's no competition for a €36 Peerless Assassin, end of discussion.

https://www.amazon.fr/Thermalright-Peerless-PA120-Aluminium-Technology/dp/B09NS9Z5BB

If we see this in Europe at the €35 price point that usually matches a $29 MSRP, then that's great - but all past and present evidence right from the manufacturer's own channels goes against that, so you'll have to forgive my cynicism - it's empirically justified.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1CGL7D1
ID-COOLING FROZN A620 PRO SE CPU Cooler $29.99

ID-COOLING: AIO Liquid Cooler, CPU Air Cooler, Case Fan

www.idcooling.com

 

[Geezen]

What turns me off these massive air coolers is the weight. I remember reading in a 2011 gigabyte manual that the mobo supported up to 500 grams. This is 1.1 kg.

 

[aatron]

I'm curious about the comparison between the FROZN A620 PRO SE and the single-tower Arctic Freezer 36
BTW. Where can I buy this cooler for 30USD? I can't find it on Amazon :/

 

[Why_Me]

I'm curious about the comparison between the FROZN A620 PRO SE and the single-tower Arctic Freezer 36
BTW. Where can I buy this cooler for 30USD? I can't find it on Amazon :/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1CGL7D1
ID-COOLING FROZN A620 PRO SE CPU Cooler $29.99

 

[ARF]

I'm curious about the comparison between the FROZN A620 PRO SE and the single-tower Arctic Freezer 36

The bad thing about the id cooling's product is the lack of direct-touch heatpipes. That generates additional thermal resistance, and worsens the temperatures.
But the Freezer 36 has only 4 heatpipes, and together with the nothing-special fan, is the worse product of the two.

You can compare with other twin-tower coolers:

It is loud at low and mid RPMs, but the quietest at max RPM. I would say that the noise level at max RPM doesn't matter, because most PCs don't ever reach this level of settings - fan curve.

Arctic Freezer 36 review: a chilly air cooler with the hottest price | Club386

Arctic Freezer 36 ignores that it's a budget air cooler, stepping into the ring of heavyweights that are three times the price.

www.club386.com

 

[Smanci]

Haven't the claimed benefits of direct touch heatpipes been debunked multiple times again and again over the years? It's better in theory but in practise, an inferior cost-saving measure. Proper base provides better contact and higher flux of heat overall.

 

[ARF]

Haven't the claimed benefits of direct touch heatpipes been debunked multiple times again and again over the years? It's better in theory but in practise, an inferior cost-saving measure. Proper base provides better contact and higher flux of heat overall.

Nope.
So, what you say is that the direct-touch heat pipes should have a flat surfacе?

 

[Smanci]

No. There are tons of direct touch heatpipe coolers with a milled flat, or slightly convex base that fail to provide better results even within the same model series. Direct touch is better in (simplified) theory but in practical applications fails to deliver.

 

[ARF]

No. There are tons of direct touch heatpipe coolers with a milled flat, or slightly convex base that fail to provide better results even within the same model series. Direct touch is better in (simplified) theory but in practical applications fails to deliver.

The "better" or "worse" results are because of other factors - anti-gravity heat pipes, fan(s) efficiency/air flow/ static pressure, design of the heatsink fins layout.

Thick base acts like a thick IHS, you must avoid it, because it adds volume with extremely high thermal resistance. In order to decrease that volume, you use thin IHS, and direct touch heat pipes with the lowest possible thickness of the pipes' walls..

 

[Smanci]

The "better" or "worse" results are because of other factors - anti-gravity heat pipes, fan(s) efficiency/air flow/ static pressure, design of the heatsink fins layout.

Thick base acts like a thick IHS, you must avoid it, because it adds volume with extremely high thermal resistance. In order to decrease that volume, you use thin IHS, and direct touch heat pipes with the lowest possible thickness of the pipes' walls..

Within the same model series? I think I understand. If they were any better they would also show up on the performance charts and command a price premium, not the other way around.

 

[ARF]

If they were any better they would also show up on the performance charts and command a price premium, not the other way around.

There is no cheap and perfect cooler. Some have advantages, others have other advantages.
Have you heard about delidding? Your laptop parts are always delidded, directly touching - chips - heat pipes.
The thermal pastes that we use are very low quality.

Delidding is where you remove the metal integrated heat spreader (IHS) from your CPU, and the stock thermal paste, then replace it with liquid metal or a high-quality thermal paste. This results in greater heat dissipation, notably reducing temperatures by 10-20% along with greater overclocking capabilities.

Is deliding safe? What are the benefits? | Delid Services

Is deliding safe? Absolutely! Well... if done correctly - that is the key ingredient. While busting out a vice and doing it the hard way might be...

delidservices.com

Similar extreme is the difference between the quality of a heat pipe, and pure copper used for heat transfer medium.

Due to the very high heat transfer coefficients for boiling and condensation, heat pipes are highly effective thermal conductors. The effective thermal conductivity varies with heat pipe length and can approach 100 kW/(m⋅K) for long heat pipes, in comparison with approximately 0.4 kW/(m⋅K) for copper.

Heat pipe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Chrispy_]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1CGL7D1
ID-COOLING FROZN A620 PRO SE CPU Cooler $29.99

ID-COOLING: AIO Liquid Cooler, CPU Air Cooler, Case Fan

www.idcooling.com

I don't see how that's relevant to the entire European audience.

 

[ARF]

I don't see this on the official ID Cooling EUR Amazon store page yet, which is ID Cooling's highest-profile, first-party sales channel, and where most of their stuff appears first.

They're also selling the smaller, inferior A610 for €35 on their official page, which makes me think that this $29.99 price is BS. If the manufacturer isn't selling at their MSRP, how do they expect their MSRPs to actually mean anything? This just stinks of a manufacturer making an unreasonably low MSRP to get more favourable reviews, with no intent to actually sell it at that price.

I don't see how that's relevant to the entire European audience.

Yup, it's currently out of stock. No information about when it will be offered again.

 

[Chrispy_]

The "better" or "worse" results are because of other factors - anti-gravity heat pipes, fan(s) efficiency/air flow/ static pressure, design of the heatsink fins layout.

Thick base acts like a thick IHS, you must avoid it, because it adds volume with extremely high thermal resistance. In order to decrease that volume, you use thin IHS, and direct touch heat pipes with the lowest possible thickness of the pipes' walls..

It depends on whether the CPU you are trying to cool has a large or small hot-spot for its preferred boost cores.

If all of the heat is concentrated in a small area, and only one direct heatpipe touches that area, heat transfer will be very limited from adjacent heatpipes. In theory, direct-contact heatpipes should give lower temperatures because there's less material between the hot silicon die and the vapor on the inner wall of the heatpipe that transports heat away. The conductive properties of metal are measured in W/m/k, and you'll notice there's a distance in that unit, which is why a shorter distance, thinner IHS, and direct-contact should work better in theory.

The reality, with a CPU that has a dense hot-spot and direct contact heatpipes is that individual heatpipes each have a maximum effective Wattage (oversimplifying some messy thermodynamics, and delta-T limits for silicon health). Each heatpipe might get overwhelmed and vapor-locked at 35W or so, which means if only one or two heatpipes is making direct contact with a dense hot-spot, your "235W" cooler is only actually dissipating 70W.

So, massive copper bases allow two things; They allow a robust, machined-flat surface that can safely put a lot of mounting pressure on a CPU, and they act as a IHS that can transport heat to more of the heatpipes. Yes, they might have slightly higher minimum temperatures than direct-contact heatpipe coolers when the direct-contact coolers do not have any vapor-locked heatpipes, but it means that the energy from a hot-spot can be dissipated by more of the heatpipes and more efficiently use the fin-stack, which obviously means you don't need to run the fan as fast.

TL;DR
Direct-contact heatpipes are fine if the die being contacted has evenly-distributed heat output (eg GPUs) but lousy if the die being contacted has a tiny hotspot that only touches one of the 4/5/6 heatpipes.

Yup, it's currently out of stock. No information about when it will be offered again.

In the US, ID-Cooling's selling their wimpy little A410 for $29.99 too. How can the much bigger, better, stronger A620 SE also be $29.99. One of them is priced incorrectly and the A620's price is already looking suspect.

 

[ARF]

So, direct-touch heat pipes are not good for AMD Ryzen (depending on the cooler's heat pipes orientation), because of the chiplets layout.

AMD Ryzen requires a vapour chamber. While direct-touch heat pipes work most optimally with large GPUs, such as the nvidia's GA102, AD102, and similar...

 

[Smanci]

Not only is it not making contact with the hot spot there, if there are 4 heat pipes, it's making contact with only part of the IHS.

Making proper contact with all of the IHS surface is important.

 

[Why_Me]

Not only is it not making contact with the hot spot there, if there are 4 heat pipes, it's making contact with only part of the IHS.

Making proper contact with all of the IHS surface is important.

The ID cooler in the review has six heat pipes.

 

[Chrispy_]

So, direct-touch heat pipes are not good for AMD Ryzen (depending on the cooler's heat pipes orientation), because of the chiplets layout.

Depends on orientation, yes.

IME a single 8-core AMD CCD is the hardest to cool with direct-contact because that's the highest TDP-to-hotspot-area CPU you can buy. Even talking about AM4, the 5800X was always considered a hot CPU that was hard to tame, because the 5800X consumed more Watts per CCD than the 5950X. That was always a very heat-dense CPU that water was better at keeping under control than air.

Meanwhile, something like a 7900 non-X is vey easy to cool. It has the thicker AM5 IHS, it has two chiplets to spread out the hotspot, and it has a 65W TDP (88W peak draw). I suspect a suitably-sized direct-contact cooler to match or even outperform other baseplate-equipped coolers in terms of temperature simply because direct contact is more efficient than a baseplate and a 65W CPU is incapable of overwhelming any single heatpipe.

 

[ARF]

AMD Ryzen requires a vapour chamber. While direct-touch heat pipes work most optimally with large GPUs, such as the nvidia's GA102, AD102, and similar...

Depends on orientation, yes.

IME a single 8-core AMD CCD is the hardest to cool with direct-contact because that's the highest TDP-to-hotspot-area CPU you can buy. Even talking about AM4, the 5800X was always considered a hot CPU that was hard to tame, because the 5800X consumed more Watts per CCD than the 5950X. That was always a very heat-dense CPU that water was better at keeping under control than air.

Meanwhile, something like a 7900 non-X is vey easy to cool. It has the thicker AM5 IHS, it has two chiplets to spread out the hotspot, and it has a 65W TDP (88W peak draw). I suspect a suitably-sized direct-contact cooler to match or even outperform other baseplate-equipped coolers in terms of temperature simply because direct contact is more efficient than a baseplate and a 65W CPU is incapable of overwhelming any single heatpipe.

The problem is that the heat pipes themselves are too large, they are wider than the poor little chiplet.

1. Option: vapour chamber;
2. Option: make the heat pipes very thin at the base, so that they cover exactly that area on the IHS which is directly above the power hungry chiplets.

 

[Caring1]

They could have picked a different name for it as this could be confused for the Deepcool AK620

 

[Chrispy_]

They could have picked a different name for it as this could be confused for the Deepcool AK620

I'm 100% positive that getting search result matches when people search for the AK620 was the idea they were aiming for.

 

[ARF]

They could have picked a different name for it as this could be confused for the Deepcool AK620

I'm 100% positive that getting search result matches when people search for the AK620 was the idea they were aiming for.

The TLR PS 120 EVO is still better. So, no need to look for these A(K)620s.
And you know what, they use the *20* name when there are 120 mm fans.

 

[Caring1]

The TLR PS 120 EVO is still better. So, no need to look for these A(K)620s.
And you know what, they use the *20* name when there are 120 mm fans.

Yeah but I got the AK 620 Digital just for the looks and fancy display, not performance.