Coolit Vantage A.L.C. CPU Cooler

Sealed, all-in-one water coolers seem to be the fastest-growing segment of the CPU cooler market today. Air coolers are reaching their physical limits: given the room inside existing cases, and the (frequently ignored) weight limits defined for CPU coolers, something like a Prolimatech Megahalems is about as big as you can get without running into problems. Water cooling systems work around these problems by moving the heat exchanger off of the CPU socket, and using a fluid to transfer heat from the CPU to the heat exchanger. Coolit Systems has been making retail and bespoke liquid cooling systems for some years now, and the Coolit Vantage A.L.C. cooler brings new features and performance to the fray. Benchmark Reviews pits this new entry against existing air and water coolers in a performance showdown.

Enthusiasts searching for preconfigured CPU water cooling systems have many choices today. Coolit Systems distinguishes their Vantage A.L.C. unit with a built-in display that shows coolant temperature, pump RPM, and fan RPM, and controls its PWM fan directly, varying its speed based on the coolant temperature and the user's setting (Silent, Performance, or Extreme).

Of course, at the end of the day any CPU cooler's main task is to cool the CPU. Since retail CPUs come with perfectly adequate coolers, the main reason to buy an aftermarket cooler is for conditions that the stock cooler can't handle...namely, overclocking. I'll put the Coolit Systems Vantage A.L.C. cooler on top of an overclocked and overvolted Intel Core i7-950 and see how it compares to a selection of air and water coolers.

Manufacturer: Coolit Systems
Product Name: Vantage A.L.C.
Price As Tested:$114.99 at FrozenCPU

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Coolit Systems.

Coolit Vantage A.L.C. Specifications

• CoolIT CPU FHE (Fluid Heat Exchanger)
  Copper Micro-Channel
• Universal Retention System
  Out of the box support provided
  for Intel 775, 1155 (Sandy Bridge), 1156, 1366 and
  AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 sockets.
• CoolIT Pump
  Quiet, compact, long life Ceramic bearing CFF1 pump
  Life Cycle: 50,000 Hours MTTF
• CoolIT Coolant
  CoolIT Systems low toxicity with anticorrosion/anti fungal additives
• CoolIT Radiator
  Custom engineered for low noise high heat dissipation
• CoolIT Fan
  High reliability, Quiet 12V
  Speed: 1100 - 2,500 RPM (low to high regulation)
• CoolIT CPU Thermal Grease
  CoolIT Systems Pro A.T.C. (Advanced Thermal Compound)
• Operations Modes (User Selectable)
  Three cooling performance modes quiet, performance, and full.
• CoolIT 2 Year Manufacturer Warranty

Closer Look: Coolit Vantage

The box of the Coolit Vantage does a good job of showing you what you're getting. At the middle left of the box you might be excited by the "Fully Upgradeable" claim. Sadly, that doesn't mean you can expand the system in a physical sense; rather, Coolit is talking about their forthcoming Maestro control software.

Inside the box is the pump/radiator assembly, Intel and AMD mounting brackets and backplates, and a spiral-bound manual! OK, maybe I get excited too easily, but having a real manual is so much nicer than the single-page, 6-language folded sheets of paper with text printed in 2-point Eyestrain-O-Vision. Notice that the single fan is connected directly to the pump.

Although the radiator/fan assembly appears to hold two fans, the outer "fan" is simply a hollow spacer that positions the radiator about an inch from the back of your case.

The Intel and AMD brackets are attached to the bottom of the pump unit with screws, the same mounting system that Coolit Systems used on their ECO A.L.C. cooler. The Intel brackets are adjustable for Socket 775, 1155/1156, and 1366.

The base of the pump has a fine satin finish. Hoses are connected to the pump with swivel connectors. Although Coolit Systems manufactures their own products, the thin, springy water hoses seem to be identical to the ones use in most Asetek OEM coolers.

The Vantage A.L.C. system has a few tricks up its sleeve, though...

Vantage A.L.C. Detailed Features

Unlike most all-in-one water coolers on the market, the Coolit Systems Vantage A.L.C. controls its fan directly, varying its speed based on the coolant temperature. The controller in the pump can vary the fan speed between 1,100 and 2,500 RPM, but the fan's airflow isn't specified. The backlit display on the pump unit shows the coolant temperature, fan speed, and pump speed, as well as how aggressively the system will spin the fan ("Extreme" in this case). It's important to note that the coolant temperature is not the same as the CPU temperature, and will generally be much lower.

Two buttons on the pump unit (to the left of the display in these images) allow you to control several aspects of the Vantage's operation. You can control the orientation of the display, so that text will appear upright regardless of the orientation of the pump unit, and you can set the display to "pulse", with the backlight fading in and out like a slowly beating heart.

You can match the color of the display backlight color to your case color or just your whim. The image below shows some (not all) of the choices.

You can also set how the coolant temperature is displayed (in Fahrenheit or Celsius), as well as set the fan's "speed mode". There are three choices: "Silent", "Performance", and "Extreme". The "Silent" setting is aptly named, but you'll want the "Extreme" setting if you're doing any overclocking. Even at full speed the fan is not obtrusively loud.

The width of the radiator/fan/spacer assembly is just under 2 3/4". The fan is oriented to blow air through the radiator, out of the back of your case. Coolit Systems does not say anything about the spacer or how it affects performance; I'd guess that turbulence is reduced (and airflow thus improved) by not having the radiator flush against the back of the case.

Installing the Vantage is easier than installing most all-in-one water coolers. While it has the same stiff, springy water hoses on most other coolers, you can attach the fan/radiator assembly with standard self-tapping fan screws (you don't have to try to thread long screws through a fan into the radiator), and, like the ECO A.L.C., the pump is secured to the backplate with convenient thumb screws.

Now that the Vantage is installed, it's time to test...

Heatsink Test Methodology

Benchmark Reviews is obsessed with testing CPU coolers, as our Cooling Sectionhas demonstrated over the past few years. We've solicited suggestions from the enthusiast community, and received guidance from some of the most technical overclockers on the planet. As a result, our testing methodology has changed with every new edition of our Best CPU Cooler Performance series. Because of this, each article is really its own stand-alone product, and cannot be fairly compared to the others. Benchmark Reviews continues to test CPU coolers using the stock included fan (whenever applicable), and then replace it with a high-output fan for re-testing.

Manufacturers are not expected to enjoy this sort of comparison, since we level the playing field for all heat sinks by replacing their included fan with a common unit which is then used for every CPU cooler tested. Many manufacturers include fans with their heat sink products, but many 'stock' fans are high-RPM units that offer great airflow at the expense of obnoxiously loud noise levels, or, conversely, quiet fans that sacrifice performance for low noise. By using the same model of cooling fan throughout our heat sink tests, we can assure our results are comparable across the board. This is one of the more significant changes we have made to our test methodology, since many of the benchmark tests we have conducted in the past have compared the total package. Ultimately we're more interested in the discovering the best possible heat sink, and we believe that you'll feel the same way.

For each test, ambient room temperature levels were maintained within one degree of fluctuation, and measured at static points beside the test equipment with a digital thermometer. The Corsair H70 and the comparison coolers used a common Thermal Interface Material of our choosing (listed in the support equipment section below) for consistency. The processor received the same amount of thermal paste in every test, which covered the heat spreader with a thin nearly-transparent layer. The heat sink being tested was then laid down flat onto the CPU, and compressed to the motherboard using the supplied retaining mechanism. If the mounting mechanism used only two points of force, they were tightened in alternation; standard clip-style mounting with four securing points were compressed using the cross-over method. Once installed, the system was tested for a baseline reading prior to testing.

At the start of each test, the ambient room temperature was measured to track any fluctuation throughout the testing period. AIDA64 Extreme Edition is utilized to create 100% CPU-core loads and measure each individual processor core temperature. It's important to note that software-based temperature reading reflects the thermal output as reported from the CPU to the BIOS. For this reason, it is critically important (for us) to use the exact same software and BIOS versions throughout the entire test cycle, or the results will be incomparable. All of the units compared in our results were tested on the same motherboard using the same BIOS and software, with only the CPU-cooler product changing in each test. These readings are neither absolute nor calibrated, since every BIOS is programmed differently. Nevertheless, all results are still comparable and relative to each products in our test bed (see The Accuracy Myth section below).

Since our test processor reports core temperatures as a whole number and not in fractions, all test results utilize ADIA64 to report averages (within the statistics panel), which gives us more precise readings. The ambient room temperature levels were all recorded and accurate to one-tenth of a degree Celsius at the time of data collection.

When each cooler is tested, Benchmark Reviews makes certain to keep the hardware settings identical across the test platform. This enables us to clearly compare the performance of each product under identical conditions. Benchmark Reviews reports the thermal difference; for the purposes of this article, thermal difference (not the same as thermal delta) is calculated by subtracting the ambient room temperature from the recorded CPU temperature.

Please keep in mind that that these test results are only valid within the context of this particular test: as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

Intel Test System

• Processor: Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601950, core voltage set to 1.35V
• Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X58 Intel X58-Express chipset) with BIOS 0603, BCLK set to 175MHz for a processor speed of 4025MHz

Support Equipment

• AIDA64 Extreme Edition version 1.50.1200
• MG Chemicals Heat Transfer Compound 8610-60G
• Stock fan (for heat sinks without fans): Thermalright TR-FDB-12-1600 (63.7CFM advertised)
• High-speed fan: Delta AFC1212D (113CFM advertised)

All of the tests in this article have been conducted using vertical motherboard orientation, positioned upright in a traditional tower computer case. Air-cooled heat sinks are positioned so that heatpipe rods span horizontally, with the fan blowing air out the top of the chassis. The radiators of water coolers are mounted as per manufacturer instructions. In both cases, fans are connected directly to the power supply (rather than motherboard headers) and run at full speed during the test. At the start of our test period, the test system is powered on and AIDA64 system stability tests are started with Stress CPU and Stress FPU options selected. AIDA64 loads each CPU core to 100% usage, which drives the temperature to its highest point. Finally, once temperatures have sustained a plateau (no observed change in average temperatures for 5 minutes), the ending ambient room temperature and individual CPU core levels are recorded thus completing the first benchmark segment. The time to reach stable temperatures varied between 10 and 20 minutes for the heat sinks in this test; larger heat sinks typically take longer to stabilize.

The second test segment involves removing the stock cooling fan and replacing it with a high-output 120 mm Delta AFC1212D cooling fan, then running the same tests again.

Note: Both the Antec Kühler H2O 620 and the Coolit Vantage A.L.C. are designed to drive their own RPM-controlled fans directly; in the case of the Vantage, an alarm will sound continuously if there is no fan connected. For these coolers, the fans were left connected as designed during stock fan testing. For high-speed fan testing, the Delta fan was connected directly to the power supply (and the alarm on the Vantage ignored).

The Accuracy Myth

All modern processors incorporate an internal thermal diode that can be read by the motherboards' BIOS. While this diode and the motherboard are not calibrated and therefore may not display the actual true temperature, the degree of accuracy is constant. This means that if the diode reports 40°C when it's actually 43°C, then it will also report 60°C when it's truly 63°C. Since the design goal of any thermal solution is to keep the CPU core within allowable temperatures, a processor's internal diode is the most valid means of comparison between different heat sinks, or thermal compounds. The diode and motherboard may be incorrect by a small margin in relation to an actual calibrated temperature sensor, but they will be consistent in their margin of error every time.

Testing and Results

For this test, I used the following heat sinks in addition to the Coolit Vantage A.L.C.:

• Thermalright Venomous X
• Cooler Master V6 GT
• Prolimatech Super Mega
• Corsair Hydro Series H50
• Corsair Hydro Series H70
• Coolit ECO A.L.C.
• Antec Kühler H2O 620

For heat sinks without a stock fan, I used a Thermalright TR-FDB-12-1600 fan, which puts out 63.7CFM at 28dBa according to Thermalright. This mid-range fan provides good air flow and reasonable noise levels. For "apples to apples" testing, where each heat sink is tested with the same fan, I used a Delta AFC1212D. This high-performance PWM fan is rated at 113CFM at a claimed 46.5dBa at full speed...which means that while it moves quite a bit of air, it's very loud.

The Intel Core i7-950 I used in this test runs much hotter than the Core i7-920 I'd used previously. At 1.35 volts, with a BCLK of 175Mhz, the 4,025Mhz CPU pumped out enough heat to stress the very best heat sinks. AIDA64 would report throttling once any single core reached 100 degrees Celsius; any throttling resulted in cancelling the test and recording a "FAIL". Although this overclocked and overvolted Core i7-950 represents an extreme, these are expensive, high-end heat sinks.

The chart below summarizes the results with the stock fans (hotter temperatures towards the top of the chart, and cooler temperatures towards the bottom). The twin-fan Cooler Master V6 GT and Corsair H70 have a real advantage here, since their dual fans move more air than the stock single fan of any of the other units. The first thing we see is that the Vantage's "Silent" setting is not appropriate for the volcanic heat put out by the overclocked Core i7-950 processor, since CPU temperature soared past 100 degrees Celsius and throttling occurred.

Stock Fan Tests

Set to "Extreme" mode, the Vantage A.L.C. was able to better the performance of the ECO A.L.C. and (just barely) Corsair's H50. That's about it for the good news, though, as it was soundly beaten by every other cooler in this test. The large gap between it and the Corsair H70 (fans on low) divides the chart into "lower performance" and "higher performance" coolers. With its dual, high performance fans (aggregate airflow of over 180CFM) the Cooler Master V6 GT takes the lead here, keeping the blistering hot Core i7-950 almost 12 degrees Celsius cooler than the Vantage A.L.C.

Delta High Speed Fan Tests

With the Delta high-speed fan, our lineup changes. Showing what a difference a change of fan can make, the Coolit ECO A.L.C. moves from the bottom to the chart to mid-pack, improving by almost 11 degrees. The Antec Kühler improves by 7.2 degrees, putting it- amazingly- between the mighty Prolimatech Super Mega and the Thermalright Venomous X. The Vantage A.L.C.'s performance improves by over 5 degrees, but it's not enough to help its overall standing, and (oddly) even the ECO A.L.C. manages to beat it by 3.5 degrees. And remember that you'd never run the Vantage A.L.C. with a separately-powered fan in the real world, because the continuous beeping of the fan speed alarm would become annoying.

Vantage Fan and Power Notes

After this test, I tried connecting the Delta fan (which has a 4-pin PWM connector) directly to the Vantage. That didn't work: about half the time, the fan wouldn't start, indicating that the Vantage couldn't supply the startup current needed. The Delta AFC 1212D fan draws 0.80 amps at 12 volts, which is much more than most fans do (the Thermalright fan used for "stock fan" tests only draws 0.20 amps). The stock fan is (as usual) unlabeled, so its current requirements and the limits of what the Vantage can supply are unknown, but if you plan to replace the fan for this unit, I'd suggest a PWM fan that draws 0.40 amps or less.

The Vantage needs a fair amount of power to run its pump and the fan; if the motherboard header you use can't supply enough power, the fan will run at full speed (yes, I know that's odd, but that's what happens). On an ASUS Crosshair IV motherboard, it took me a while to figure out why the Vantage's fan always ran at full speed; connecting the pump's power connector directly to the power supply fixed that problem.

Liquid Cooler Final Thoughts

After Corsair's H50 hit the market, its success led to many other companies offering their own variations on the theme, if by "variations" you mean "label". Even Corsair's own H70, with its double-thickness radiator, is simply a version of Asetek's LC570 OEM cooler.

Coolit Systems manufacturers their own coolers, which gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The Vantage A.L.C. was the first all-in-one liquid cooler that could control its own fan, and is still the only one with the display feature and audible alarms that warn of overheating, or fan or pump failure. But although the Vantage beat the first-generation water coolers in the stock fan test, its performance advantage was small, and Corsair's H70 easily beat it even with its fans on low. (Granted, the H70's MSRP is significantly more expensive). High-end air coolers and new-generation water coolers provided much better performance than the Vantage.

Still, the Vantage's extra features like the PWM-controlled fan, visible status panel, and audible alarms for pump or fan failure offer some consolation. The Vantage was to be the first beneficiary of Coolit's "Maestro" software control suite, originally announced at CES 2010. But Maestro never appeared and Coolit has said that work on that project has ceased.

At this point it may all be moot: Coolit Systems has entered a partnership with Corsair, who will take over retail marketing and support of Coolit products. While some Coolit Vantage A.L.C. systems are still available in the retail channel, they're no longer available on Coolit's web site, and Corsair has no equivalent product (yet).

Should you come across a Vantage A.L.C., should you consider it? Sure. The Vantage offers much better performance than any stock heat sink, is quiet even in "Extreme" mode, and the display and alarms are features that no competitor offers. It's not designed to cool heavily overclocked systems like the overvolted Core i7-950 I tested with, and if that's the kind of rig you're running, there are better choices available.

Coolit Vantage A.L.C. Conclusion

Please remember that these test results reflect our experience with each cooler on a specific motherboard, with a specific processor, BIOS revision, BCLK and voltage settings, and test programs. The results of this test cannot be directly compared to other tests since many factors will have changed.

I've tested a lot of all-in-one water coolers recently, and the Vantage A.L.C. is the only one that has any visual appeal at all. The adjustable-color display not only provides useful information, but looks great, too, and begs for a windowed case to display it.

The quality of construction was up to Coolit's usual high standards. After dealing with the somewhat fiddly "retaining ring" used on Asetek cooler variants, Coolit's simple back plate and thumbscrew mounting system is a breath of fresh air, although the "springy" coolant hoses exert enough tension on the pump to make lining up the thumbscrews with the backplate an operation that requires some concentration.

Performance-wise, the Coolit Vantage A.L.C. outperformed first generation all-in-one water coolers, but couldn't keep up with newer water cooling units or less expensive high-end air coolers. While its performance is much better than stock air coolers, it's not intended for heavily overclocked systems.

The Vantage A.L.C. introduces useful new features such as the status display and the audible alarms. The alarms especially are important features for a water cooling system and I hope to see them become more common.

The Coolit Vantage A.L.C. doesn't offer top-end performance, but will quietly keep most systems cool, and its display and safety features make it worth consideration. The Vantage A.L.C. is available for $114.99 at FrozenCPU.com.

Pros:

+ Informative display
+ Pump and fan failure alarms
+ Easy to mount
+ Quiet, even at "Extreme" setting
+ PWM-controlled fan

Cons:

- Can't compete with the latest water coolers or high-end air coolers
- Unit's availability is in doubt
- Cannot drive high-current fans
- May require direct connection to power supply

Ratings:

• Performance: 7.50
• Appearance: 9.25
• Construction: 9.00
• Functionality: 9.50
• Value: 8.25

Final Score: 8.7 out of 10.

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