The Freezone will consume an additional 70W of power, so you should make sure that your power supply can handle that load. Typical computers today consume an average of 300 Watts, so a good 500W power supply should do the trick. Be forewarned, the light-weight 500W power supply that come pre-installed in a $30 case is probably not up to the task. Use a good, name-brand power supply like Ultra, Antec, or OCZ.
The unit steadily got louder as it “warmed up”. At the lowest setting (~3000rpm), the unit is almost silent, but at the highest setting (~7000rpm), the Freezone sounds like a jet engine taking off, and will probably be the loudest thing in your case. Noise might be reduced if using an efficient 120mm fan, but you can try to balance the noise and performance using the TCM’s adjustment knob. Since the TCM is placed inside the sytem, minor tweaks require opening the case.
Test system
The Freezone was tested against our top-performing air-cooled heatsink, the Zalman CNPS-9700NT. We used an Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo processor, which has great overclocking ability.
- Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo @ 2.4Ghz
- Asus P5W Deluxe (Intel 975 chipset)
- 2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR-800
- XFX 7800 GT PCI-e video card
- CoolIT Freezone CPU Cooler
- Zalman CNPS-9700 NT Heatsink
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CoolIT Freezone CPU Cooler Performance
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The CoolIT Freezone is the only CPU Cooler I’ve used that actually cooled the CPU signficiantly below room temperature! At 15 degrees celcius (59 degrees F), our E6600 had much better overclocking potential. We were able to overclock our E6600 from 2.4Ghz to 3.2Ghz, with high stability. In contrast, using the Zalman we could only overclock to 2.8Ghz stably, and the CPU was still hotter than I would like.
The copper waterblock was literally cool to the touch, as were the tubes and peltier. Because the TCM adjusts the peltiers to prevent condensation, the unit only achieved these results at night, when the room temperature was lower. During the day, the Freezone was able to chill the CPU to 20 degrees C, still way below room temperature.
