So here is another review courtesy of Susan LeBlanc at Coolit Systems, This is one of CoolIt’s best CPU all in one water coolers, Instead of spending huge amounts of money and having all the worry of a custom water cooling kit the A.L.C products from CoolIt give you all the plus sides of water cooling but without the huge cost and installation time.
CoolIt have done a great job suppling all the things nessecery to install the Vantage into any rig you may have, It comes with support for AMD: AM2, AM2+,AM3, Intel Socket :775,1156 and of course 1366. This cooler shouldn’t have a problem supporting your setup. The Vantage comes with the Intel socket support retainer already attached, Which was handy as i’m testing it on an Intel I7 920. The manual they supply is as straight forward as its gets, It tells you how to install the vantage in 6 languages(English, Spanish,French,Italian,Dutch and Russian). This is very handy indeed and the manual is a full color one as well, Which is also a plus.
Looking at the Vantage cooler itself, You cannot help but see its beauty, It really is one of the nicest looking coolers i have seen. When holding the Cooler in your hand, You really get a sense of its durability. Its a very strong build.
As you can see the Copper base on the Vantage cooler will keep your cpu cooled very nicely, It also comes with Thermal compound pre-applied which is always a nice touch. The rentention clips that come already attached are for Intel sockets, They are extremely easy to adjust, You just pop the clip up and aline it with whatever Socket connection you are using. I was testing the cooler on a Socket 1366 and it is already adjusted for that. The retention bracket for behind the motherboard comes with an adhesive strip attached so it just sticks on to your motherboard, Meaning it will not fall of while you are installing the cooler.
Looking at the fan/radiator you notice the entire black design they went for, Which i think looks amazing, Even the screws are black. Very nice work by CoolIt.
Okay, I have no pictures of me installing the Vantage(Some after photos tough), The reason for that being is that depending on the case, CPU. Motherboard. Fan position. Its going to be different for everyone. I will however tell you my experience on installing it.
Now all in all it took me around 30 minutes to install this, That is including taking out my trusty Cooler master V8(Which is going to my brother) The thing about installing this cooler is that its going to be a little more difficult then installing a normal air based cooler.
The point being is there is two pieces that need to be installed. Now it wasn’t at all too difficult and an extra pair of hands came in handy. The first thing you need to do is too install the fan/radiator first. While your friend holds the pump/cooler. This makes it easier to get the screws into the fan. As with most fans, The threads for the screws are made while you are screwing them in, Meaning you need to put some pressure on the opposite side of the fan to screw it in. Once the fan/radiator is in, Its pretty much just aligning the pump/cooler into socket and then screwing it in. Now this is where CoolIt really help out.
The screws are in fact THUMBSCREWS all praise the mighty thumb scree. This is a great help as you can quickly get the the screws into place and have them tightened with a screen driver at the end. Just a simple Philips will do.
Now unlike basic fan based coolers, Once installed you don’t just walk away, There is some much more fun to be had. You can customize the Lcd panel on the Vantage to your liking,
As you can see there are many options from you to choose from, Regarding color of the screen and how the Vantage preforms.
Now while CoolIt have made this as easy as they could for you to install the Vantage, There is a few things that needed to be noted for when you install yours. The way the pump and fan get power is the most important part of the cooler. While with custom coolers, There components all get there power separately. CoolIt have designed the Vantage so it gets all the power it needs from the CPU fan header on your motherboard. The problem with that being that some motherboards will regulate the power coming from that header in certain ways, This can be switched off but sometimes the power still gets regulated by software on your computer. The Vantage requires full 12v power to for the pump and fan to work perfectly. There are so many safety features in case something goes wrong you can rest assure that it will be covered, Although that itself does cause some issues. While i first had the Vantage installed on the CPU fan header, I was having problems with the fan getting kicked into overdrive and running at full rpm which is 2500rpm and i have to say this is quite loud, Its not something i would like to be running into.
There was really no reason for it to be that loud. At the time the computer was running idle. I think(well not 100%) That its one of the CoolIT’s safety features, Meaning if the power tries to get regulated in any way, The fan will kick in to 100% to make sure the CPU doesn’t heat up because of it. Using a 4pin molex adaptor will give the Vantage unregulated power, Its not a perfect solution as the molex adaptor isn’t supplied but then again, This issue will not show up for most people.
As you can see, The Vantage really does look amazing. Now its time for some testing results.
Here is the computer the Vantage was tested in.
- Coolermaster HAF X
- Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard
- Intel i7 920 D0 stepping
- Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB
- 3 X 2GB Corsair Dominator Ram
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit
Now first of, I’m not going to have any stock setting results, WHY you ask. Because they are pointless. If you buy a cooler like this and don’t overclock even a little, Your mad!!
I start off by running the the CPU @ 3.2GHz. Now on idle, I was getting temps of 30º-35º Running prime95 and max load for about an hour, The temp on the never went past 62º Which is very nice results and would be perfect to run your cpu at.
Now here are some crazy results.
Running at 4.0ghz under load the cpu never went above 76º, I left it running for about 30 minutes on Prime95, While the fan was pretty loud at this point, It shows the cooler knows exactly what its doing and has some great measures for cooling the CPU. The Vantage will make sure the fan kicks in if the coolant temp gets too hot, Which is a great idea and makes sure your CPU doesn’t run hot for too long before cooling it down.
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Okay, Over the last few days of using the Vantage, I have been experiencing a slight issue, As mentioned above, The vantage will at random times kick the fan into full rpm, Which to say on its own isn’t a problem but its doing it for no reason. Its completely random and will NOT come out of full rpm. Also the fan is really loud at this level(I mean intolerable) Not sure why the fan gets this loud, During the tests the fan did get as loud sometimes, But it was cooling an overclocked under load CPU and after time it would lower the fan.
I have since contacted CoolIt to try and work out a solution to whatever is causing this. It seems the vantage is going into default mode(Not sure why) and will not come out of it until i shut the computer down and boot it back up, At which point the fan will stay at a nice 1100rpm and be near silent. I will be sending the unit back to see if it was faulty, They are sending me a new one, Hopefully it works out okay, As this cooler did get some pretty decent temps.
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Okay, I have since gotten a new Vantage from coolit, Great part was that it only took a few days to get here from canada, They were extremely quick to send me out a new one and i have to give credit there as it turns out the last one was faulty. I have had this one in for a good few hours and it seems to be working perfectly, I did most of the tests again and luckily the results were pretty much the exact same, Infact in some cases the results were the same but the fan had a lower RPM in turn meant it was quieter, At this point i’m very happy with the product and thing its a excellent piece of work.
Conclusion: If you are looking for a mid/high price CPU cooler that will give you temps you are really looking for, Then look no further, The Vantage is great geektech and really does look amazing in any case you may have, Its very easy to install and the temps are pretty incredible for such a small water cooling unit. Hands of to coolit for making water cooling not only cheap but alot easier and management free, This gets the GREAT GEEK TECH AWARD.
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