CoolIT Freezone Elite

Verdict: Uses the power of electricity to keep your CPU cool.

Fortunately, the Freezone Elite isn't just a scaled-up version of the dire PURE, which failed to prevent the thermtrip from switching off our test PC after just three minutes. Instead, the Freezone Elite is an oddity in this month's water-cooling special, as it combines the properties of a water-cooling kit with a TEC (thermo electric cooler).

TECs use the Peltier principle, which states that if a current is passed through two dissimilar materials, heat will also be conducted, leaving one side cool and one side hot.

The Freezone Elite uses this principle to conduct heat from the coolant to a large heatsink (as opposed to a radiator), which in turn is cooled by a 120mm variable-speed fan. In practice, this process is aided by six low-wattage TECs, which have a total power draw of 72W. This means that the Freezone Elite should be far more effective at drawing heat from the coolant than a standard radiator.

However, even though CoolIT has used low-wattage TECs, you'll still need a fairly meaty PSU with at least 6A free on one of its 12V frails, and either one 6-pin PCI-E or two Molex plugs to power the TEC control module. In its default configuration, the TECs and fan speed are adjusted according to the coolant temperature, but you can also adjust these using a small Windows applet that communicates with the TECs via a USB cable.

Despite its high number of power and interface cables, the Freezone Elite is very easy to install. The waterblock mounts quickly and easily to the CPU with four standoffs that have to be screwed through the motherboard, while the large unit housing the pump/heatsink/fan/TECs is designed to be screwed into the 120mm fan mount nearest the motherboard.

The Freezone Elite was very quiet when the CPU was idle in Windows, but with the CPU fully loaded, the fan spun up and was extremely loud. Even so, the CPU temperature was only 3ûC lower than it was with the Tuniq Tower 120 fitted; this is a very disappointing result, given the hybrid water/TEC cooling system.

Considering that the Freezone Elite is a lot more expensive than any HSF and consumes a lot of power, it's hard to recommend, especially for an overclocked quad-core CPU.