CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler

Product(s): CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler
Provided By: CoolIT Systems
Price:

Introduction: 

If you have been following BCCHardware for the past couple months and have read our coverage of CES 2010 (which you can find over here) or CeBIT 2010 (our full coverage over here) you may have heard us talking about some new water-cooling products from CoolIT, and today we have finally got our hands on one their newest offerings named "ECO".

CoolIT has been known in the past for their high-end watercooling systems such as the Freezone Elite (which we reviewed here). In the past couple years CoolIT has expanded their product lineup to include watercooling systems that offer high-performance, hassle-free, watercooling at a very affordable price with offerings such as the Domino (which we reviewed here) and the Pure (which we reviewed here). The ECO is the latest in this lineup which aims to give you great watercooling performance at a very affordable price.

The ECO is priced at a very affordable MSRP of $74.99 from CoolIT Systems direct (you may be able to find it even cheaper online in the months to come), and this comes with everything you need to get the ECO installed on pretty much any current CPU socket from either AMD or Intel. Back in the early days of watercooling you could very easily spend that kind of money on a pump alone much less an entire setup.

First Impressions:

After seeing the ECO at both CES and CeBIT, opening the box felt a little bit like Christmas.

CoolIT ECO - Box (Front)

CoolIT ECO - Box (Side)

 

The ECO comes in a snazzy white box that has some of the highlights about how the ECO works on the outside of the box (as you can see in the pictures). The ECO also comes with everything you'll need to get the ECO mounted on any current AMD or Intel CPU very easily.

CoolIT ECO - Box (Side)

CoolIT ECO - Accessories

 

If you remember some of CoolIT's previous coolers you'll notice right away that the ECO is a bit different (CoolIT Domino review here, CoolIT Pure reviewed here, and CoolIT Freezone Elite reviewed here). The biggest difference is now the pump is built into the heatsink part of the cooler, thus making the radiator part of the cooler much smaller (and easier to fit into your case).

CoolIT ECO - Side View

CoolIT ECO - Radiator

 

CoolIT ECO - Heatsink/Pump

CoolIT ECO - Bottom of Heatsink

 

The entire setup of the ECO is pretty simple, you mount the radiator into a empty 120mm fan bay in the back of your case and screw the heatsink on and your done, watercooling really couldn't be any simpler.

CoolIT ECO - Radiator

CoolIT ECO - Radiator

 

As you might have noticed in the above pictures, the radiator fan needs to be plugged into a 4-pin PWM fan header and the pump/heatsink needs to be plugged into a 3-pin header. Thanks to the PWM fan on the radiator you can set your motherboard to spin the fan up and down depending on temperatures to keep your computer quiet.

CoolIT ECO - Radiator

CoolIT ECO - Fan attached to Radiator

 

So that's the ECO, let's move onto the next sections for more ECO fun!