Testing:
The all-in-one water cooling kits have been a product line which usually consists of putting the pump and water block together and running two tubs to a small radiator which is just big enough for a 60mm fan. The pump and fan run at a constant speed no matter the temp of the processor. Cooling your CPU this way may be affective and potentially better than a stock CPU heat sink, but this type of setup is usually a little noisy while the PC is sitting at idle which is a big negative for most PC users who are looking for a quit PC. The CoolIT Domino is designed to combat this with a larger fan of 120mm and the option of three settings. Choosing to water cool the CPU over a stock heat sink has many advantages such as the ability to keep the CPU temp down and closer to room’s ambient temperature. For example, we ran our AMD Phenom II AM3 x4 810 processor with the standard OEM heat sink in a room which has an ambient temp of 73 degrees. The processor at idle maintained a temperature of 93 degrees and under load the processor climbed to 115 degrees. While the 10’ X 10’ room was closed off, the room temp climbed to just 95 degrees the processor under load climbed to 125 degrees. Game performance degredation was noticed, but nothing catastrophic. With the game performance degraded slightly, the stress on the processor could shorten the life or even CPU over-heat and failure. We installed the CoolIT Domino on the same system and ran the same tests. The Domino was set to the middle setting which turned up the speed of the pump and radiator fan a few RPM, but also the middle setting allows the Domino to automatically speed up the pump and fan to higher RPMs if the CPU temp climbed. The room ambient temperature was once again 73 degrees and the PC was powered up and ran at idle. The CPU temperature at idle displayed by the Domino LCD was 83 degrees Fahrenheit (NOTE: it is possible to display Celsius on the Domino by press and holding the button till the display changes). The CPU was once again put under load and the climbed to 87 degrees and held. The room was then sealed off and the ambient room temperature climbed to 95 degrees once again. This time, the CPU stayed just 10 to 14 degrees higher than the ambient room temperature. Game play didn’t seem to be affected by this temperature change as it was noticed while using the OEM heat sink.
Conclusion:
There are a lot of choices on the market today to cool your CPU, which range from all-in-one kits to modular kits, but by far the Domino from CoolIT is one of the best we have seen. Also the price is a point that only smaller noisier kits come close to (at the time of this review $79.99). The features of adjusting the pump and fan to minimize noise, but keeping the CPU temp down is simply priceless. The only draw back we had come to was the size of the Domino kept it out of a few of out mid-tower cases, some which only had a 80mm fan access port. So if your looking to cool your CPU on a budget and you don’t want to risk spilling coolant on your computer during installation or later, then take a look at the Domino from CoolIT. You won’t be disappointed!
This system of carefully designed and selected components will provide over 50,000 hours or worry free operation backed by an unprecedented 2 year manufacturer warranty.
I just filed a customer complaint. I came home to find my home server shut down due to CPU overtemp. I run SETI in the background so this keeps my dual core system working when the server is not busy and I have seen CPU temps of 115 to 120 with a traditional heatsink/fan. . The pump speed indicates ‘—–‘ and switching back and forth from quiet to performance mode was no help. The Domino ALC unit is less than 60 days old. I will relay here the results of the customer service experience.
Question for anyone who has used this ALC….
I have a Coolmaster Centurion 5 case with 120mm Fan on the back so I’m fairly confident this will fit and mount in my case. But by mounting it I am wondering if I need to install another exhaust fan since I will be replacing the only exhaust fan that exists in the case?
Or does this unit pull enough air out of the chassis to give me proper air flow?
Do not buy this, it supposedly is sealed forever…. well the mount to one of the tubes cracked (the lower tube where it connects to the radiator) and sprayed (apparently water based) conductive coolant into my 350$ graphics card and corroded it. I opened the thing and its all corroded and green. Totally destroyed. It’s like they just used plain antifreeze, smells like water and green toxic glycol.
Don’t buy this, its a piece of crap that ended up costing me more money than I thought i was saving getting an all in one unit.
Supposed to work maintenance free for thousands of hours or whatever, I just build my computer band new, it had been on for probably less than 30 hrs total before this happened. DO NOT BUY
I would like to see a picture of your setup and how you had the coolant lines run. My experience with CoolIT products has been without issue and I have never had any of their stuff break or leak on me. That being said no product is without the occasional problem or breaking. Have you at least contacted CoolIT to see if they will replace and or fix your system and their product? Give them a chance and I think they will please you.