Pros:

• Reasonable price of $109.99
• Full RAM height compatibility
• Handles 298W (avg) loads with Intel’s i9-13900K
• Moderate Noise Levels

Cons:

• Doesn’t perform as well with AMD’s Ryzen 7700X

About Thermalright

Thermalright is an established player in the cooling market, with unique products like its all copper SP94 CPU Cooler in the past and more recently the LGA1700 Contact frame which prevents and corrects bending on Intel Alder Lake & Raptor Lake based systems. I’m a big fan of their Peerless Assassin air coolers, which provide some of the best air cooling performance on the market while running whisper silent!

Today we’ll be looking at Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB, a 240mm AIO with a high speed external pump designed to tackle the hottest of workloads.

Foreword

In the past I’ve mentioned how my past testing of coolers had focused on Intel CPUs because they were the most challenging to cool and also consumed the most power. When Alder Lake was released, I noticed that the thermal difficulty of cooling the 12900K was more difficult compared to prior generation products – only a few coolers were able to keep it under TJMax.

Intel’s i9-13900K and AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs can be even more difficult to cool in heat intensive workloads – and this trend is likely to continue with future generations of CPUs. As CPUs continue to shrink in size, thermal density rises, increasing the difficulty of cooling. Indeed, it is no longer worrying to run a desktop CPU at it’s peak temperature – it is to be expected in intense workloads (for example: rendering) without power restrictions or undervolting.

Introducing Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB

Packaging and Included Contents

The Frozen Notte 240 arrives in a black box with information about the cooler on the outside. The inner contents are packaged with molded cardboard, foam, and plastic coverings for the protection of the individual parts.

Included in the package are

• CPU Block and Radiator with fans pre-installed
• 1x Tube of TF7 Thermal Paste
• 2x 120mm fans
• Mounting for AMD & Intel Platforms
• Fan adapters
• User Manual

Cooler Installation

The included mounting brackets support modern Intel and AMD platforms, and advertises a “simple five-step installation process” to setup Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB. The steps below detail instruction on an AMD Ryzen system, but the only real difference with an Intel system is the use of a LGA1700 backplate.

Step One: Attach the AMD mounting adapter to the CPU block

Step Two: Secure the CPU block to the default retention mechanism

Step Three: Secure the radiator to the computer case

Step Four: Plug in the PWM and ARGB connections

Features of Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB

RAM Clearance	All heights supported
Coldplate	Copper
Thermal Compound	Thermalright TF7
Radiator Dimensions	120× 277 ×27 mm
Radiator Material	Aluminum
Pump Dimensions	72 x 72 x 54 mm
Pump Rated Speed	Up to 5300 RPM±10%
Rated Pump Noise Level	Up to 28 dBA
Compatible Socket	Intel LGA115X/1200/1700/2011/2066 AMD FM1/FM2/FM2+/AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/AM4/AM5
Manufacturer Warranty	2 Years

Full RAM Clearance

The Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB has a small CPU block that doesn’t overhang DIMMs – ensuring compatibility no matter how tall your RAM is!

High Speed External Pump

One of the most important factors in the performance and noise levels of a liquid cooler is its pump. Most liquid coolers on the market use Asetek based designs which incorporate the pump into the CPU block, but Thermalright’s Frozen Notte features a high speed external pump capable of speeds of up to 5300 RPM

Full Copper CPU Contact Plate

Infinity Mirror with ARGB lighting

The Frozen Notte’s CPU block features an infinity mirror design with ARGB lighting support.

Full tube of thermal paste

While most manufacturers either provide pre-installed thermal paste for a single use or provide a very small packet of thermal paste. Thermalright provides a full tube of thermal paste with the Frozen Notte 240

27mm size radiator

The radiator included with the Frozen Notte 240 is 27mm, the most common size you’ll see used in liquid coolers. This should fit most cases without having to worry about space constraints.

With the fans installed, the total thickness measures at about 2″ (just over 5cm).

2x Thermalright TL-E12B-S 120mm fans

There’s more to a cooler than just it’s heat sink, the fans paired with a cooler have a direct impact on cooling capacity and acoustic performance – included with the Frozen Notte are two 120mm TL-E12B-S fans which come pre-installed to the cooler for simplicity of installation.

Model	TL-E12B-S
Size	120 x 120 x 25 mm
Speed	2000 RPM±10%
Blades	7
Airflow	72.37 CFM
Static Pressure	2.87 mm H2O
Noise Level	Up to 27.7 dB(A)
Bearing	S-FDB V2 Bearing
Connector	4-pin PWM

Test Platform Configuration

System Configurations Tested

AMD Ryzen 7000 Raphael Platform:

CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
Motherboard	ASRock B650E Taichi (sampled by ASRock)
Computer Case	DeepCool CK560WH (sampled by DeepCool)
Storage	1TB Kingston Fury Renegade
GPU	Intel ARC A770 LE (sampled by Intel)
RAM	32GB (16gb x2) Crucial DDR5-4800 (Sampled by Micron)
Coolers Tested	(Click the links for previous reviews) DeepCool AG500 DeepCool LT720 WH BeQuiet! Pure Rock LP EKWB EK AIO Elite 280 D-RGB Iceberg Thermal IceSLEET G4 Silent Fractal Celsius+ S28 Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB

Intel 13th Generation Raptor Lake Platform

CPU	Intel i9-13900K (sampled by Intel)
Motherboard	ASUS TUF GAMING Z690 PLUS WIFI D5
Computer Case	Cooler Master HAF 700 Berserker, system fans set to 35% (sampled by Cooler Master)
Storage	1TB Micron P3 Plus, 1TB Micron P3
GPU	Intel ARC A770 LE
RAM	32GB (16gb x2) Kingston Fury DDR5-6000
Coolers Tested (See Tom’s Hardware for more comparison data)	(Click the links for previous reviews) BeQuiet! Pure Loop 2 FX CoolerMaster PL360 Flux DeepCool AG500 DeepCool LT520 Enermax AquaFusion ADV Icebert Thermal IceSLEET G4 Silent Thermalright Frozen Notte 360 Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB

Intel i9-13900K acoustic and thermal results

If you’re looking for noise normalized results to see how coolers compare when set for silent operation, you’ll want to fast forward to the Ryzen 7700X results at the last half of this review. For testing with Intel’s i9-13900K, these results will show performance and acoustic results when tied to the default fan curve of my motherboard.

No Power Limits

We’ll start by first looking at performance with no power limits enforced whatsoever. There are “only” ten comparison coolers shown here, so I’ve included some of the testing results I have submitted to Tom’s Hardware to give a better idea on how Thermalright’s Frozen Notte compares to other coolers. These results are directly comparable because they were performed using the same system, by the same person (me!).

I’m only including the maximum watts cooled results from Tom’s Hardware in this article. If you’d like to see the rest of the comparison results with the coolers listed below, please check out my reviews there!

The overall cooling capacity results here aren’t bad for Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB. At 298W sustained in long term loads, these results place it’s performance amongst the best results I’ve recorded with Intel’s i9-13900K.

Looking at the acoustic performance in this scenario, Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB has moderate acoustic levels and it’s noise maximum noise output is right in the middle of all of the results I have recorded thus far.

Some of you may wonder why my acoustic graphs start at 36dBA. That is because my noise meter cannot reliably measure lower than ~36dBA. Some of you might have concerns that starting at 36 may distort how each cooler’s noise levels compare with each other – but honestly if anything it’s the opposite, these charts will minimize the differences between perceived noise levels.

Because dBA measurements are logarithmic, the perceived total volume doubles every couple of dBA depending on the sensitivity of your ears. BeQuiet! made a video explaining this relationship better than anything I could ever put into words, it’s embedded below.

200W Thermal & Acoustic Results

Most loads that common users run won’t use more than 200W, so this is a better analogue for a worst case scenario of what folks might actually see in day to day usage. At 50C, the results here are good, only beaten by the strongest coolers like DeepCool’s 360mm LT720 or Corsair’s 420mm iCUE H170i ELITE (results not shown here, see Tom’s Hardware). The noise levels here are good too, at 42.7 dBA it runs with a low hum.

All results shown on Boring Text Reviews are tested in an environment at 23C ambient temperature.

125W Thermal & Acoustic Results

When restricted to 125W, thermal performance really isn’t a concern – though I’ve included that information in the graph below. Really, any cooler should be able to handle this load – even Intel’s stock cooler! The Frozen Notte’s thermal performance is excellent here, amongst the best results I have recorded.

Acoustic performance is much more important in this scenario, and Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB ties here for the quietest result I’ve with a CPU power limit of 125W enforced – however, even with system fans restricted to 35% the system fans of my HAF 700 Berserker case makes 40.9 dBA the noise floor for testing. Let’s move on to the Ryzen 7700X tests, which are performed in a quieter DeepCool CK560WH case, to see how quiet this cooler can get!

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X results

As I’ve only had time to complete testing of eight coolers on AMD’s AM5 platform, the data I have is currently limited. This will grow as I continue to test coolers.

For thermal results, I’ve tested the CPU in three configurations:

• At the default power limits
• With a 95W PPT enforced
• With a 75W PPT enforced.

Noise Normalized Results

Performance only scales by a limited amount with improved cooling capacity with Ryzen 7000. This also means that there is less of a benefit to running fans at higher performance levels. As such, it can be useful to see how coolers compared when noise normalized for quiet, silent operation.

The results here were surprising to me, as I had expected the Frozen Notte to have better performance in comparison to air cooling based on my results with Intel’s i9-13900K.

Default Power Limits

At the default PPT of 105W, the most intensive loads can be difficult to cool and result in the CPU running at TJMax with anything less than the strongest coolers. DeepCool’s LT720 and EKWB’s EK Elite coolers are the only two I’ve tested (yet) which can handle that much heat. As such, we’ll be looking at two metrics in this situation where coolers run with the CPU reaching TJMax (95c): Noise levels and watts cooled.

Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB again ties with Iceberg Thermal’s IceSLEET X7 Dual, cooling an average of 126.5W during the course of testing – about 3W better than DeepCool’s AG500. Thermalright’s Frozen Notte did much better in comparison to DeepCool’s AG500 when paired with Intel’s i9-13900K, where it cooled 45W more than DeepCool’s air cooler!

The acoustic results for the Frozen Notte aren’t bad in this worst case acoustic scenario, measuring just slightly louder than Fractal Design’s Celsius+ S28.

95W PPT

Imposing even a minor power consumption limit on AMD’s Ryzen 7700X reduces cooling difficulty dramatically resulting in the ability to easily to cool the CPU under TJMax (95c), as such in these situations the total noise levels are more important. It’s also important to test in these TDP restricted situations, because most “real life” workloads will not push the CPU to it’s limits.

The results in this scenario are much like the previous ones, with Thermalright’s Frozen Notte performing on par with Iceberg Thermal’s IceSLEET X7 Dual in both thermal performance and total noise levels.

75W PPT

Lowering the PPT to 75W further reduces the cooling difficulty, bringing CPU temperatures down to 40C over a 23C ambient temperature. As with the previous results, when paired with AMD’s Ryzen 7700X the Frozen Notte performs on par with Iceberg Thermal’s IceSLEET X7 Dual air cooler.

Conclusion

The results from testing Thermalright’s Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB were quite curious. When paired with Intel’s i9-13900K it offered top tier cooling performance comparable to many 360mm coolers – cooling up to 298W in long term loads.

However, the results were different when paired with AMD’s Ryzen 7700X – performing only on par with high end air cooling. For this reason, I recommend the Frozen Notte 240 for cooling Intel’s i9-13900k – but not AMD’s Ryzen 7700X.

If this cooler interests you, it is currently available on NewEgg for $109.99 USD