Q6700 stress test

I am having trouble getting your Freezone specs, but from what I see, its not impressive. It has a power draw of up to 56W, and that includes the fans, the pump and whatnot. In fact, it connects straight to your power supply

What I had in mind was at least a 320W TEC (this is at 15V though, which means it will be 256W at 12V). I would have needed a seperate power supply to power this mother, and it must be able to provide at least 21.33A on its 12V rail. Due to safety reasons I probably would have pushed for at least 24A on the 12V rail. My current PSU pushes 21A on each of the 12V rails max.

I don't have to tell you what kind of problems I ran into when trying to configure a cooling system with this thing, which was why after a few months, I gave up on the idea.

I'm sure others have done it, but most of the ones I've seen aren't safe, and didn't take into account the biggest drawback about TECs regarding temperature control. TECs cannot be controlled via normal thermostat, and if you do, the TEC will burn out. There are TEC control kits, but they cost a bomb, which is why most people don't bother with them.

Your retail kit should have everything considered, plus its such a low powered TEC, you might have been better off with a good WC system.

not many watercooling kits are internal, for the power management this thing cools great. I'm not going to spend 900 for one of the top end coolers. For the money this thing does the best job. Many benchmarks show that this is the best of what you can get at 300 usd and many competition products are way louder. If you want to see impressive go to the galory and check out my pics, i took pics of this thing first day, with speed fan at stock voltages. and that was running the thing on low. Watercooling is also a damn hasel, I dont have to go into that I'm sure you know. My set up is all internal and maintainence free. So I'll take 32C running full load over anything else. Do you know how hard it is to get a quad core to run at full load, at my clock rate, couldnt do it on fans and keep temps as low as I have.

I don't mean to say that its a crappy cooler, 32C is pretty good, and I've mentioned it before.

Its just that TECs have the potential to go much much lower than that.

I'm also saying that watercooling with the right components may bring temps close to that at load, due to how TECs work. Its a heat pump. If your CPU is pumping out more than 56W, which it definately should, then your TEC will not be very effective, which is why its cooling the water, instead of the processor itself, and that is also why it doesn't drop below ambient temp at load, not sure if it would at idle (depends on power output at idle).

It would be interesting to see the Swiftech H20-APEX Ultra Plus Liquid Cooling Kit and your freezone cooler go head to head, especially since the Swiftech comes with chipset and graphics card cooling as well.


BTW, top end watercooling kits don't come at 900 bux.

And your setup shouldn't be maintenance free. It would need the same maintenance as any other watercooling kit. Rubber/PVC tubes are porous, and you'll find your watercooling kit devoid of water sooner or later if you don't top it up.

I have the option to add quad ali coolers as well, not sure how well it will effect my overall cooling though. those are my worries. Soon I'm introducing sound dampening material, as a housing around the tec cooler in the case to lower dbs. Those are my plans, I'll post pics next week after i put it all together.

Just a short mention:

Here's some temp results for a TEC aircooler, which obviously has trouble cooling an overclocked E6400. Notice the load temps are just 1C cooler than a normal aircooler (its a "medium sized" aircooler as well, with a 90mm fan).

The TECs in your watercooling system should be of the same size (they push the same amount of Watts).

Also, you might find this REALLY interesting. FYI, the Ultra-X is an aircooler, with 4 heatpipes.

Edit: whoops, forgot to add the link.

If you're done upgrading for a while...can I have some of the saved cash?

coolits tec technology is patented, while there are other tec coolers there are non like coolits, which can operate at low wattage and still outperform anything else in the price range. Simple as said, its the best there is for the amount of money spent. lol and who said I"m done. I'm waitin for the 9 series cards to drop so i can pick two up.

After an extensive search, I've finally found a very small article which compares the switech directly with the freezone. However it doesn't look very professional, but most "professional" looking sites basically did the same things this guy did anyway. Unless they dig out a professionally calibrated temperature probe, its not good enough to be taken as gospel for me.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/Coolit-Freezone

Whoops, post came out twice.

Anyway, I'm not saying that your cooler is crap, I'm saying that there are better alternatives available, especially since your processor pumps out an incredible amount of heat. But being able to keep that processor of yours at 32C at load is really good, and I wouldn't really be concerned about it.

Btw, computer upgrades are NEVER fully done. I've been spending just about every cent I have extra on my comp, and I have nothing close to what supersmashbrada has. Then again, I'm just a student who's surviving on very casual work, so its not like I'm spending thousands every year....

the benches on both are impressive, its the sound issue that gets me.

92mm fans should be quiet... but obviously not as quiet as 120mm fans.

Funny enough, its my 120mm fans that I hear in my computer, not my 92mm fan, mainly because the 2 120mm fans are at the exhast, while the 92mm is on the graphics card.

I still have yet to figure out whats making noise in my system, I can still hear it at night when its quiet all around. In the afternoon its inaudible over normal background noises (heck, the wind outside rustling leaves is louder). I'm just too picky.

yep, im picky as well, i understand, the only thing making noise in my case is the coolit system, although i have 4 120mm fans and 2 92mm fans, but they came with my case that i paid 300usd for, they are all quiet, prob just really good after market product

Well, a good way to check it out would be to run everything else, except the coolit fan. Unplug the coolit, and all motherboard power, and short the green wire with the black on the 20 or 24pin motherboard connector (which should be unplugged). This should allow you to run all the fans without the coolit, or your computer running.

From what I read, your coolit makes a HUGE amount of noise at max (which is what you're running at I'm sure). Might be a good idea to change that fan to a 120mm fan, you'll benefit from lower system noise, and if you don't, lower cpu temps.

Hello. I'm new to the forums but have worked with many of CoolIT System's cooling systems. After much testing, I was able answer the question in regards to condensation and any dangers from it.

On the Freezone, the built-in thermal controller actually keeps track of ambient temperatures at which point it starts to turn down the TEC power. This prevents any significant condensation even if your side panel is on. I did notice very, very small droplets ONLY when my heater duct blew warm air directly on to the TEC where the sensor is placed.

At no point could I cause enough condensation to build up to even cause concern. You can read a bit on it here:
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/CoolIT_Freezone/index.shtml

The Eliminator doesn't use the same amount of power as the Freezone, nor does it cause condensation at any degree. Between the two units, the Freezone is only a bit louder. I personally swapped out fans that were much quieter, yet comparable, on both units. The Freezone required a bit of adapting but it still worked great. The Eliminator doesn't need the adapter, so it was much easier.

For the pricing and performance, there isn't anything near as good. Water cooling can cover more components that the units can not. Future CoolIT products may fill that void. Can you imagine your CPU, Chipset, VGA cards all running at about 15 to 20 C at full load while only emitting 20 dB of noise?

thx for this article, think we needed it.

Interesting. This design was developed by Vigor gaming, from what I understand, and somehow Chiilltec came out with the exact same cooler. Some kind of hanky panky going on. Anyway Vigor replaced the big LED module with a PCI card controller in their lite version. It's supposed to be priced a bit higher than the Tuniq Tower but performs better. The controller continually adjusts the power to the TEC to prevent condensation. I hadn't seen the chilltec version till just now via your link. Check the Vigor lite version which anandtech reviews here. The anadtech review of the Vogor TEC looks to have much better cooling than the chilltec.

The design was not developed by anybody. Its just a cooling "accessory", which incorporates a TEC, which has been around for quite sometime.

I must say I am quite surprised that the Monsoon II Lite has managed to keep such an overclocked chip cool, given that the TEC only takes up 50W at 100% (according to article), which means it can only dissipate (theoretically) up to 50W of heat. Given that a stock Core2Duo dissipates around 90W, and much much more when overclocked like that, the numbers don't quite add up.

But looking at the design, with extra heat-pipes on the CPU itself, that could have something to do with it. I would have seriously doubted the amount of heat a 4 heatpipe aircooler could dissipate. But this is a single review. Reading more reviews which compares this product to other high-end aircoolers would really prove that this product performs better than other high-end coolers. I particularly like this one because it compares it directly to the Soniq Tower, which I believe is one of the best out there, but like I said, the numbers don't seem to add up. The review also did not mention if the comparison results were done together with the new unit, or were old results with the same methodology.

But overall, its a great initial review.

whoops, repost.

Well on the Vigor website they say they have patents. We both know peltier and fans have both been around a long time. And they weren't specific on what part or configuration they have it on. I've been reading a lot of reviews, especially when that anandtech article said the would be priced between $80 and $90. All the reviews I've read were pretty positive including the price which seemed reasonable, but the fact of the matter is it's come out around $130, and me living off of disability, I'm not prepared to go that high. I'd rather buy the Tuniq Tower and a hard drive for the same price.

Well, some guys buy computers just because they can, and they buy super cooling solutions, just because they can.

For guys like that, I'd say the lowest temps possible would be the main priority. Who cares if it costs twice something which cools 1C higher?

You must also realise that most people don't have cooling which performs anywhere close to the Tuniq Tower. I'dd say most guys here would be on Stock cooling, then some Zalman solutions or Freezer7, a whole bunch of cheap watercooling solutions, and then you've got some people with worthwhile watercooling, and a handful of weird guys with TEC cooling or DIY.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if the TEC isn't powerful enough, I wouldn't recommend anyone to bother. You'd need something thats at least 200W today I'd reckon, and you'd have to fork out money for a special TEC thermostat with that. Trust me, the thermostat is more expensive than the TEC if you can't DIY it. Normal old thermostats don't work too well with TECs...