CoolIT Systems – ECO ALC Cooling System

Introduction

As we get into the summer months many of us geeks begin to think thoughts of sweltering heat and preserving our components from the dreaded hard lock cause by critical system components overheating and beginning to fail. One of the biggest causes of the summertime blue screen blues is the CPU getting too hot and shutting down to preserve itself. While liquid cooling is nothing new to the PC market it has always been a niche group that dare to liquid cool, many people when faced with the daunting expense and potential for catastrophic failure generally decide against introducing liquid to their expensive gaming rigs. Fortunately the cool folks over at CoolIT Systems have brought us a product that promises to introduce liquid cooling at a substantial reduction of cost and risk as opposed to standard liquid cooling. I am happy to introduce ECO  A.L.C which stands for Advanced Liquid Cooling and promises to cool your CPU without breaking the bank.

CoolIT Systems take:

Quick to Install Into Any Chassis – The extremely compact ECO A.L.C. comes pre-assembled making it easy to install into any chassis with a few simple steps. Unlike heavy air cooled solutions, the ECO exerts little weight on the motherboard keeping the solution well below the maximums specified by Intel and AMD.

There was relatively little introducing the ECO A.L.C  on CoolIT Systems website which would lead one to believe that the cooler should stand on its own and easily shine without any fancy wording from the manufacture to hold it up. Let’s take a look at the specs after the break to see if it gives us any additional insight prior to testing it

Features as seen from the company’s site:

CoolIT CPU FHE (Fluid Heat Exchanger)

• Copper Micro-Channel

Universal Retention System

• Out of the box support provided for Intel 775, 1156, 1366 and AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 sockets.

CoolIT Proprietary Pump

• Quiet, compact, long life CFF1 pump

• Ceramic bearing

• Life Cycle: 50,000 Hours MTTF

CoolIT Coolant

• CoolIT Systems low toxicity with anti-corrosion/anti fungal additives

CoolIT Radiator

• Custom engineered for low noise high heat dissipation

CoolIT Fan

• High reliability, Quiet 12V

• Speed: 1800 RPM MAX

CoolIT CPU Thermal Grease

• CoolIT Systems Pro A.T.C. (Advanced Thermal Compound)

CoolIT 2 Year Manufacturer Warranty

Basically when we break down the specs we have a copper heat exchanger which we know will be effective because just about any cooler worth its salt uses copper for heat transfer because its uber conductive to heat. We know the retention system supports all of today’s desktop processors and I can attest to its efficiency at holding the heat transfer plate against the CPU for maximum surface to surface transfer of heat. On the heat transfer plate we have some of CoolIT’s proprietary thermal compound which helps facilitate the heat transfer. Beyond the heat transfer plates we have what makes a liquid cooler a liquid cooler which is a pump to move some of CoolIT’s proprietary coolant, the pump used in the lower cost ECO A.L.C is the same pump used in the company’s more expensive products which is good to know that you are getting the same high quality components as those who buy the several hundred dollar model. Finishing up the whole unit is a standard 180mm fan connected to a radiator which will help dissipate the heat which is transferred from the CPU to the fan by the coolant.

Packaging:

Front side of the box, states the product name and socket support	Back side of the box, shows specs and a brief promotional blurb
Shows a diagram of how the product works with short blurbs on the pump, retention system, and radiator	Much like the front states the name but lacks the socket support

While the outside of the box is informational its pretty plain all in white and black, the product inside has an equally spartan appearance which honestly is probably a good thing because theoretically that means the company spent more money on the substance instead of the jazz.

Here we have the full package,  the unit itself as well as the instructions and mounting components	A closer shot of the heat exchanger with thermal grease pre-applied and protected by a plastic casing
A close up of the fan which oddly enough points out which would mean it sucking warm air from in the case over the radiator and out the back instead of a lot of other liquid cooling products which want you to pull cold air into the case over the radiator…	A shot of the back side of the radiator as you can see the heat fins are very similar to those on an air conditioner which does basically does the same thing of removing the heat from the coolant.

After the break stick with me to see how the ECO A.L.C actually performs…

Testing:

Testing was done with

• Room temperature 91^oF with ~54% humidity
• Core i5 750 ( 3.71ghz)
• CoolIT ECO A.L.C
• Asus P7P55D motherboard
• 4gb DDR3 Patriot Viper Ram 1333 (O.C to 1560)
• 2TB Segate Barracuda XT SATA3
• 8800 GT
• Antec Nine Hundred case
• Thermaltake Tough Power XT 750w
• Windows 7 Enterprise

Installing the cooler was a snap the directions walk you through the easy setup with my only caveat being that you need to remove your motherboard from its chassis before you can install this cooler as it requires a back plate to screw into. Personally I love coolers that require a back plate because it always feels like a more sturdy connection.

as you can see it fits rather nicely onto the board.

I was worried that the tubing would run into the fan on the top of the case, fortunately its flexible enough to be routed away.

After the installation I fired up the system checked the bios it reads 31^oC which translates to roughly 88^oF my first thought is sweet. It would be a good time to note that prior to installing the ECO A.L.C I grabbed the temperature while idling (40^oC – 104^oF) and under load (60^oC -141^oF)

To test I left both the stock cooler and the ECO A.L.C running idle for 60 minutes to make sure everything was warmed up then I ran 2 instances of Prime95 using the In-Place Large FFTs test which will generate the largest amount of heat and power consumption on the processor itself. I left this test to run for an hour and recorded the final temperatures.

As you can see from the chart the ECO A.L.C clearly does a better job of keeping the temps low at least compared to the stock heat sink the final values for the ECO A.L.C were 87^oF idle and about 122^oF under load which is a decent amount from what the stock provides.

Conclusion:

My thoughts on the ECO A.L.C CPU cooler are mixed I feel that for the price which is about $75 at the time of this writing this is an awesome cooler it does its job under a heavy load and on a hot processor very well. I am not sure how this will stand against a true water cooling set I feel that the larger tubing in a true water cooling setup may have an advantage but with it comes several heavy risks that are not present with the ECO A.L.C such as the constant need to keep it clean and the ever present possibility of spilling into the system possibly ruining valuable components. That being said I love this cooler for what it is and coming from using air coolers I am not sure I would change back now after using the ECO A.L.C though having seen the cooling increase and stability that comes with it I think I would bit the bullet and go full out water cooling, think of the ECO A.L.C as your gateway drug into the world of water cooling, because honestly once you head down this path your probably not going to want to go back. As a cooler on a decent price range I would defiantly recommend this to everyone who are using air cooling and are interested in trying something new.