When Geoff Lyon, the Chief Executive Officer of CoolIt Systems, told the Fall 2008 Intel Developers Forum that he was coming out with an Advanced Liquid Cooling (A.L.C.) solution for under $100 it grabbed my attention. I've worked with many cooling companies for the past six years and bringing a functional water cooler to the market for under $100 was said to be impossible if you still wanted decent performance. When I think of a low cost internal water cooling system the Asetek LCLC water cooler that was released back in 2006 comes to mind. When the Asetek LCLC water cooler was announced it was said to be available for roughly $40, but it never seemed to catch on and was available mostly to original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and was not widely available to the public. Today you can find the Asetek LCLC at a few retailers on Google Shopping for between $60 and $106, but as you can tell the product never caught on outside the OEM market (Asetek informed me that they have sold over 100,000 LCLC kits since 2006). CoolIT Systems noticed that well built water cooler was still missing from the sub $80 retail market and went back to a drawing board to see if something could be designed that had the cooling performance that enthusiasts demand and a price tag that won't break thebank during these troubled economic times. After many long hours and a year in the test lab CoolIT Systems came up with a pre-assembled water cooler can be easily installed inside any standard chassis called the Domino A.L.C.
The Domino A.L.C. is factory sealed ready to be quickly and easily installed, so the retail box is modest sized as the water cooler is already plumbed and ready to go when you open the box. The CoolIT Domino A.L.C. packaging shows all the important features and even has pictures to help you quickly see what the product is designed to do. A couple of quotes from past reviews on CoolIT products were included from various review sites, but sadly no quotes from our Eliminator CPU Cooler, Pure CPU Cooler or our USB Beverage Chiller reviews made it.Removing the Domino A.L.C. from the box you will find the cooler safely packed in a clam shell that prevents things from banging around when being shipped to you.Removing the Domino A.L.C. from the box you will find the cooler safely packed in a clam shell that prevents things from banging around when being shipped to you.A few minor imperfections were still observed on the radiator cooling fins as you can see from the image above, but they were easily straightened out using a small flat head screwdriver. Notice that everything is assembled and ready to go the second you open the box. The rubber band that is on the water block is to hold a plastic cover over the already applied thermal interface material, but I cleaned that off in order to use Arctic Silver thermal compound. This was done to keep the testing numbers consistent as no two thermal compound brands are identical. Now that we know what we will be looking at today we can take the Domino A.L.C. out of the box and give you a better look at how it works.

SAPPHIRE Technology is now introducing the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2, an exclusive new dual GPU water cooled version of the standard ATI HD 4870 X2 card. Because the article is written in Greek which is not my strongest language, I'll stick to the specs and pics, after all that's all we need. As usual, the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2 comprises of two complete HD 4870 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 1GB of GDDR5 memory, making a total of 2GB on-board memory. Core clock speed for this model is 800MHz, there are 2x800 stream processors, the memory clock speed is 1000MHz with 512-bit memory interface. What's so special in this model is the full cover liquid cooling provided by the famous OEM coolingexpert Asetek. The water-block cools both GPUs, all memory chips, the bridge chip and all the power elements. Two Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. Additionally the card's bundle includes a CCL UV lamp and Sapphire USB memory stick with drivers. The card will be available starting December 18th for a MSRP of $649.

Water cooling has traditionally been considered an extreme solution, pursued by enthusiasts looking for the best cooling performance to squeeze every last drop of performance from their systems. For a long time this wasn't far from the truth and you were unlikely to find a water cooling setup that wasn't hooked up to an overclocked rig. However, in recent years watercooling has become ever more mainstream as evidenced by the number of manufacturers producing entry-level kits. These kits often provide ease of installation and operation at the expense of performance and cost. They also eliminate much of the knowledge barrier to entry to water cooling.
Since the early DIY days, water cooling has come a long way in terms of accessibility and exposure, but there are still many issues which prevent it from ousting traditional air coolers in the mainstream chip cooling market. Compared to air cooling, water cooling requires more maintenance and it's harder to install since most water cooling systems have over twice as many parts as an air cooling system, which generally only consists of a heatsink and fan. Many retail water cooling system kits also come unassembled to some degree which further complicates installation and opens up more chances for incorrect installation and user error.While pre-assembled and all-in-one kits have done a lot to alleviate these problems, the increased accessibility often comes at the sacrifice of performance and they don't really address the largest problem with water cooling; the high cost. A competent water cooling system will usually cost from $150-$300 while a top-end heatsink and fan with somewhat comparable performance can be bought for only $70. The combination of high cost, increased need for maintenance and the do-it-yourself nature of water cooling is often too much for non-enthusiasts who tend to avoid it in preference for turn-key solutions, and who can blame them? It is for many of these same reasons that OEMs have not caught on to the idea of water cooling. The additional costs involved as well as the prospect of potential maintenance issues have caused many users and OEMs alike to avoid watercooling despite the numerous advantages.

Asetek saw an opportunity to address some of these issues and help bring watercooling further into the mainstream. They hope to do this with their simply named Low-Cost Liquid Cooling system (LCLC).The LCLC may resemble other water cooling setups but it provides many features that set it apart from the pack. Asetek has attempted to address nearly all of the traditional disadvantages of water cooling compared to air cooling. It is a completely sealed system, which means it comes completely pre-assembled. This eliminates issues of assembly error and makes installation simpler. A non-toxic, non-flammable liquid and plastic tubing is used in lieu of silicone to eliminate evaporation issues, which means the system will not require refilling, reducing maintenance. This also makes a reservoir unnecessary, which makes the system simpler. To further simplify the system, the pump and cold plate (a.k.a. water block) have been integrated together into a single unit.

This means a basic LCLC configuration only consists of a pump/block unit and radiator (with cooling fan) connected by plastic tubing. This makes the LCLC significantly simpler and smaller than traditional water cooling systems and it also means it is small enough to easily accommodate just about any mATX case that can mount a 80mm, 92mm or 120mm exterior-access fan.