Coolit Vantage Advanced Liquid Cooler Review

1. Introduction2. Coolit Vantage ALC3. Installation4. Testing The Cooler5. Acoustic Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

With the vast selection of coolers on the market today it is hard to know which model to purchase. Will an £18 Thermaltake Contac 29 do the job or do you really need to spend over £60 on a Noctua NH D14 ? To make matters even more confusing there are some ‘all in one' liquid cooling solutions from Corsair and Coolit, which offer low noise levels and high performance with small CPU mounting blocks.

We recently looked at the Coolit ECO, an excellent cooler which combined low cost with good cooling prowess, and today we are going to be reviewing the Vantage A.L.C. – a unit with enhanced functionality and programmable performance levels.

As with all Coolit liquid cooling units, the Vantage comes pre assembled and filled so its a simple case of ‘plug and play'.

Specifications:

CoolIT CPU FHE (Fluid Heat Exchanger)
Copper Micro-Channel

Universal Retention System
Out of the box support provided
for Intel 775, 1156, 1366 and
AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 sockets.

CoolIT Pump
Quiet, compact, long life Ceramic bearing CFF1 pump
Life Cycle: 50,000 Hours MTTF

CoolIT Coolant
CoolIT Systems low toxicity with anticorrosion/anti fungal additives

CoolIT Radiator
Custom engineered for low noise high heat dissipation

CoolIT Fan
High reliability, Quiet 12V
Speed: 1100 – 2,500 RPM (low to high regulation)

CoolIT CPU Thermal Grease
CoolIT Systems Pro A.T.C. (Advanced Thermal Compound)

CoolIT Fan Node
Three standard 3 or 4 pin fan headers that can auto detect a variety of third-party fans. Integrated Red-Green LED as well as an external RGB LED header and one temperature sensor header allowing for remote temperature detection.

Operations Modes (User Selectable)
Three cooling performance modes quiet, performance, and full.

CoolIT 2 Year Manufacturer Warranty

The Coolit Vantage arrives in a blue gradient layered box which shows the main specifications with several high quality images.

Inside, the cooler is sandwiched between two very heavy duty layers of styrofoam.

Inside the Vantage is further protected by a plastic bag. There are three mounting backplates for the various slots and an AMD mount.

The Vantage uses a control module that be customised with settings entitled ‘quiet‘ ‘performance‘ and ‘extreme‘. On the top of the pump block are two buttons that allow menu navigation. We have a video of the unit in operation on the build page later in the review.

The pump assembly is inside the housing and Coolit are using their own proprietary CFF1 unit which has a ceramic bearing to achieve the rated 50,000 hours of use while consuming a single watt of power. In layman's terms this means if you were running a system 24/7 that it is rated to last for 5 years. The liquid mixture also contains a propylene glycol mixture with anti fungal and anti corrosion additives, this will be a major asset to long term performance as without it, algae growths can block the heat exhanger.

The CPU head comes with a fine layer of thermal paste preapplied – we removed this to show the complete, exposed block. Very nicely manufactured it is too.

The Vantage uses 90 degree fittings which swivel around to make sure the fitting is extremely flexible regardless of the way you need to mount it. One side of the pump has a little latch and the other side is home to the pump outlet and the return feed from the radiator. Just be aware that even though these lines are rigid yet flexible that there are limitations to how far you can bend them without causing damage.

When we first opened the box I was immediately impressed with the shroud concept because I knew this would greately assist with airflow outside the case. Additionally it also means that you are not screwing directly into the radiator itself which is better for safety. The 120mm Coolit fan is capable of spinning from 1100 rpm to 2500rpm to cater for a variety of system demands. The airflow is tailored to push from inside the chassis, over the radiator, and out the rear of the case.

Technically they could have flipped the fan meaning it would suck in cool air from outside, but this would have a negative effect on the air flow inside many chassis. We have created a diagram to show a brief overview of what we mean.

‘The right way' shows a traditionally designed chassis (Lian Li) two with intake fans on the front, The Vantage has replaced the rear exhaust fan and we added a 140mm fan at the top to expel warm air. The Vantage ‘out of the box‘ acts as an exhaust fan which replaces the original fan at the rear. If Coolit had reversed the fan position to act as an intake (‘the wrong way'), then both front mounted and rear mounted fans would generate conflicting air flow, causing turbulence. Some cases don't have top mounted fans either so there would actually be no exhaust system in place.

For testing today we are using an Intel Core i7 970 6 core CPU and an MSI X58A-GD65 motherboard – a combination we know already hits high overclocks with relative ease. Thanks to Intel and MSI for supplying these.

We are also going to be using 6GB of our favourite Ballistix Tracer DDR3 courtesy of Crucial.

Our chassis of choice is the Lian Li PC-8FIB which we reviewed a few days ago over here.

The cooler is supplied with a bracket prefitted for Intel processors, to change the fitting you simply slide the bar across to the relevant slot position. It comes set already at 1366 which is what we need.

We simply slide through a backplate and attach the CPU block to this with a standard screwdriver. We like the fact that Coolit have used little protective shrouds on the screws to ensure you don't slip and damage components.

There are two connectors which feed from the Vantage Pump assembly, the first is a four pin female connector which delivers power to the CFF1 pump via a CPU header on the motherboard. It is extremely important that PWM control is disabled in the bios so full power can be send via this connector.

A four pin male header delivers power to the fan mounted on the radiator. The Vantage control box can then adjust fan speeds to suit temperatures and settings.

There are many settings and options on the Vantage which allow for personalised configuration. The display can be rotated for instance to suit the fitting position.

Firstly, the main view shows the temperature of the Coolant as well as the speeds of the fan and pump.

There are coloured options to suit your own taste and you can make the unit ‘pulse' the colour if you wish.

We created a video to show the panel functionality.

As you can see the panel offers plenty of customisation, from fan speeds, to colours and rotation. We hear that upcoming units will support added software based functionality, such as auto detecting devices and controlling third party fans. This might be very useful for someone who wants complete control over airflow and system performance/noise.

All of the aesthetic options are great to look at, but we need to ascertain if the cooler can actually live up to performance claims as well. For this we are using a Core i7 970 processor which Intel supplied and we are testing it at reference clock speeds and voltages, and then cranking it to 4.33ghz with a 0.19 core voltage increase.

A few people have asked recently how I get such great overclocks with the CPU's I have, but I really have no answer, apart from having 25 years experience. I have seen some reviewers struggle with overclocking and I can only put it down to inexperience, poor mounting or bad component selection.

This 970 actually hits 4.65 ghz, but the voltage required could destroy it so we like to keep it reasonably sensible.

As many sites are claiming the Core i7 970 won't go higher than 4.1ghz regardless of voltage I felt a little validation was in order. Disbelievers can check it out over here: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1358577.

This combination of reference and overclocked performance will ensure that people can judge the end results and whether it will suit their specific demands. We are also including other coolers which we have tested in the past, such as the Thermaltake Frio, Corsair A70 and Noctua NH D14.

Idle temperatures are measured after 30 minutes resting in Windows and room temperature is maintained at 23c throughout, a comfortable real world environment for most people. We don't believe in testing coolers on an ‘open bench' as people at home won't be throwing parts onto a desk for everyday use.

We measured temperatures with diodes as motherboard readings can often be considerably wrong.

Coolit Vantage ALC

Comparison Coolers:
Noctua NH D14
Thermaltake Frio
Thermaltake Contac29
Coolit ECO ALC
Coolink Corator DS
Corsair A70 Cooler
Thermalright TRUE Revision C
Intel Reference Heatsink

Processor: Intel Core i7 970 CPU
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Memory: Crucial 6GB (3x2GB) 1600mhz DDR3
Graphics Card: Evga 1GB GTX460
Power Supply: Corsair AX850
Hard Drive: OCZ Agility 2
Chassis: Lian Li PC-8FIB

At reference clock speeds and voltages it is difficult to seperate the coolers, so we need to apply a 1.13 ghz clock increase by increasing the core voltage by 0.19. This should show greater variables. We used ‘extreme' setting on the Vantage here as there was no difference between the three – the processor wasn't generating enough heat to increase fan speeds.

We had to remove the Intel heatsink from the equation as the system would crash.

The Vantage ALC on extreme settings at these core voltages is achieving 69c under load, 1c better than the Frio and 3c higher (worse) than the NH D14 with 2 fans. The Vantage wasn't actually generating too much noise.

For our final test we will put the Noctua NH D14, Vantage and Frio in a head to head, after raising core voltage by 0.22 and increasing core speeds to 4.44ghz. Memory has risen to over 1800mhz at these settings (we know its fine to 2ghz with previous testing). Do you still believe the 970 I7 won't push past 4.1ghz?

Again CPU validation can be seen here http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1358646. This is a sweet spot for the CPU as if we want to take it to 4.6ghz the core voltage needs raised by 0.28 which is a little high by our estimations.

The Vantage fans ramped up with these settings although we still found it bearable, but clearly audible. To be fair, these are the kind of settings you normally associate with high end watercooling solutions – such as those seen in the Cryo Nemesis pc we reviewed last month.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. For most reviews we have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is passively cooled and we use a Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition graphics card which is also passively cooled. Ambient noise in the room is kept as low as possible. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

We normally use air conditioning which generates noise levels around 21dBa. We disabled air conditioning to lower ambient noise to 16.2dBa.

We use a SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter (6-130dBa) from a distance of 1 meter.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Vantage proves to deliver a very modest set of noise figures considering the limited radiator size. It is programmed to deliver idle temperatures between 28-30 c and when in performance mode it is noticeable, but not intrusive. When under full load and trying to cool a 6 core Intel Cpu at 4.5ghz however it becomes audible. That said, there are not many occasions, even during gaming when a 6 core processor is fully loaded so the noise levels at extreme settings are normally only apparent when running Prime or Cinebench.

Coolit have clearly been concentrating on the most important aspect of their cooling solutions, the build quality. We had some reservations in regards to their original Domino and with horror stories across the net we are glad to see that the ECO and Vantage have been repairing the faith with consumers.

The Vantage is in a different price bracket however so it has to compete with monster heatsinks such as the Noctua NH D14 Austrian Sandwich – sadly it isn't quite up to the task. Even at ‘Extreme' settings it can't quite cool a heavily overclocked processor in the same manner as the Austrian masterpiece.

To be utterly subjective however, we would be happy using this cooler on our overclocked Core i7 970 at 4.44ghz 24/7 because it is barely audible until all six cores are sitting at 100% load. Even then it isn't as loud as the Domino ALC on high or the painful Thermaltake Frio when both fans are maxed. 47.8dBa is perfectly acceptable to me in a performance system and we also love the fact that when the Core i7 970 drops to under 50% load, then the Vantage lowers noise levels in conjunction.

Right now the price is £105 inc vat in the UK which puts it into the high end category, costing £50 more than the Noctua NH D14 for instance. Why would anyone spend £50 more than the Noctua NH D14 for a cooler you ask?

Well, for one, the Noctua NH D14 is a massive cooler and can cause some fitting issues in specific chassis and can also negate the option to use memory with tall heatspreaders. It also takes some work reinstalling and is basically a ‘once fit, leave it', solution. The Coolit Vantage is more diverse because it only takes a few minutes to fit and it won't block anything in close proximity to the processor. From this perspective it is a fantastic high end cooling solution which bears serious consideration.

The LED system also is extremely practical and entertaining. If you have a side windowed case then the pulsing and colour settings look great, and you can always double check on coolant temperatures with a quick glance.

KitGuru says: It is expensive, but it is a quality piece of equipment and one we rate very highly indeed.

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