It’s always interesting to see what comes out of the labs at CoolIT Systems. We saw many of their new innovations at CES 2010 and were pretty impressed with what we glimpsed. While I wasn’t able to get a look first hand due to a pre-show injury that didn’t sate my intrigue when they announced the product we’re reviewing today. The ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler is yet another product in the same vein as the Domino A.L.C. CPU cooler we reviewed more than a year ago. It sits in a similar price range, has a similar form factor, and has related underlying technology. It also won the same award from CES as its older Domino A.L.C. sibling. With a new set of refinements to the already innovative Domino A.L.C., the new ECO A.L.C. is set to make its older brother proud. To see how proud, let’s get this thing tested and reviewed.
And What A Refinement…
While being in the same vein as the Domino by being an inexpensive entry into the world of water cooling, the ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler is closer in design and implementation to the Corsair H50. It’s a stripped down design, consisting a single radiator, short tubing, and a CPU waterblock with the pump built in. There’s no fancy thermally regulated temperature display with this unit. Here’s a full listing of the specifications.
- 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 anticorrosion/antifungal 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
Lot’s of juicy info can be found on the product home page. I think you might want to stick to our site though, since I hear a lot of people have been waiting for a comparison between the ECO, the Domino, and the H50. All of which are very similarly priced and we’ll need to settle that score once and for all.
The New Block
The first feature of notice on the CoolIT ECO is the heat exchanger. Not only does it incorporate a water block, but it also contains a pump in it’s housing. The pump is powered by a 3-pin connectors, which utilizes the fan headers found on the motherboard. CoolIT’s design is a little more bulky then the Corsair H50, but it’s also easier to work with during install. It’s also very well integrated and looks very sharp.
And by easier to work with I mean you can actually mount the CoolIT ECO without the stress associated with trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. The Corsair H50’s mounting system was very much tool-less, but it was also a wee bit of a pain. The mounting system on the CoolIT ECO on the other hand does require a screw driver, but it’s stupid easy to install. The only catch is that motherboard removal is required, at least for Intel installations.This seems to be the deal with most aftermarket CPU coolers these days so definitely not a mark against the ECO. The current crop of new performance enclosures like the Cooler Master HAF932 seem to remedy this with a CPU installation cut out on the back of the case.
For my AMD test rig all I needed to do was remove the existing heatsink bracket while keeping the backplate in place. Then I placed the waterblock on the CPU, screwed it down, and cracked a beer to celebrate my genius. CoolIT has even pre-applied some of their own thermal compound, so if you’re not picky about your thermal compounds that step is taken care of for you as well.
The New Radiator
To remove the heat, CoolIT chose to use a 120mm radiator and fan combo in the cooling loop. Unlike the Domino before it, the ECO uses a pretty barebones setup on the radiator. The fan is pre-mounted to the rad, and the hoses are firmly secured, and that’s about it. The radiator itself is powder coated aluminum with a rather dense collection of fins for good surface area effects. Though it’s thin it should be able to wick away a lot of heat.
The total size of the radiator and fan assembly also lend to the ease of mounting the CoolIT into any case. The cooler is fairly universal as long as you define universal as cases that have 120mm rear exhaust fans. That’s actually fairly common these days, with only a few exceptions. The total thickness of the assembly won’t interfere with most motherboards.
The Test Rig
To test the CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler, I hooked it up to my standard (and apparently somewhat obsolete) test rig. Specs are as follows.
- AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU
- ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 790FX Motherboard
- OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 AMD Black Edition Ready 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit
- ASUS EAH5850/G/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 Video Card
- Kingston SSDnow V-Series 128GB Solid State Hard Drive
- HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
- Ultra Products X4 1050W Modular ATX Power Supply
Of course we’ll be pitting the ECO A.L.C. against both the CoolIT Domino A.L.C. CPU cooler and the Corsair Hydro Series H50 High-Performance CPU cooler in our tests. We’ll test idle and load temperatures under all coolers, as well as take a peak at noise levels. OCCT is our program of choice for the former, with a good ol’ dB meter being used for the latter. Also worth nothing is the fact that our Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition is the original first run 140W TDP version that has a tendency to run on the “spicy” side. This should provide some extra load as most of the top CPUs like the new AMD Phenom II X6 1090T and even the INTEL Core i7 980X 6-Core use no more than 125 – 130W respectively.
Installation and Setup
As noted, installation of the CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler is fairly easy and straight forward. I found it a fair degree easier than the Corsair H50. The mounting system is also more sturdy then the original CoolIT Domino A.L.C. CoolIT also provides the brackets needed to install the ECO on the major Intel and AMD platforms. It’s even compatible with the new Phenom II X6 6-core processors from AMD.
As for the installation itself, the level of ease is based on what platform you are using. All the Intel platforms require removal of the motherboard from your case unless you have a new case with a CPU cooler installation cut out on the back of the motherboard tray. This is due to the need to install a mounting backplate, which is required for Socket 775, 1366, and 1156. AMD installations on the other hand may not require the removal of the motherboard, depending on clever you are. The bracket also accommodates all these sockets in one single innovative clip system that simply slides to the right setting, reducing the barrage of unnecessary parts.
The mounting system for the ECO, much like many other AMD cooling solutions, uses the existing AMD backplate found on every Socket AM2, AM2+, and AM3 motherboard. So if you’re clever enough to lay your case on it’s side, you simply need to unscrew the standard heatsink mounting bracket and secure the ECO exchange block. Then you plug the fan on the radiator into the CPU fan header on your board, the pump into the chassis header, and you’re done. Oh and don’t forget to disable any functions that automatically vary the fan speed in the BIOS.
Testing…Finally
And now we come to the moment everyone has been waiting for; the impetus behind this review. We finally get to the point where we compare the three sub-$80 water coolers we’ve now had come across our bench. Many have asked how these coolers stack up against each other, even though CoolIT is in a precarious position of competing against itself.
And as the results have told us, the CoolIT ECO has surpassed the original Domino A.L.C. in cooling performance and has totally blown the Corsair H50 out of the water. To make sure it was a fair fight, I had to make sure the fans on all three coolers were running at max. At full speed, the CoolIT ECO beat the Domino by 8% and the Corsair H50 by 19% when the CPU was idle. Placing a full 100% load on all four cores of our test CPU brought the numbers a little closer to each other, with the ECO pulling ahead of the Domino by just 4% and the Corsair H50 by 6%.
This may not seem like a big gap, but those extra few degrees of headroom can make a difference should you choose to overclock the CPU that will eventually reside under this cooler. Though I wouldn’t recommend hardcore overclocking using any of these entry level water coolers, the highlighted performance of CoolIT’s ECO A.L.C. might be just enough for you to push a few extra MHz out of your CPU safely. Having said that, comparisons between overclocked results can vary based on the amount of voltage being used. As we all know, not all CPUs get to a particular clock speed with the same voltage thus the only way to get a consistent result is to use the CPU at stock settings for testing. Your mileage varies when pushing things out of spec so please feel free to share your results in the comments.
As for acoustics, the CoolIT ECO did produce a noticeable din at idle when used on my open test bed. It was about 2dBA louder then the Domino A.L.C. However when installed into a case, the sound of the ECO was lost to the internals of that case and the fans held within. Under load the Corsair H50 is still the quietest of the three coolers, but not by much and at a cost in performance to the others.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
The CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler is a great response to the Corsair H50, and a great addition to the CoolIT line. CoolIT has done it once again, packing a well built product with excellent performance into a kit that sells for less than $70 USD. That’s less than many aftermarket air-cooling solutions and is yet another great cooler to look at for those wanting an easy to install gateway into water cooling. It can also fulfill the need for a quiet cooler for a hot CPU.
The benefits to this kit are numerous. As I noted the kit is very well built and solid, which was one of the complaints I had with the first release of the Domino kit. The fan on the ECO is quiet even at it’s highest setting, and can have its speed varied by way of a PWM connector. CoolIT even went ahead and included all the mounting hardware you’d need to use this cooler with almost any motherboard and CPU combination produced in the last 4 years. Their innovative new mounting system really makes it possible to have it all without extra parts. This is the first product I haven’t been able to muster a single complaint about in terms of user experience.
The only thing I can really gripe about is that the cooler doesn’t quite have the performance for serious overclockers, but that’s about it. CoolIT has other products for those purposes and it’s really not fair to put that on the ECO because it does what it does extremely well.
In the end, the CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler is summed up rather simply. It’s inexpensive (retails for only $74.99 US), performs wonderfully, and is well built. It shows how easy water-cooling a system can be, and how little one has to spend on it. Anyone who wants a good, quiet cooling solution should be out there buying one right now.
Pros
- Inexpensive
- Easy to install and setup
- Broad compatibility
- Quiet with great performance
Cons
- Might not be cool enough for high overclocks
Overall Rating: 9.5/10.0
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