The Domino ALC

One of our very first stops at CES 2009 was at the CoolIT booth to meet CEO Geoff Lyon and finally see the Domino A.L.C. all-in-one water cooling system. Mr. Lyon gave us a great tour of the company booth, showed us some of the sweet things they had in the works, and left us with an overall great impression of the Domino. It seemed almost too good to be true. Here’s a unit that’s easy to install, requires little to no maintenance, looks great, and performs on-par or better than most air coolers. Of course, we asked for a review sample. Demand for the Domino has been high from the get-go and it took a while to finally get it into our hands, but we think the wait was worth it. At last, we can put speculation to rest.

What is the Domino A.L.C.? It’s a sealed unit that consists of a small waterblock that mounts to AMD Socket AM2+ and Intel Socket 775/1366 CPUs via a tension spring screw system, attached by semi-rigid short, small diameter tubes running to a large control unit which houses an oversized sealed 120mm radiator and fan, small pump, and LCD screen control module. This radiator/pump/controller mounts to most standard 120mm case exhaust fan attachment points by either machine screws or rubber vibration dampening quick mounts. The entire system runs off a single 3 or 4-pin motherboard fan connector and comes with pre-applied silver thermal paste on the base of the heatsink. The MSRP is $79.99

Product Specifications via CoolIT
User Interface
* High contrast backlit LCD
* Single push button control for configuring operation mode and temperature scale
* Audible status alerts

Operation Modes (Fan Speeds)
* Quiet: 1100-2500 RPM
* Performance*: 1100-2500 RPM
* Full: 2900 RPM
*System automatically increases cooling performance at an increased rate compared to Quiet Mode.

Physical Specifications
* Dimensions: 14.0 x 12.5 x 15.5 mm
* Weight: 1.03 kg
* Operating Voltage: 11.6-12.4V
* Power Consumption: 8W (Max)
* Life Cycle: 50,000 Hours (MTBF)

Fan
* Long life, low noise
* Dimension: 120 x 120 x 25 mm
* Noise: 19.2 dBA (Min)

Pump
* CFF1 long life ceramic bearing
* Noise: <21 dBA

Radiator
* Custom engineered for low noise heat dissipation
* Dimension: 157 x 120 x 27 mm

CPU FHE (Fluid Heat Exchanger)
* Copper Micro-Channel
* Surface Dimension: 50 x 50 mm

Coolant
* Proprietary with anticorrosion/antifungal additives

CPU Thermal Grease
* Proprietary Pro Advanced Thermal Compound

Warranty
* 2 Year Manufacturer

The retail Domino A.L.C. packaging.

The system comes with instructions and is protected by a plastic clam shell.

Everything comes sealed in plastic snap-together clam shell packaging in the box. Along with the unit, buyers will find a directions booklet and mounting hardware with a small selection of spare mounting parts, including extra C-clips for retaining the mounting springs and additional rubber vibration insulators. Also in the box are all the requisite top and back plates for mounting to the various CPU sockets. All the top and back plates are very high quality, well-finished items that should stand up to years of abuse.

Installation woes

Mounting the Domino A.L.C. is purported to be easy. At CES, where it won the coveted CES Innovations 2009 Design and Engineering Showcase Honors, they even had races with convention goers to see who could set it up the quickest. One simply has to attach the four screws clamping the water block to the backplate, then pop the four rubber attachment pieces through the case’s rear 120mm fan attachment points. It sounds simple. It isn’t.

The Domino's mounting hardware for AMD and Intel systems.

First, the back plate must be installed on the motherboard. For testing purposes, Icrontic is using its ASUS P6T Socket 1366 motherboard, Core i7 920 processor, and 6GB OCZ Blade DDR3-2000 memory kit in our NZXT Beta case. The all-metal back plate that comes with the Domino is a tight fit through the motherboard’s attachment holes. It took quite a bit of force to pop the attachment points through the holes in the board. Note that the Domino requires a non-standard back plate where the threaded attachment points protrude up through the board. This is contrary to traditional back plates where the threaded attachment points rest behind the board.

The board is then re-mounted in the case. For Intel systems, the Domino shares a single top plate with two sets of spring screw mounting holes; one for Socket 775 and one for Socket 1366. For this install, the spring screws were already in the correct position for our Socket 1366 processor so we did not have to move the spring screws. Later work to adapt the system to our Socket AM3 test rig showed the process of moving the spring screws to be a frustrating experience due in part to CoolIT’s use of small C-clips that attach the screws to the top plate. The clips are not easily removed and prone to flying across the room. We found no tools in our standard PC tool kit that facilitated their removal and resorted to prying them loose with a butter knife blade before attempting to grab them with small needle nose pliers. Reports from other users indicate they also break easily. This could account for CoolIT’s decision to include extras with the mounting hardware.

With the spring screws in the correct positions, it’s now time to try and attach the water block to the back plate. It’s a three handed job, or a delicate balancing act. One hand is required to hold the Domino’s radiator, one is used to hold the screws straight so they can attach correctly, and one is used to work the Phillips #2 screwdriver. A talented contortionist can sometimes balance the radiator upon his arm and steady the screws at the same time, but it’s an artform that requires practice and patience. Also, it isn’t possible to start the screws by hand thanks to little black caps CoolIT places around the screw heads. Presumably, these are to prevent the slippage of the screwdriver tip from flying off the head of the screw and gouging motherboard components, a problem found mostly with flat bladed screwdrivers and not with Phillips heads, but we appreciate their misguided concern. After a few minutes of cussing the situation, the water block was then successfully mounted. At this time, the power plug was also attached to the motherboard’s CPU fan header.

When it came time to mount the radiator to the case’s 120mm exhaust fan mount, we were met with another problem. The Domino A.L.C.’s radiator is larger than a standard 120mm fan. The top of the radiator extended past the bounds of the normal fan and fouled against the power supply. It wouldn’t fit. Like most hardware enthusiasts, we decided to improvise at this point. The radiator’s rubber mounts were removed and we threaded in the large screws that came with the unit into the mounting holes. Then we moved the unit down enough to give the top of the radiator enough clearance and screwed through the case’s fan grill, attaching the Domino A.L.C. via its top two mount points. This still allowed a large amount of airflow through the radiator at the expense of aesthetics.

And at this point, as if things couldn’t get worse, we found another issue. Not only is the radiator system of the Domino A.L.C. taller than a 120mm fan, but it’s wider too. The NZXT Beta has a nice rolled edge along the back of the case to prevent cuts. This rolled edge contacted with the Domino’s LCD screen enclosure, bulging out the side of the case when the unit was fully attached. With the water cooler attached it would not be possible to close the case door. For testing purposes we do not attach the case door, but some users may be disappointed to see that the Domino doesn’t fit well in their case.

Noise

All said and done, the Domino fired up without a hitch. The LED screen emits a nice blue glow and is easily read, and pressing the button on the side of the unit allows users to toggle between three performance modes which adjust the fan speed on the radiator. At low speed, the unit is barely audible; medium speed it makes noise comparable to most performance air coolers, and at full blast it becomes a dull roar of wooshing air similar to a hair dryer at the end of a long hall.

Testing

For comparison purposes we’re using the tried-and-true Noctua NH-U12P heatsink with its stock NF-P12 fan. At 19.8dB and and 54 CFM, the included fan provides good air flow at and quiet operation making this heatsink a favorite for noise-conscious users still looking for a performance heatsink. While the Noctua unit won’t win today’s air cooler performance crowns, it’s a solid heatsink with renowned build quality that comes with a hefty $60 price tag. With the Noctua heatsink we’ll once again use OCZ Freeze thermal paste to provide an interface material between the CPU and heatsink. We unfortunately didn’t have any of CoolIT’s thermal paste to use to make this a direct comparison.

The Core i7 was tested at stock speeds with the CoolIT Domino A.L.C. running in all three modes, and was overclocked to 3.2GHz and tested with the cooler at full blast to gauge how the Domino handles heavy load systems. All testing was done at 100 percent CPU utilization through Prime95 loading eight threads of Small FFT loops for ten loops with temperatures recorded via the CPU sensor in Everest Ultimate running under Windows 7 Release Candidate One.

The data shows the CoolIT Domino A.L.C. outperforming the Noctua heatsink only when the fan is cranked to the max and the processor is left at stock speeds. In all other testing configurations, the cheaper air cooler has the performance edge.

Conclusion

The ALC unit with the waterblock.

The Domino is a mixed bag it seems. The performance isn’t terrible by any means, but it’s nothing spectacular either. Lets run down the list of reasons people might consider water cooling, and how the Domino fits in to those ideas.

Performance: Water cooling is known as a sweet way to pull those last few remaining megahertz out of an overclocked chip when the limit is reached on air. An overclocker-friendly water cooling setup runs a few hundred dollars–well above the Domino A.L.C.’s price range. It’s not fair to expect it to compete with such setups, but one would expect it to perform as well as other air coolers in the same price range.

Noise: Multiple companies have marketed water cooling as a way to quiet a system down. High performance air cooling usually brings high noise, but most water cooling setups are almost silent, yielding good to excellent cooling performance without sacrificing their acoustic footprints. The Domino can run quietly, sure, but it’s performance suffers when paired with a hot quad-core chip like the Core i7. Which makes a nice segue to–

Space: Water cooling is sometimes the only option for people working in cramped cases with strange motherboard clearances. Got a PSU hanging over your CPU socket and RAM with heatsinks spikier than an anime character’s hair? Water cooling may be the only way to effectively cool your CPU. The Domino could work in this instance, but the benefit gained with its small footprint around the CPU socket is offset by its oversized mounting requirements for the control module/radiator/pump. It takes more than just a 120mm fan slot to fit this thing in a case.

The CoolIT Domino A.L.C. is probably best for casual users running cooler processors at stock speeds. Dual or triple-core chips at stock speeds should see nice temperatures under it, and simple HTPCs might consider it for the low speed fan setting’s quiet operation, although fitting it in an HTPC case will probably be a chore.

In the end, it looks like CoolIT has a good foundation for a future product. If they tweaked the mounting system to use thumbscrews, created a way to control fan speed remotely instead of having to open the case, refined the mounting system to be better compatible with more cases, and stepped up the performance just a bit more they’d have a sure-fire winner. Until then, the Domino A.L.C. is only a niche product. We just don’t know what that niche is.