Date:
Monday , January 08, 2007
Author:
Justin Diduch
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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CoolIT Freezone Chilled Liquid CPU Cooler

Is CoolIT’s hybrid, TEC chilled, water cooler up to the task of cooling your CPU? We find out how water cooling with no radiator works. Turns out to be user-friendly as well.

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The Freezone

As you can see in the picture below, the Freezone comes pre-assembled and pre-filled. In doing this CoolIT Systems has taken much of the pain and guesswork out of installing a watercooling system. There is no need to figure out hose lengths and routing, leak test, or risk getting coolant on your components while filling.

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On the far left you can see the copper block with what appears to be a nickel plating to prevent corrosion. Plumbing the system is achieved using ¼” hose sleeved with metal coils to prevent kinking. Moving to the right we can see the 12v DC pump which receives power through the motherboards CPU fan header. I was unable to obtain flowrate/head pressure ratings for this pump but I was able to find out that is a MAG drive pump with dual in fluid sapphire bearings rated for >50,000 hrs. Looking at the pump design and the specifications available I would not be surprised if it were made by C-systems maker of the CSP-MAG and older CSP-750 pumps.

To the right of the pump we can see the heat exchanger and fan unit. Attached to the top of the first of two fluid heat exchangers is the three wire thermal probe used to monitor the coolant temperature.

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Here we have a closer picture of the pump and heat exchanger unit. The pump is attached to a large black aluminum heatsink that is used to cool the hot side of the six TECs used to chill the coolant. These TECs are sandwiched three to a side between the heatsink and the two fluid heat exchangers. When heated coolant runs into these fluid heat exchangers it is chilled by the TECs then returned to the CPU. The waste heat generated by the TECs is transferred into the large heatsink and exhausted out through the back of the case.

You can see that there is a fair amount of excess white thermal grease that seems to have gotten everywhere. It wasn’t too hard to clean up but was quite annoying.

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At the rear of the unit we have the 92mm exhaust fan. This fan is an ARX CeraDyna 12v DC fan rated at .38A and a maximum of 37dBA. Pressed into the fans screw holes are four threaded grommets that accept the screws for the mounting plate we will see on the next page. Also seen here is the short hose that connects the two fluid heat exchangers.

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I was somewhat disappointed with the base of the cooling block. The marks left from the milling process were quite apparent and there were scratches in the plating. The center of the cooling block is quite flat however, my machinist’s straight edge revealed a bit of upwards warping on two of the corners. I took a picture of the block with a piece of graph paper reflected off of the base to better illustrate this issue.

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You can clearly see the two deformed corners above where the lines from the graph paper are warped. Because the deformity is only at the very corners of one side I doubt it had much of an impact on performance but, it is worth noting.