CoolIT Boreas MTEC Chassis Review

BOREAS Up Close and Personal

Where this model is called the Boreas MTEC Chassis, we were expecting the Boreas to be the star of the show, and boy we were not disappointed! For anyone who has never had the privilege to own or even touch one of these beasts, it truly is hard to properly describe it to you. The experience is almost visceral in nature and is a lot like trying to explain the colour blue to the colorblind. While it may be impossible to do the Boreas justice, we will do our best to accurately deconstruct the Boreas for you our reader; just be aware the Boreas is a great example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.


Unlike previous models which are modular and / or drop in pieces of kit, the Boreas in the MTEC Chassis is mounted the chassis in two separate and distinctive parts. The smaller part is of course the pump to the rear of the BMC. For all out eagle eyed readers out there, yes this is the exact same pump as used in the Elite….and the PURE; however, unlike those models, this one is bolted to the actual chassis of the case. This makes for a very solid mount which should help keep the pump balanced and help reduce vibrations, but there is a small but also distinctive down side to how CoolIT has decided to mount this pump. Even the most quiet and stable of pumps (which this one is) makes a certain amount of vibration which in practical terms means noise.

To counteract this, many watercooling aficionados use rubber mounting rings and / or vibration dampening mats underneath the pump so these errant vibrations do not get past on the case (which can turn the case into one big sounding board!). In this instance the pump is just bolted right to the case with no such efforts done to counteract these vibrations. On paper this sounds like a big deal, but in practice this is a very quiet pump which didn’t make much noise. However, when our DVD drive was active, and the side panels were off this combination did create a lot of sympathetic vibrations which were very annoying to listen too. The lack of silicon washers (etc.) is a small nit, but it was conspicuous by its absence, especially given the price point of this unit and its “flagship” status.

One could also make the argument CoolIT really did take the amount of noise a given pump would make into consideration when they spec'ed a sub 1 gallon per minute pump for this unit. To us this is not a good argument to make as this setup has a lot of flow restricting parts and whole bucket load of tubing to force the fluid through. We can only hope this is in fact a case of CoolIT properly specifying a powerful enough pump for the Boreas and just reusing it on the lower models (PURE, Elite, etc.) due to economic reasons.


The fluid restrictive parts we are referring to are none other than four TEC blocks, Just as we saw on the Elite model, each of these blocks house 3 TECs (or Peltier Cooling blocks, for a good overview of these we recommend re-reading the Elite review); or to put it another way this bad boy has a grand total of 12 of these cooling beasts harnessed into one giant loop.

One strange thing about these 12 TECs is the CoolIT website lists their maximum power draw as being only 130 watts. We say this is strange because this only works out to 10.83 watts per TEC; whereas the 6 TECS on the Elite model are rated for 72 watts or 12 watts each. The simplest explanation is the website is wrong and the Boreas TECs are not really running at less than full potential; the more unlikely option is CoolIT has intentionally hobbled their flagship product and these TECs are not set up to the give their maximum performance. If this is the case we have to wonder if there is a “golden screwdriver” option in the works where by simply plugging in a new and improved MTEC controller (say with two PCI plugs) you will be able to “upgrade” the Boreas to a “Boreas Elite” for example.

A lot of people have asked about what coolant CoolIT uses for fluid and instead of getting in a rather technical discussion on the merits of various fluids on the market I am going to let Mr. B. Olde’s answer on their forum describe what they use:


Certainly, nothing fancy but then again the KISS rule does apply when it comes to longevity. After all, it is one thing to use an exotic coolant in a loop which can (and will) be flushed bi-yearly; its another thing to use a coolant which will break down over time in a sealed unit that is expected to last for years. Since the neoprene tubing does not allow light and the anti-freeze additive is also a fungicide you do not have to worry about alage (etc.) eventually blocking the tubes.