Conclusion
The Freezone and Eliminator are for the enthusiast who wants a plug & play maintenance free CPU cooling system. As far as exotic cooling solutions go, the Eliminator and Freezone are about as easy to install and maintain as they come.
Compared to a water cooling system, they both have strengths and weaknesses. A water cooling system is expandable to chipsets and VGA cards, but the Freezone and Eliminator are not. On the other hand, the Freezone and Eliminator are not in the way if you want to change out your graphics card, and you don't have to drain the system if you want to change your CPU or motherboard. With these pieces of information in mind, a standard water cooling system is a no-compromise PC cooling system, whereas the Freezone and Eliminator provide excellent cooling without the hassle of water-based systems.
In this way, comparing these coolers to standard water cooling systems is very much an apples-to-oranges comparison. And before I come to any conclusions about value, let's examine the prices again: I found the Freezone for sale online for about $290 USD and the Eliminator for about $175. Koolance's Exos-2 water cooling system with required accessories weighs in at about $325.
If we compare the more costly Freezone with the Exos-2, we have similar performance and even a similar price. The Exos-2 is expandable and a bit quieter, but is more of a hassle to set up and maintain; the Freezone is a breeze to install and maintain, but is a bit louder and is a bit more limited. Apples to oranges. Which is better? That's a personal question really, and only you would know which you'd find more valuable. I will say this however: as a hardware tester who constantly moves hardware in and out of his PC, a water cooling system is a bit of a pain sometimes. It sure is nice & quiet though.
Now let's compare the Freezone with the Eliminator: here we have an apples to apples comparison. Is the Freezone worth the $100+ premium over the Eliminator? If you're using a relatively cool processor like the overclocked to 2.25 GHz e4300 used here, I suspect it's not. However, with a hotter processor the Eliminator is going to reach its limits faster and the Freezone may well come into its own. I really appreciated the Eliminator's small size and ease of use compared to the Freezone, but if I had a monster overclock I think I'd be more inclined to put up with the Freezone's quirks.
In the final analysis the Freezone and Eliminator are definitely interesting products for the PC enthusiast. Those who would appreciate a high end CPU cooling system without the hassle won't be disappointed.
