First Impressions

As is becoming readily apparent, CoolIT takes the time to make sure their equipment is as user friendly / plug ‘n play as possible. Just as the PURE was a drop-in cooling solution so too is the Freezone Elite. Heck in many ways, the inclusion of the MTEC controller actually makes things easier.


On paper having all those cables going to the MTEC controller sounds like a cabling nightmare but since CoolIT has had the foresight (and fortitude to face down the bean counters over this “frivolous added expense” ) to provide extra long cabling for all the necessary parts, and since said cables all go to the MTEC controller one can easily install the Freezone Elite and then take the time to route all the cables behind the motherboard. While we didn’t do this as we were not permanently attaching the unit in this system it looked like an extremely easy task to accomplish.


CoolIT has even thought to add Velcro sticky tape to the bottom of the controller so that you can mount it out of the way in an unused portion of your case's 5.25 bay area. All in all this is exceptionally good to see and is easily the best first impression we have ever greceived from a CPU cooling solution.


The next thing which is blatantly obvious is a lot of the water cooling components like the pump and tubing are the exact same one as used on the PURE. The downside to this is the pump still has less than 1gpm flow rate and the tubing is still a somewhat restrictive ¼ inch ID. When it comes to tubing we are fans of 7/16 ID (or larger) and we would really have liked to have seen the pump beefed up on this premium model. This is a moderate flow pump which is rated to move 3.5L of fluid per minute. While this is just short of the 1 Gallon Per Minute mark we like to see, this pump does makes up for its low flow rate with exceptionally low noise. As we stated earlier, this is a hybrid TEC cooler and not water cooling unit, so we will withhold judgment on its potential inadequacies (if any) until after testing is complete. It will be interesting to see if any of this matters as this is not a water cooling setup and thus “rules of thumb” (such as 1gpm as a good minimum) may need not apply.

The upside to all this is that it does makes for a very compact unit. CoolIT has taken a basic 3 piece setup (water block, pump & radiator) and melded it into a small closed loop hybrid cooling system; unlike the PURE model where the long metal shroud was bordering on the ridiculous, we can actually see a use for it in this system: that of protection. No one wants to spend $400 to $500 on CPU Cooling system just to have it short out because a side case fan slammed into one of the precious TEC’s rendering the whole unit unusable.


When one takes a close look at the radiator it readily becomes apparent this is not a radiator in the water cooling sense of the word. Yes this is certainly a big, nay huge heatsink but as no fluid flows in or around it, it is more of a huge heatsink than a radiator. Instead of having the fluid flow through a radiator (as it does in a water cooling setup like the PURE) what CoolIT has done is have the fluid flow in and around the cool side of the TECs themselves, with the TEC being securely housed in small metal protective cases. These TEC cases (the blue objects in the pictures) are then attached to the oversize heatsink block with Thermal Interface Material (the white “goop” between the heatsink and the TEC blocks) so that the hot side of the TEC is in contact with the heatsink. The 120x120x38 mm fan is then attached to the back of the supersized heatsink and sucks air in through the gaps thus cooling off the metal fins which in turn cools the hot side of the TECs.


An easy way to picture this setup is too think of a typical CPU cooing solution; the heatsink part is attached to the CPU and the air gap between the two is filled up with TIM. Then on top side of the heatsink has a fan is attached which removes the heat from the heatsink allowing it to suck new heat away from the CPU. Now replace the “CPU” with the hot side of the TEC blocks and join two of these TEC blocks and heatsinks together at an approximately 90° angle and stick a fan over the third side (thus making a big right angle triangle) and you have in a nut shell what the Freezone Elite looks like. This is ingenuous since the TEC can cool the liquid a lot better than ambient air could and the heat generated from the TECs is dumped into the enormous heatsink, where the fan sucks all the heat out the back of the case. Simple, elegant and above all else a classic example of great engineering.


For all you eagle eyed readers that are going “but they left of the fan shroud!”, the answer is yes they did but no they didn’t in realtiy. If you take a close look at the design of the heatsink / radiator you will notice a huge air gap in the center (to borrow from the previous analogy: the center of the triangle) and this gap acts as a built-in fan shroud thus making an external one unnecessary. In fact one could say including a plastic fan shroud (no matter how tough a plastic) would have weakened the unit as the built-in fan shroud is made from solid metal.

As mentioned previously, the neoprene tubing is only a ¼ inch ID but it once again is surrounded by anti-kink metal wire; and since it is made from Neoprene it should last a good long while without any maintenance. However, this is an expensive unit and we really would have liked to have seen some upgrades in the tubing from the relatively inexpensive PURE. Maybe we are being overly harsh, maybe no one makes 7/16th ID Neoprene tubing, but we doubt it as 3/8ths is readily available so there really is no physical reason larger sizes can not be obtained if CoolIT really wanted to pursue the issue.


On the positive side, and as we saw on the PURE model, all the tubing has been crimped into place using heavy duty steel pinch clamps. This ensures a good long-term leak proof fit. Of course, you will have a tough time removing these little suckers if CoolIT ever comes out with an upgrade kit (e.g. a video card fluid heat exchange) to turn you single loop into a multi-loop. However, based on the design philosophy behind the Freezone Elite the chances of that happening are probably slim.