CoolIT ALC VANTAGE review - Introduction

The one company with a brand name that does what it says (to cool it) has once again released a new product based off a concept that was started a year and a half ago, ya'll remember the Domino ALC right ? An all in-one liquid cooling kit with great price versus performance.

Earlier this year CoolIT introduced their ALC ECO. The ideas were based off the same Domino kit, yet improved but also simplified on many levels. That product was quite a success, tagged with a launch price of 75 USD, and these days it can be found at 50 USD it certainly rocked the cooing arena a little. However the ALC ECO is only the beginning, earlier this year at CES (and gawd they make good Mohito's in Las Vegas) we already brought you the skinny on something else they where working on, the Vantage ALC series, based off that ECO but targeted at the more nice end-user. So the ALC range is once again getting an update, this time around a very impressive one.

The ALC series are single self contained water-cooling based units, that are very easy to install. No need to fill em up, nope ... just seat them, secure them, activate them and you are good to roll.

They look nice and perform adequately as well. Now I state this in each and every liquid cooling review; yours truly is a huge fan of water-cooling. There are very few systems here in our office that are not water-cooled. And there's a good reason behind it really. First off, water-cooling is extremely efficient as it's a very quick way to transport heat away from the processor. That by itself has several advantages, the biggest one being the overall the temperature of your processor will go down much faster than say a traditional air cooler. Another good reason for water-cooling is the noise level. When done right you can keep the volume of the fan on a radiator really quiet creating a pretty inaudible experience. Last and most certainly not least is the most simple reason of them all .. it can look freakishly cool.

Over the next pages we'll dive into the A.L.C Vantage, the latest model located in that self contained water-cooling based segment targeted at an audience that like style and gimmicks. But don't let the looks confuse you, the performance and features of this little product are really good.

 As always we'll show you the entire product with the help of a nice photo-shoot. And then obviously we'll take it to the next level by massively overclocking an Intel quad core processor and see how the VANTAGE behaves.

Will a 115 USD water-cooler with an LCD screen slapped on top of it be able to pull off an overclock towards 4.2 GHz on a Core i7 750 ? Well, let's find out, next page please.