To test the CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C cooler I will be installing it into the following system.

• CPU - Intel i5 750 @ 4GHz
• CPU Cooling - On Review
• Mobo - MSI P55-GD65
• GFX - XFX GTX 260 BE
• Sound - On Board
• Memory - 4GB Gskill Ripjaw DDR3 2000
• Disks - 2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB Raid0
• Optical - Aopen DVD RW
• Case - Akasa infiniti ZOR
• PSU - Thermatake Evo Blue 650
• On Review - CoolIT ECO A.L.C

To test the CoolIT ECO ALC I will be running the above system for around an hour at both idle and 100% load to let the system settle before taking a temperature reading. I will run Prime95 blend test to load all 4 cores to 100%. Temperature measurements will be taken with Coretemp, averaged across the 4 cores, and will be given as a measurement above ambient, delta T, ambient temperature at time of test 22c. For details of delta temps look here

To give some idea of how well the CoolIT ECO ALC does I will be comparing it with the cooler I have currently fitted, a Akasa NeroS which is currently the best air cooler I have tested to date so it will be up against some reasonable, if only “air cooled” competition.

To start with I took the idle and load temperature with the Akasa NeroS fitted then I set about installing the CoolIT ECO ALC.

Fitting the ECO ALC was a little bit fiddly due to its “all in one” nature and the fact you have to fit a rear mounting bracket to the motherboard. This is, yet again, a stick on affair and due to the regularity in which I swap out my coolers I didn’t stick it on so no doubt that made the job a little more difficult than it would have otherwise been. The sprung loaded screws worked very well and were pretty straight forward to screw in and once everything was in place I powered my system up and begun testing.

Once it powered up there was a slight gurgling noise as, I guess, there is a little bit of air in there but this only lasted a few seconds and it eventually quietened down. It’s not totally silent, but this is not a silent system anyway and it hasn’t added noticeably to the overall volume of fan noise. As there was now nothing like the airflow around the power circuitry I placed the fan that was at the rear of the case onto the side panel blowing directly onto the motherboard over the CPU socket so the slight increase in system noise could be coming from this fan too.

Results as follows:

Overall not a bad result at all, and pretty much what I was expecting if I am honest. A slight improvement of a couple of degrees under load conditions over what I consider to be one of the better air coolers on the market at the moment is not to be sniffed at.

Next Page - Conclusion