Cool stuff at CoolIT

Peter G. 10 Jan, 2010 at 5:55pm ET Article published in Tech

CoolIT’s CEO Geoff Lyon gave us a tour of the company’s booth today at CES. After last year’s launch of the Domino A.L.C., they returned to CES with four new products that build on different areas of the Domino’s successes.

The Eco A.L.C.

First, and in our view the most attractive, was the Eco A.L.C. cooler. Like the Domino before it, it’s a sealed loop, maintenance-free water cooling solution, but this time they’ve gone for a no-frills version that ditches the flashy LCD multi-mode options. Instead, they’ve refined the whole design. The pump now consumes only 1W of power, the radiator has been redesigned to maximize compatibility with case mountings, the tubing is longer and has swivel mounts on the waterblock side, and the new mounting system quickly and easily adjusts to fit all current Intel or AMD sockets. Overall block height is under 50mm, which they claim makes it the lowest profile cooler on the market.

If that’s not enough of a bold claim, Lyon says it’s the “best $75 cooler you can buy anywhere” and that they’ve improved performance by 6-8 degrees celsius on a 150W load over the old Domino. We can’t wait to see how it shapes up on the test bench, but in a demonstration at CoolIT’s booth, they had the Eco running side-by-side with a Swiftech GTZ, Laing DDC pump and a Black Ice Xtreme 120mm radiator setup using matching fans and 175W loading plates. The Eco’s die temp was cooler by a solid margin. It’s not an easy pill to swallow when a $75 part schools one of the most popular DIY setups in water cooling so we hope to test it soon and see how it stacks up. It’s available now.

The Vantage and Omni A.L.C.s in use

On the other end of the spectrum, the CoolIT Vantage A.L.C. has all the bells and whistles. For $125, it gives users an LCD screen mounted to the top of the waterblock to view cooling data, multiple operational modes and a 2.4GHz wireless interface they call CoolIT ESP. Plug in a USB dongle and you can control three fans and three RGB-selectable LED lighting arrays through CoolIT’s Maestro software control panel.

The control panel is expandable by adding additional controller modules which will be available a la carte from CoolIT’s website. Additionally, after the Vantage is released in late February or early March, CoolIT plans on opening up an SDK for the ESP controllers. It should be available for download roughly six months after the cooler’s release. Maestro will be available by itself for $90.

A breakdown of the Omni's cooling setup.

On the graphics front, CoolIT is bringing out several GPU coolers for single-card and dual-card setups. These products, called the Omni A.L.C. feature the ESP wireless technology for interaction with the Maestro software suite. The GPU blocks are all single-slot coolers made up of two pieces, the standard cooling plate and an interposer plate that attaches the cooling plate to the PCB. The nice bit is, once you’ve got an Omni system you can upgrade video cards and keep the cooling system by switching out interposer plates which will be available for new high-end cards with a price point around $50 depending on the card. Single-card Omni systems will retail for under $300 and dual-card rigs will be above $300.

Comments

10 Jan 2010 ~ 6:31pm GooD Nice stuff

With that kind of maintenance-free kit getting better i think my next computer could be water-cooled :P
10 Jan 2010 ~ 7:13pm Garg The price and performance is pretty compelling on the CPU coolers! I'm not as convinced on the GPU cooler, though. $300 seems like a bit much.
10 Jan 2010 ~ 8:21pm BuddyJ Yeah, on the GPU stuff you're paying a premium early on for the ESP/Maestro setup and saving money down the road as you won't need a new cooling plate when you get a new card. Instead, you just buy a new interposer plate. Full card waterblocks are costly whereas the interposer plate is surprisingly affordable. Thrax and I both figured they'd be around $70-$80. Under $50 is a good deal.

They did mention that they're designing the Omni to handle heat loads higher than what's currently being sold so the system can handle future products and overclocking. Geoff specifically mentioned the Radeon 5800-series as a target product since they overclock so well.
10 Jan 2010 ~ 9:49pm Rofl Waffle Since GPU waterblocks only cost $100. The omni setup is pretty expensive at $300 and $50 per plate.

You can get like 6 EK waterblocks for the same price as 1 OMNI thing with 6 interposer plates. $300 more if you want to run two cards with the OMNI setup at the same time....
10 Jan 2010 ~ 10:15pm mas0n My whole water loop was less than $300, including the MCW60 which was $40 and is now on its 4th GPU.

I'd also like to know how loud these products are. Back before I built my water loop I played around with the CoolIT Freezone for a few days but returned it because the noise was insane for the temps I wanted.
10 Jan 2010 ~ 10:49pm Thrax Your cooling was cheaper because your video card blocks are GPU-only, whereas the CoolIT solution is RAM, GPU <i>and</i> VRMs. That's a lot of extra overclocking headroom.

Also, the products were completely silent, and I was as close as a foot away from each of them.
10 Jan 2010 ~ 11:31pm mas0n Meh, I use the plate portion of the stock heatsink + the MCW60 and get performance just as good as any full coverage block. See here.

Really, I was just throwing my previous post out there as a sort of counter point. There is no denying the ease of use and "OMG sexy" of the CoolIT gear.
11 Jan 2010 ~ 1:23am BuddyJ Counter point noted.
11 Jan 2010 ~ 11:49am _k What about quality and leaks? Did they talk about that all because on newegg they get flamed about leaks and broken connectors?
12 Jan 2010 ~ 12:35pm BuddyJ Yeah. They're serious about that issue, going so far as to fly to the UK to meet with one review site who broke 3 (THREE?!WTF) Dominos.

The Eco's waterblock/pump unit now has 90 degree swivel fittings and longer tubing to relieve pressure on it and make it fit better. It was one of my big complaints and they fixed it.
12 Jan 2010 ~ 12:37pm BuddyJ Here's a larger shot to illustrate it.