Gelid Antarctica Ultra-Quiet Tower CPU Cooler Review

Peter Donnell / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

The Gelid Antarctica is available from QuietPC for a very reasonable £33.46. Stock is limited to just a few retailers, but availability seems good overall, so you shouldn’t have any issues finding one at this price. It’s not overly expensive and given the performance, we think this is a great deal for any system build.

Overview

I wasn’t expecting particularly huge performance from this cooler, given that it has a relatively slim cooling tower design, but with Gelid’s extensive cooling knowledge, there’s certainly a lot of positive things to say about the Antarctica. The performance wasn’t anything amazing, but when you look at the size of the cooler, as well as its price tag, it’s got what it takes to give the competition of run for their money. Even when overclocking, we found the temperatures to be more than satisfactory and the fan managed to stay calm and quiet throughout. There’s easily room to push the fan harder, or even add a second fan if you wanted more cooling performance, but equally so to lower the fan RPM for ultra-quiet performance, without losing much in terms of cooling performance.

The build quality is perfect, at least for this price range. The fan is particularly nice, with a durable design and a very quiet operation even at higher RPM. The addition of it being all black with a black braided PWM cable only helps sweeten the deal. If I could improve one thing, it would be the fan mounting clips as I don’t like those metal spring clips, but at least they get the job done easily enough.

The tower is very nicely designed, with durable things and thick heat pipes that obviously do a great job shifting heat from the CPU, now doubt helped by that secondary fin array on the back of the cooling block. There’s a good size, smooth copper contact plate too, which give a nice clean fit over the CPU and overall, it’s relatively easy to install. The aesthetics are a little standard and somewhat safe, but I’ll take performance over a flamboyant design any day of the week.

Finally, the best bonus here is a small tube of GC-Extreme, one of the best thermal pastes on the market and there’s enough included for multiple re-installations of the cooler.

Pros

Robust build quality
Tidy aesthetics
Great quality fan
Competitive performance
Affordable price
Quiet
Suitable for overclocking
GC-Extreme thermal paste included

Cons

None

Neutral

Design is a little bland, but that’s hardly a deal breaker
Spring fan clips are a bit fiddly, but this is true of all clips this style, and many coolers use them

“Great cooling performance, a quiet 140mm fan, robust build quality and an affordable price tag make the Antarctica one of our favourite coolers on the market today. Highly recommended!”