Verdict: Akasa goes back to basics to try to beat the Freezer 7.
With the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro garnering huge amounts of praise from us for its cooling abilities, low noise levels and value for money, it was almost inevitable that companies would start borrowing from the Arctic Cooling copybook. Of course, each company wants to add its own mark, so Akasa has used a different fan, while also undermining the price of the Freezer 7 Pro. The company hopes the resulting AK-965 will be quieter than the Freezer 7 Pro and better value.
The AK-965 doesn't have a mounting mechanism for AMD's Socket AM2 (the AMD version is called the AK-876), so it's taking on the Freezer 7 Pro at its own game. It's clear that when you're designing a CPU cooler for around £10, you can't afford much in the way of extravagance - the important factors are cooling ability and noise levels.
The first thing that an HSF needs to do to impress us is cool a CPU more effectively than the stock Intel cooler. The AK-965 passed with flying colours - our overvolted quad-core Intel Xeon X3210 was 7ûC cooler than when using the standard HSF, only 1ûC short of the Freezer 7 Pro. However, as the fan on the AK-965 is controlled by PWM, the fan speed will increase as the temperature increases. In order to tame our Xeon CPU, the AK-965's 92mm fan had to spin quite fast, resulting in the sort of noise that makes you want to move your PC to a separate room. While the Freezer 7 Pro is hardly silent under the same conditions, its fan noise is far less intrusive.
Conclusion
When it comes to efficiency of design, effectiveness of cooling and value for money, the Freezer 7 Pro is difficult to beat. The AK-965 almost gets it right though: it's cheap, simple and able to cool an overclocked CPU. Unfortunately, the need to increase the fan speed to its wailing maximum scuppers its hopes of a recommendation.
