The Arctic Freezer 36-S lands at the right time. Prices are rising for PC builds but you can claw some money back with this cooler. It costs just $22/£19. A small price to pay for ample cooling for your processor. And it is, genuinely, good.
Arctic has plenty of accolades to its name when it comes to cooling. One of its more popular designs, the Arctic Freezer 36, is our pick for the best budget air cooler. With two fans, an effective heatsink design, and a great price tag, it’s all anyone needs to chill most of today’s popular gaming chips. But could you make do with less? That’s what the Freezer 36-S puts to the test.
A few cuts have been made to the Freezer 36-S compared to the Freezer 36, including trimming down to just one fan. But it still has a lot going for it, especially when it comes to performance, as you can see in the charts below. The Freezer 36-S performs really well considering its size and price tag. Though price is a sticking point: the Freezer 36-S is going up against the best and when you can get the Freezer 36 for very nearly the same cost, it’s tough to argue for the slightly cheaper model.
Buy if…
✅ You’ve spent all your budget elsewhere: So you’ve blown your budget on a graphics card and a motherboard that’s definitely overkill. Now you’re scraping change for a suitable cooler. The Freezer 36-S is all you need.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You are tight on cash but can spare a couple dollars: If you can spend even a little more on your cooler, the Freezer 36 is in most ways a better air cooler. It’s quieter and cooler.
Features
Freezer 36-S
Freezer 36
Dimensions (mm)
126 (L) x 88 (W) x 156 (H)
126 (L) x 104 (W) x 159 (H)
Fan(s) included
1x P12 Pro PST
2x P12 PWM PST
Max. RPM
3000
1800
Socket support
Intel LGA 1851/1700 | AMD AM5/AM4
Intel LGA 1851/1700 | AMD AM5/AM4
No. of heatpipes
4
4
Accessories
Contact frame (for Intel systems), MX-7 thermal paste
Contact frame (for Intel systems), MX-6 thermal paste
Price
$22/£19
$29/£20
The Freezer 36-S is a fairly slim cooler at 126 x 88 mm. It’s a pretty traditional-looking thing, with a similar height to the Freezer 36. That makes it a fit for standard ATX and Micro-ATX rather than small form factor cases.
There’s only one fan on the Freezer 36-S, a numerical loss to the two on the Freezer 36. Though it’s a P12 Pro fan, an improvement on the twin P12 PWM PST included with the latter. This P12 Pro fan spins up to 3,000 RPM and comes with impressive ratings for both airflow (77 cfm) and static pressure (6.9 mmH2O), the latter being important once the fan is stuck to the side of a heatsink.
The P12 Pro is our current pick for the best budget PC fan and performs exceptionally well in testing throughout its large RPM range. I do have one recommendation, and that’s to adjust the fan curve in the BIOS. These fans are incredibly loud at top speed, but they don’t need to run this fast to be effective. They’re very capable and much quieter at slower speeds.
(Image credit: Future)
One accessory bundled with every Freezer 36-S is a contact frame. A contact frame is just a piece of metal or, in this case, plastic, which sits around and atop of a processor instead of the standard ILM. It’s important for Intel processors from the 13th/14th Gen as they are likely to bend due to the stresses applied to the chip from the ILM and cooler. To avoid this, a contact frame is preferred, and Arctic bundling one with the Freezer 36-S takes the stress out of it. That said, the metal one included with the Freezer 36 feels more robust.
Arctic throws in a small 0.8 gram tube of MX-7, the company’s latest thermal paste. It’s good stuff, and there’s enough here for initial installation and at least another application, providing you apply a thin line and don’t go overboard.
Installation
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Installation is fairly straightforward with the Freezer 36, if only a little tricky depending on whether you’re using an AMD or Intel processor.
The good news is it couldn’t get much easier on AM5/AM4 systems. Fit a couple of brackets, apply some thermal paste, and tighten the cooler into place using two screws. Sorted.
Intel systems, on the other hand, require the removal of the built-in ILM from the motherboard and replacing it with the contact frame. That’s easily done ahead of installing the motherboard inside a case, less so if not. If only humans had one more arm, it’d be a lot easier to hold everything in place while screwing the frame down. There is an added risk of the CPU falling out or breaking a pin in the socket with the contact frame, but just take it slow and it should be fine. Having spoken to Arctic about this earlier in the year, they’re convinced that the contact frame is worth it in the long-run.
The Freezer 36 comes with two metal clips for holding the P12 Pro fan in place. These clips attach to the cooler itself. Unlike most other coolers I’ve used, which do the opposite. Install the clips first, then the cooler, than clip the fan on. This way, nothing ever gets in the way and you don’t have to fiddle clips in hard to reach places. Nice design.
Thermals
I was expecting a bigger delta between the Arctic Freezer 36-S and the bigger, dual-fan Freezer 36. There’s not too much in it, just a couple of degrees at most during the more intensive tests.
I test each air cooler using a Core i7 14700K, running at three different fixed voltages: 1.275 V, 1.325 V, and 1.4 V. The highest of which is admittedly a bit of a torture test, running Prime95, which often leads to thermal throttling with an air cooler.
Our game of choice for testing, Baldur’s Gate 3, is a little more CPU intensive than some. Though not enough to see huge swings in temperature between coolers at 1.275 V. Prime95 and X264 are very intensive, however, and the Freezer 36-S is second-worst out of the lot in these tests, behind only the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5. Though that’s a more expensive cooler than the Freezer 36-S, and there’s not much in it between the Freezer 36-S and the Freezer 36. In Prime95 at 1.325 V, both oddly reached the same temperature, likely a sign of the P12 Pro and its impressive cooling ability at max RPM, and the expected variance in my test process. These aren’t lab conditions, folks—as damned near to as I can get in my home office.
Aesthetics
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I’m reviewing the A-RGB version of the Freezer 36-S, which includes a P12 Pro A-RGB fan. It’s not the prettiest implementation, it must be said, with clear blades and LEDs embedded in the hub in the age-old fashion. But it does produce a pretty enough effect for the price. The RGB effect can be controlled via any 5V RGB header.
The Freezer 36-S looks pretty great underneath the RGB lighting. The version I have for review comes with an all-black coating, which includes heatsink, heatpipes, and even fan clips. It doesn’t scream ‘budget’ like some others do. I wouldn’t assume it’s a budget model.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
I test each cooler with their fans set to 100% PWM duty cycle, to see what they’re capable of. I wouldn’t recommend you do the same at home, especially not with the Freezer 36-S. It’s very loud, coming in at 47 dBA, and much louder than the Freezer 36 with two slower-spinning fans.
In defence of the Freezer 36-S, it’s still quieter than many other coolers I’ve tested.
Value
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Arctic is its own greatest enemy in terms of value. In the US, the Freezer 36 (non-S) is $9 more, at $29, than the Freezer 36-S at $20 (on sale at time of writing, usually $22). In the UK, the Freezer 36 costs just one pound more (£20) than the Freezer 36 (£19), or £4 more for the all-black model to match. Why opt for the smaller, weaker option with one fewer fan when the better pick is only a quick search for spare change down the back of the sofa away?
The Freezer 36 is a tough act to follow, and while prices may fluctuate in favour of the 36-S at times, I just can’t see myself buying one—no matter how mighty it might be for the money. There’s not much wiggle room here for the Freezer 36, either, as the excellent and enormous Thermalright Peerless Assassin has the market all wrapped up at $40/£36.
