So you want watercooling for cheap with no maintenance ? Here's how...

A few days ago I saw a review for the CoolIT Domino A.L.C. CPU water cooler. I was shocked to see that it was both cheap, and had literally no long-term maintenance required. In fact, I had no idea that anything like this even existed. The Domino is a radiator, pump, cpu heatsink, fan, and lcd display all in one. And it does a decent job of cooling the processor. There is no filling, or bleeding or any of that nonsense, which traditionally kept me away from watercooling, it also is only powered by a single 3 pin connector to the motherboard. Here are some pics and results from the install.

My system:

Asus P5E vanilla

Intel Q9650 @ 3.8Ghz

Asus 4870X2
Sapphire 48701GB

Mushkin 4GB DDR2 800

Zalman 850W HP

Creative X-fi Fatality Gamer Pro

WD Raptor 150
WD Caviar Black 1TB
Super Talent 32GB SSD

Lite-On Blu-ray drive
Cooler Master Cosmos S (8 X 120mm fans)










Here, I mounted an additional, low rpm 120mm fan, so there are now 2 fans cooling the radiator, and it stays very quiet.




The temps I got are not nearly as gaudy as a full fledged water cooling loop, but they are not bad either.

Zalman 9700 (Full speed) Idle: Core 1-4, 40. 37. 39. 38.

CoolIT Domino (Med. Speed) Idle: Core 1-4, 34. 32. 37. 32




Zalman 9700 (Full speed) Full load: Core 1-4, 60. 54. 59. 56

CoolIT Domino (med. Speed) Full load: Core 1-4, 55. 50. 55. 52




So as you can see, it dropped my numbers a bit, which is nice, but to be honest with you, if you already have a really nice air cooler (like the 9700) then I don't suggest upgrading to this particular cooler. It is however much quieter than the Zalman on full fan speed, and let's face it, it looks pretty sweet in there too! By the way, the LCD display can be seen clearly through any case window, and reads coolant temperature, fan speed, and pump speed.

Hi

I never seen one with the digital readout, it looks nice.

I agree, I would have never dabbled with water cooling at all, because of the bleeding, and filling, and tube routing, and draining it every time you upgrade, but when I saw how this requires none of that, I said 'why not'. I fully respect anyone who uses a legitimate water cooling setup, espescially if they have it looped to their cpu, and gpus(s), just so much work.

That's pretty much says it all, a toy. And the stuff is addictive, I don't see how anyone can stop at just the CPU. Two weeks after water cooling the CPU I was ready for the video cards. Then you want bigger this, better that, I have so much stuff in there now it's on the edge of ridiculous, but like Blood Raven said it's cool.

I wrote a review for the Domino on newegg 2 weeks ago. Kept my I7 at 30c idle / 50c load.

If you want a reliable WC kit, go with Swiftech. CoolIt's watercooling kit is very overpriced, and usually can be outperformed by several air cooling solutions (TRUE for one).

At 4Ghz and 1.334v. I did modify it a tad. Changed out the stock 120mm fan for a higher cfm one and added a 92mm fan for push/pull