The Best Threadripper CPU Cooler? (YES!) Ft. UnRAID

Arctic Freezer 4U Heatsink: amzn.to/3hZpxed
Arctic MX Wipes: amzn.to/3Oqp4hp
Arctic P12 PWM Fans: amzn.to/3Ol1TFg
Server build:
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Today we’re taking a look at the Arctic Freezer 4U SP3 Threadripper CPU cooler. The Freezer 4U SP3 CPU cooler is an absolutely massive CPU cooler meant for custom built Threadrippper and Epyc based servers. Arctic sent this Freezer 4U over so I could test it out and make this review video on my Threadripper 1920x based UnRaid storage server. I run some really CPU intensive dockers on my UnRaid Threadripper server. Even though this setup is all housed inside of a large 4U Rosewill RVS-L4500 chassis, the 90mm Noctua cooler that I was using didn’t allow for good boost speeds and was actually throttling after several hours of heavy encoding sessions. The Arctic 4U SP3 is a massively large cooler as I mentioned, coming in at 152mm tall, 156mm wide, and 124mm long with a total weight of 1,288 grams. This heatsink comes with two fans that have an range of 400 to 2300rpm push a maximum of 71.9CFM each at static pressure of 3.3mm/H20 which is relatively high. The high static pressure is used well since the Freezer 4U has 59 total fins for heat dissipation. As you can probably tell by these specs, this heatsink is no joke, it’s purpose built for custom Threadripper and Epyc based compute servers. You might wonder why do I or anyone else for that matter need a cooler this beefy though? Well, in my case, I take all of my Linux ISOs and I compress them with Handbrake using a very slow placebo preset. I do this because it's cheaper for me to compress then buy more disks even when you consider shucking cheap hard drives. In order to keep my 12 core 24 thread gen 1 Threadripper running though, lots of heat needs to be removed from the CPU. Arctic self rates this cooler at a crazy 300w worth of TDP meaning they believe this cooler can pretty much cool any of the current SP3, TR4, sTRX4 and sTRX 8 CPUs.
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[@STS]

Check out my other Homelab projects here: kzbin.info/aero/PLEDadN7QqO95uP8zILa8QF3vQwGgkN4l8

[@tony3stark]

i think you have installed those fans incorrectly....cause your power supply intakes hot air and sucks it out the way you installed your cooler it has to fight for air and the hot air of CPU will remain in the case if you install those fans correctly you will get 4-5 degree temperature drop

[@STS]

This EVGA PSU was intaking the warm exhaust air from the the CPU and exhausting that out the backside of the CPU. This is not optimal for the PSU but it should not impact the CPU much more than ~1C due to airflow restriction.

[@dominikheinz2297]

Did you by any chance have the ability to test this cooler with the TR 7980X, how well does it perform there? Considering building a system with that CPU and I am not a fan of water cooling, so looking at the air cooling options. Unfortunately there aren't many. Either the Article Freezer or the Noctua..

[@STS]

Hi! Sadly I don't have any Threadripper 7000 series CPU for testing. From what I have read though, this cooler should work with the 7900 TR's. You will want to check your motherboard for any tall VRM heatsinks or anything that might get in the way of the larger tower coolers designed for Threadripper. The Freezer 4U/-m is definitely one of the best options for Threadripper CPUs. Was this a workstation or dedicated AI rig?

[@dominikheinz2297]

@@STS workstation but i dont have it yet, just planning rn

[@STS]

@@dominikheinz2297 Ah ok, seems like it will be quite a nice setup. I think its worth mentioning to just make sure you know the maximum cooler height supported in your case. I also wanted to mention that while I quite like the Arctic Freezer cooler, SilverStone does offer an AIO made for Threadripper but I never got around to testing on my older TR system.

[@dominikheinz2297]

@@STS thanks I'll have a look. main concern right now is pro vs non pro TR - selection of mainboards etc. As a dev, i benefit the most from cores+fast memory, so I am leaning towards non-pro. its also bit cheaper. But I have less pcie (i think 48 gen5+32 gen4?). but considering that even a rtx4090 doesnt saturate pcie gen4 yet, I should be fine with non-pro if I ever wanna run some quad-gpu setup. Lots of things to consider as you can see, aside from cooling haha :D

[@STS]

@@dominikheinz2297 Ah, that makes sense. I have very little experience with coding/development. I would say if you have a budget and it's not a for funsies build, gotta plan for what you think you will actually end up buying on this platform. Considering my unqualified opinion, I tend to agree, non pro might be the better value pick. I suppose if you have serious storage needs perhaps that could be a consideration but it doesn't seem like it. I will be very curious with the setup you eventually go with - as I said, I don't run a workload like that. Out of curiosity, what's your budget and what do you have now?

[@AutodidactEngineer]

I know this sounds crazy and unnecessary but is it possible to adapt it to a normal AM4/AM5 or Intel?

[@STS]

Well, anything is possible but, I would not attempt that since modifications would be required. What CPU other than Threadripper did you have in mind that needs such a beefy cooler for?

[@AutodidactEngineer]

@@STS 7950x or anything 105w and up! From my point of view the only way to install it would be from the back of the motherboard ;).

[@STS]

Ah ok, I have a Ryzen 7700X myself. From what I have seen and read, if I were to buy a 7950x, I would probably go with the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420mm watercool if my case could fit it. Might as we'll go big! For a 4U case like what I have here, some 360mm AIOs will fit on the middle fan tray, something to consider

[@AutodidactEngineer]

@@STS Sounds good!

[@bojanmajnaric]

Would this cooler be able to handle the new threadrippers pro at everything stock?

[@STS]

If the mounting is the same, without the ability to test, I would make a guess that it's likely one of the best air coolers for a threadripper CPU. Unfortunately I likely won't be able to get a hold of a newer threadripper until the pricing comes down (a lot). Were you trying to build a new TR system? Was this for gaming or workstation purposes?

[@bojanmajnaric]

@@STS I've done some research in the meantime and it looks like this cooler is the bomb when it comes to new threadrippers. Only real problem is availability. I am eyeing a TR Pro build when finances allow, as the main (and only) system. Mostly work and some games.

[@rdsii64]

What chassis is this system in. I have a spare Rosewill that I'm going to build in soon and would love to build an epyc based server in.

[@STS]

For a homelab on a budget I have always recommended the Rosewill RSV series chassis. They used to all be around $100-150. The pricing seems to fluctuate these days though. I still like these cases though, here is my affiliate link to it on Amazon: Rosewill RSV-L4500U 4U Chassis: amzn.to/30G91rd I haven't paid as much time to my homelab recently but, it's overdue for a decent bit of rebuilding in order to support some lab l, storage, and general KZbin growth and needs. I will have to look around to see if the Rosewill RSV chassis have been dethroned for best value

[@rdsii64]

@@STS The artic freezer won't fit in all 4u cases. How much clearance did you have with your Rosewill chassis.

[@STS]

@@rdsii64 The Arctic did in fact fit into the Rosewill chassis, I had probably somewhere between 1-2mm. I was able to fully close the lid with a little bit of foam on the tallest point 😅. It did quite well in this setup, I'll likely be reusing this cooler in this threadrippers next life as well (heavy compute)

[@CYYB3RMISTER]

Is your rear intake fans intentional?

[@STS]

Do you mean to ask did I intend to have the rear fans setup as exhaust? Yes, I did - this is a 4U tall rackmounted server case so airflow is generally front to back. The orientation of this CPU cooler is not ideal for consumer-grade motherboards but it will work fine. The orientation is meant for Epyc or workstation type TR boards. Were you looking at building a server of your own?

[@musicasdebiodanza9876]

Hi, do u think this one will work properly with a 12600K?

[@STS]

Hi Musicas de Biodanza! Sadly no, this heatsink is only designed for Thredripper, it will not work on any other socket. Are you looking for just an air cooler or an air cooler that will fit into a 4U server?

[@ScriptureConsolidated]

theyre almost nonexistent too. i just found one for 24 bucks shipped new so i bought it just to buy it. but i also bought a dynatron tr/epyc cooler to see how well they do since theyre industrial grade. i bet the dynatron wins

[@STS]

They have become hard to source. I guess with the desktop platforms offering so much compute power, a Threadripper with only 12-16c is no longer very interesting. A while back I was talking to someone at Dynatron but it didn't work out for me to get a cooler for testing. I don't know of it would perform better or not to be honest. My assumption would be that if it did perform better, it would be at a significantly higher sound output. I think they have a few options, 1u/2u air cooling and they might have had some water-cooling. Right now I have a different Intel system running my UnRAID server. I have this on my parts shelf. Trying to think of an interesting way to use it in the future.

[@ScriptureConsolidated]

@@STS threadrippers 5k series prices are coming down! So we'll see which ones best. Not a huge concern on noise for me though. I'm deaf. Lol

[@STS]

@@ScriptureConsolidated Yes they are - I'm looking for a new platform for my main ESX host but I'm looking for power efficiency as well. I will have to keep my eyes peeled

[@ScriptureConsolidated]

@@STS i got shafted on the artic by an online scammer. had to fight with paypal to get my money back. BUT- I still ended up with the dynatron and to be honest from the looks/specs of it i'd be happier. I have my threadripper watercooled right now. but once i get my lian li front mesh fan conversion from coldzero in the uk ill be about done with the conversion from water to air. esx host is where your platform runs servers, right? but the servers only led by your desktop, your desktop isnt an actual server?

[@STS]

Ah, that is a bummer! That sounds like a very cool build you have there! As for my servers, it's a mix of consumer grade desktop parts, workstation grade parts, and some enterprise server-grade parts. Running traditional 1/2 HP and Dell servers is usually not a very sound friendly or power efficient strategy in a homelab, even a big one. For my ESX, I was running dial E6-2660v3 CPUs on a Super micro X10DRi board with 96gb memory. This setup has tons of threads but I found I needed faster and power efficient cores. At the moment I'm running my ESX in a limited compute scenario on a back up custom built 2u Ryzen 2700X box. I will probably upgrade to a 12th gen in the coming months. My old supermicro rig my take over storage duties and become my best TrueNAS server. Right now, my Threadripper is idle since I swapped it out for a 12600k system to power my UnRAID storage server. I have a fun project planned for the 1920x though. It will take sometime to get the video up :)

[@squeegeesauce2662]

Is there any difference between swrx8 sockets and strx4 sockets when it comes to cooler attachment?

[@STS]

The sWRX8 mounting is the same as it is for SP3 sockets (the consumer grade Threadripper. Looks like any Threadripper cooler should at least be able to mount to any Threadripper socket. The cooler orientation and or size might make it incompatible with the case but they will mount. Are you building a new sWRX8 build? Video production or 3d modeling?

[@squeegeesauce2662]

@STS , thanks for the help! I'm building it for work to do large data analysis. I have a huge case (core w100) and I'm actually planning to use the corsair h170i aio, but corsair would not verify that it would work on a swrx8 socket.

[@STS]

Hard to know if they just didn't test it or if there's some unknown there but, the mounting is definitely the same. Given that cold plate seems to be the standard AIO size I would be somewhat unsure of the cooling ability of that cooler on Threadripper. I wouldn't typically use any AIO with a standard "one size fits all" cold plate. I would personally go for an air cooler but the h170 is no slouch either. I would try to research if anyone else has used that on the CPU you are choosing. You're likely going to be putting out a lot of heat from what you said.

[@squeegeesauce2662]

@@STS, that is a good point. Maybe I will go with the ml360 mirror tr4 or the freezer 4u you show here.

[@STS]

Ah interesting, I was unaware of that option from CoolerMaster! That seems like it could be performant, quiet, and have that RGB look, ha. I like the idea of air-cooling for mission critical systems but AIOs have come a long way. Which board and CPU were you going with?