Id-Cooling Frozn A620 SLK Review

About the same size as Id-Cooling’s 2024 upscale effort, the Frozn A620 SLK has little else in common with its forebear’s design. For its slightly higher price, will the redesign bring it a level of quality that matches its high-end rivals…without significant penalty to value?

Inside The Box

We were confused at first when we found only a pair of Intel cross brackets in the Frozn A620 SLK’s installation kit, but rest assured it does support AMD’s sockets AM5 and AM4 as well, which is great for our review progress since we’ll be testing it that way. Since those AMD sockets include their own threaded-hole backplate but Intel’s mainstream sockets don’t, the kit adds an Intel backplate to its tube of thermal paste, four standoffs, four standoff nuts standoff socket, installation guide and extra-long Phillips-style screwdriver.

The reason we don’t see AMD brackets in the current installation kit is that Id Cooling merely added the AMD holes to its Intel brackets. They’re visible at the edge of the crossbar. Also note that the standoff (one of four) has #6-32 threads on one end and M3 threads on the other: Designed to match the factory socket brace of AMD’s socket AM5 and AM4 motherboards, Id-Cooling uses those same #6-32 threads on its Intel socket brace.

The fin stack sits 38mm above the copper base plate that holds the cooler’s six 6mm heat pipes: Opposite that smoothly machined surface, a clamping bar relies on spring-loaded barrel nuts to press the base plate against a CPU’s integrated heat spreader.

Also notice the screwed-on basket that surrounds the bottom of the center fan.

No more failed adhesive: The Frozn A620 SLK uses a clip-on top cover to hide mounting holes and bracket screws, and Id-Cooling emblazons that piece with a chrome-like reflective “FROZN” label.

The four screws under the snap-off top cover hold the center fan’s mounting bracket in place: Id-Cooling chose a 25mm-thick 120mm fan for this location despite the front fan’s 15mm thickness.

The center fan is screwed only to its top bracket, while the front fan’s frame is bounded on three sides with the plastic frame of its mounting bracket. Designed with counter-rotating blades to reduce turbulence, the extremely short PWM connectors of both fans rely on an included 14”-long splitter cable to tidily deliver power, tachometer and PWM signals.

Our AMD installation started by adding the cooler’s included standoffs to the holes where our motherboard’s factory clip brackets were once screwed (top), then adding the cross bracket and securing it with included nuts (bottom). The threaded nub sticking out of the center of the cross brackets are designed to receive the barrel nuts of the base’s clamping bar.

With both cross brackets installed, we added thermal paste to our CPU, topped it with the cooler, and inserted the included long-shaft screwdriver through each of the two holes to screw the cooler’s barrel nuts onto each cross-bracket’s threaded nub. We remembered to provide even pressure by alternating between the upper and lower nuts one turn at a time.

With the cooler mounted and its fan splitter cable plugged into the CPU fan header of our motherboard, we snapped the top cover back into place and turned our system on.

Testing The Frozn A620 SLK

We’ll be comparing the Frozn A620 SLK to our five most recently evaluated dual-tower coolers using the following configuration:

System Configuration
Case	Thermaltake Ceres 500 TG ARGB
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: 12 cores/ 24 threads, 64MB L3 Cache O/C to 5.00 GHz at 1.25 V Core
Motherboard	ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi, BIOS 1.18
RAM	Sabrent Rocket SB-DR5U-32GX2 64GB DDR5-4800
System Drive	HP SSD FX900 M.2 1TB NVMe SSD

Results

Only 4% temperature difference separates the top six coolers, and the Frozn A620 SLK falls right into the center of that mix: Our system likewise ties for third place when relying on its waste air to cool our voltage regulator.

We were a little surprised to see the A620 SLK falling to fifth place in noise suppression, but at least the greater noise made by the competing A60E adds perspective to its slightly better cooling.

Since CPU cooling capacity fell within 4% when comparing similarly-configured models, the far larger price difference overwhelms our cooling-to-price comparison. By being the third cheapest model, the Frozn A620 SLK becomes the third best-value.

The compared A60E’s bottom-tier pricing makes it the elephant in the room, while the Dark Rock Elite faces the opposite distinction: Similar performance leaves things like aesthetics to justify the prices of higher-tier models. At the extremes, Sama’s A60E costs $15 less and be quiet!’s Dark Rock Elite $50 more than the A620 SLK. All three present visuals that well match that price spread, leaving buyers to decide which price point their builds should represent.

Id-Cooling Frozn A620 SLK (EAN: 6931393308678)
Pros:	Cons:
Great overall performance Mid-tier fit, finish and design	Mid-tier pricing
The Verdict:
A design triumph over its prior A620 Pro SE, the Frozn A620 SLK provides the aesthetic quality that a mid-tier build deserves.

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