The Reeven Arcziel 12 is available for £39.99 which isn’t exactly the most attractive price in the world but its a decent start from Reeven.
We can see from the performance figures that the Reeven Arcziel 12 performs okay and is capable of taming a heavily overclocked Ivy Bridge processor. Although we did have some slight issues with noise in the overclocked configuration but as always we think its very important to point out we were running Prime95 for an extended period of time. During “realistic” use of our test system, such as playing Battlefield 3 and encoding videos, the acoustics never jumped above 43dBA – which is whisper quiet.
However, if the ambient conditions were much hotter than ours then the acoustics could become an issue. A 7 volt fan speed reducer cable would go down a treat with this CPU cooler – although this would add some more cost.
Mounting on the Arcziel 12 was slightly tricky but we had no complaints. The mounting equipment is perfectly adequate and provides a strong contact with the CPU as well as being versatile enough to support every major socket including LGA 2011. The overall build quality, packaging and attention-to-detail is quite amazing considering how young Reeven are and the aesthetics are left down to your own judgement – but I really liked them myself.
Reeven have produced an attractive looking CPU cooler with good performance considering its single fan and top down design. The Acoustics need some work but they aren’t irreconcilable, a fan speed reducer cable or a lower RPM fan would easily solve this minor hitch. At £39.99 the Reeven Arcziel 12 is more expensive than we would of liked to see, but if you’re looking for a really unique looking CPU cooler that can handle the latest mid range processors (LGA 1155 with overclocks) and is generally very quiet, then you need look no further than the Arcziel 12.
Oh boy the cooling market sure doesn’t have a shortage of players. This company has one of the silliest catch phrases out there. Maybe it’s not a bad thing.