CeBIT 2009 3-8 March, Hannover (Germany), day 3

Time to show you what we've seen in day 3 of our stay in Hanover at the 2009 CeBIT expo.

Arctic Cooling (Part 1: CPU & VGA coolers)

Arctic Cooling is Switzerland company well known to overclockers and silence lovers including here in Bulgaria. The company makes variety of air coolers - for processors, video cards and memory modules, they also are in business of making high efficiency PSU's, PC cases, chassis fans laptop coolers and even miniature USB fans :) The Arctic Cooling stand was one of the largest and most interesting ones for such products at the whole expo. The company was well prepares and showed us all of their available products along with some new things, some just being released, some scheduled for release through the year.

The range of processor coolers was the biggest. There were everything for each and everyone be they silence lovers overclockers or in need of cheap and efficient mainstream solutions. Freezer 7 Pro and Freezer 64 PWM ( respectively for Intel/AMD systems) were on display for the overclockers, and for the HTPC, small cases and minimalistic mods the highly efficient Freezer 7 LP and Freezer 64 LP were on display (LP being short for Low Profile). Freezer 7 Pro had received a new upgrade - bracket for socket LGA1366 (Core i7 processors). And there is for the most extreme of users the Freezer XTREME Rev. 2, capable of dispersing a whopping 160W of heat. Their cheaper and more quiet coolers include models with different sizes and applications from the Alpine series.

Video card coolers have always been important for Arctic Cooling, and now they are one of the top video card cooler manufacturers in the world. In February not one or two video cards were released with Arctic Cooling cooler instead of referent one. And we're talking for factory overclocked cards even, which are thanks to the Arctic Cooling intervention working silently and at much lower temperatures than with any referent cooler suggested by NVIDIA/AMD.

One of the best selling Arctic Cooling video card coolers is Accelero S1, a passive cooler the latest revision of which was on display at the expo. In order to show off the vast capability of Accelero S1, there was a dual 9800 GTX+ in SLI mode system assembled by Arctic Cooling, and well overclocked it was in fact by the data on the display panel that showed temperatures and frequencies measured in real time. But even if you have a middle class video card and want to to reach absolutely new heights at overclocking a special module for Accelero S1 with two silent fans is available.

For users of high class cards such as GTX 260/280/285 and HD 4870 X2 there is of course "something special" - Accelero Twin Turbo (which can disperse up to 120 W of heat) and Accelero XTREME. Accelero XTREME is sold in two separate versions for HD 4870 X2 and GTX 280, the first being capable to deal with up to 320W of heat and the second - 250W, in both cases well above the values set as maximally released by the two cards in question. The coolers have three PWM fans (their RPM controlled by the load of the card) and Their speed varies between 1000 and 2000 RPM, while even at the maximum of 2000 RPM they are hardly audible, unlike the referent coolers that roar like jet engines at their peak speed.