Verdict: The best Pentium 4 HSF, bar none

While it's becoming increasingly pointless to water cool an Athlon 64, we never thought we'd say the same thing about cooling an overclocked and overvolted Pentium 4.

However, the latest Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro really does break the mould by offering cooling abilities comparable to those of a single-radiator water-cooling kit in an HSF. The PWM-controlled 92mm fan also rarely spins at its 2,500rpm limit, making it one of the quietest Pentium 4 HSFs produced. Low noise usually means low performance when you're talking about HSFs, but Arctic Cooling has a track record of producing quiet HSFs that offer superb cooling.

The Freezer 7 Pro cooled the CPU to 19ûC below the reference Intel HSF, a temperature only matched by the considerably noisier Cooler Master Hyper 6+, which is also almost twice as expensive. This means the Freezer 7 Pro is actually better at cooling Pentium 4s than most water-cooling kits.

The only issue with the Freezer 7 Pro is that it's relatively tall but, assuming that it will fit in your case, there's really no reason to consider any other HSF for your Pentium 4. Even if you aren't overlocking, it's cooler, quieter and cheaper than its competitors.

• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007
• Motherboards - 13th November 2007

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