CoolIT System Eco CPU Water Cooling System Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
2,038 words · ~10 min read
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So, I'm going to be having a look at a very exciting new product. This is the
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Coollet Eco. It is a brand new liquid
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cooling product from Coollet Systems. So, I don't know if you remember this
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far back, but their very first liquid cooler was the Coollet Freezone. Okay,
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so the Freezone was revolutionary. Well, not revolutionary because it wasn't the
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first cooler to ever use a tech or a pelchier, but it was the first one to do
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it with any commercial success with liquid cooling. So they went from there.
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They produced the Freezone Elite as well as the Pure. The Pure turned into the
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Domino and the Domino has given birth to the Eco. So as we uh go and unbox this
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product, I'll tell you a little bit more about the evolution of it. But why don't
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we start with what's on the outside of the box. So I'll use my handy dandy
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remote, have a zoom in here, and I will tell you what it says, even though you
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could probably read it just as easily yourself. So, it supports AMD, AM2, AM2
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Plus, AM3, as well as 775, 1156, and
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1366. So, pretty much every socket out there right now, as long as it's not a
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server socket, it is extreme cooling, maintenancefree, and simple to install.
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All right. Uh, what do we have on the outside here? This looks like the same
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thing. Is it like different languages or something? What are they
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doing? Oh, no. Oh, they've gone and they've put the same diagram on two
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sides of the box to confuse me. They
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actually have different bullet points on them. So, here we go. Universal
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retention system out of the box support provided for all of those sockets I
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listed below. Proprietary pump with a ceramic bearing including well, not
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including but a 5,000h hour lifetime.
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Okay, so meanantime to failure. All right. Then we have a high performance
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radiator which is custom engineered for low noise. So that generally means that
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it has a fairly low fin per inch rating. So that means that there's less
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turbulence as the air moves through the fan and overall less noise. It also
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means you can get better cooling out of it with a lower airflow fan. Superior
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cooling performance through technology and that's pretty much marketing spiel
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right there. All right. And then on the other side, quiet work and play
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environment. So they encourage you to use this both for work and play. It uses
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ATC thermal compound and ATC stands for
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advanced thermal compound. So, it's the advanced thermal compound thermal
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compound. It is maintenancefree. It is pre-filled, factory sealed, and it does
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not evaporate due to the kind of tubing they use. So, you don't have to refill
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it. High performance fluid heat exchanger. So, there that's what they
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call a CPU block, I suppose. All right. On the back, finally, we get quick to
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install in any chassis. So, I will be
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the judge of that because usually I can
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easily find flaws in these preackaged
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water cooling products that make it not fit in a number of chassis. So, let's
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get it out of the box. I haven't I mean, I saw this in person briefly at CES, but
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I never got to actually touch one.
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So, all right. You can see that Koolit has attached the styrofoam inside to the
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outer box extremely
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well. Oh, come on. All right, here we
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go. I found somewhere to pull on it. Sort of. Wow. This is
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um this is one of the more difficult unboxings I've run into in quite some
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time. Ah, here we go. Okay. Come off.
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It's like it's box is giving birth. It's
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a very narrow birth canal, too. All right, there we go. The box is off. And
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uh I the first thing I find is this piece of paper, which is a quick start
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guide. And it is a one, two, okay, it tells you what's in the box. And then
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it's a one, two, three step uh configure
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the retention bracket. So, as long as you get it set up for the right CPU that
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you're going to be installing it on, you put on a back plate. And then you secure
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the eco to your case and to the uh and to the CPU socket. Next, you connect a
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fan and the pump power. So, that is kind
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of more than three steps. I think they're cheating a little bit, but what can you
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do? This is the AMD retention bracket.
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So, you can see where that secures to the block. And you can see the spacing
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is clearly for AMD. All right. What do we have next? Actually, why don't I just
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go ahead and kind of put those back in there. All right. Next, we have a little
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uh elastic around our three different
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back plates. Okay. So, we have 775,
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1156, and 1366. It wouldn't be a bad
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move probably to do a universal back plate, but um maybe that's something
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that's coming down the road for a Koolit engineering team. All right, let me just
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see if I can get this open here.
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Okay. And inside the styrofoam
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clamshell, you can see this is extremely well packaged. Check that out. There is
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nowhere for this thing to move when it's in transit. I really like that. That
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makes me really happy to see them taking the care and attention to get you your
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product in as good shape as possible. Here, I'm going to show you the other
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side of this, too. So, it's completely enclosed in there. Very nice job,
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Coollet. Okay. So, it comes in a little baggie,
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and that'll prevent any incidental scratches or dings from happening to
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your cooler here. So, let's uh get this removed here. All right. So, why don't
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we start with the radiator, which is what the uh the DIY water cooling guys
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would call this particular piece. So, it's got a Coollet branded fan on the
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back. I'm just going to zoom in a little bit closer so you can see this thing
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better. Okay, we've got a coollet branded fan on the back that spins at,
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you know what? They never actually gave us that in the specs for this thing, did they? Oh, yeah. There we go. 1,800 RPM
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max. It's right there on the box. I just didn't see it before. All right. So,
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1,800 RPM max. You can see it is configured for exhaust. So, while
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Corsair has a comparable product in their um the Corsair H50, Corsair
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actually recommends that you configure the fan blowing air into the chassis.
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Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. This
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one takes hot air from inside your case and removes it. So, that means that
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rather than taking all that CPU heat and
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then pumping it back into your case, it actually removes it from the case. Now,
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the disadvantage is it means that you're not using the coolest possible air to
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cool your CPU. So, in a case like the
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Corsair Obsidian 800D, there's an advantage to turning this fan around,
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which you can actually do on the coolant unit or on the Corsair. It doesn't
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really matter. And then you could use those top three fans to blow all the air
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out. And then you could just bring in extra air. It doesn't really even matter
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at that point. So, if you bring air from the outside, you're using the coolest
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possible air to keep your CPU cool. You've got a four pin PWM fan connector
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here. So, that'll take care of making the fan spin. All right. This radiator
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looks fairly bog standard, although they have made a couple small improvements
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over ones I've seen in the past. First of all, this may seem minor, but you see
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this uh this notch right here. Most water cooling radiators have the these
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uh these end tanks go right from the side of the rad up and then over. And
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also, they can tend to be quite a bit larger. So, on the bottom and the top,
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Coolid has made a little bit of extra space here. That right there is going to
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give them compatibility with way more cases right off the bat. I've also seen
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all-in-one liquid coolers that are more than the width of a fan. Now, you can
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see when you look at the Eco, the radiator is exactly flush with the fan.
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So, for cases that have, say, for example, a side window that goes right
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next to the rear 120 mm fan. If your radiator's a little wider, it can hurt
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your compatibility there. So, the Eco is pretty much as close as I've ever seen
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to something that can actually achieve universal compatibility. All right.
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Koolite uses their standard plastic tubing here, which is uh it's good and
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bad cuz it's not very flexible, but they must use it because that's what prevents
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the water from evaporating and that's what makes it so that you don't have to
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actually fill this thing repeatedly. Oh, they've got actually Oh, these are kind
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of neat. They've got rotating fittings here. This is something new. So, that's
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going to give you a little bit better flexibility when you're installing the Eco in your system because you can kind
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of, you know, move it this way or that way. Before it was always just putting
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so much tension on the fittings, but now they've uh they've worked that rotation
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in there. That's very nice. Okay. The pump is powered by a three pin
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connector. So, as long as you've got a couple three pin motherboard connectors
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close to your CPU socket, you'll be able to plug in both your fan and your pump
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very easily. On the bottom of the unit, you can see a nice shiny copper base as
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well as a pre-applied thermal compound. And then they've got little labels in
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the bottom here that Oh, what did I do?
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Don't think I broke it. That's good. Okay. So, how does this work exactly? It
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looks like you lift it up and then you
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move it. Oh. Oh, that's kind of cool. So, what you do is you actually lift
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this up and then you move it around based on uh which mounting hole you want
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to use. So, just like that. So, they've got 775, 1156, as well as 1366 all
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labeled in here. And then if you want to use AM2, I guess you just
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um Oh, yeah. That's what these little
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No, that can't be what that's for. Well, I'm sure that there's a way to do it and
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it's not that hard and it's in the quick start guide. So, if you actually buy this to mount on an AM2 or AM3
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motherboard, then I'm sure you'll figure it out. Anyway, thank you for checking
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out my unboxing of the You know what? I guess I'm not quite done. Uh why don't I
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just give a brief mention to the uh
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where the pump is because it used to be that Coollet would integrate their pump
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either next to the radiator or next to the radiator. That's where they used to
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put their pump and now they've moved to something that is more of an integrated
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all-in-one unit. So the pump as well as the CPU block are both contained within
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this one piece here. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Coolit
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Eco.