CoolIT made ECO A.L.C. with a specific aim of defeating high-performance air coolers both in performance and pricing. ECO A.L.C. is priced at $72.86 here and at €74,90 here. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that ECO A.L.C. is superior to classic water cooling systems especially to average users. It’s priced lower, it’s smaller and comes as a preinstalled system with no need for adding fluids yourself – mount it and you’re good to go. On the other hand, users who prefer more customizable systems will probably find these benefits to be shortcomings, as classic water cooling systems allow for replacing or adding water blocks, mounting longer pipes and/or new radiators and such. ECO A.L.C. is made of three components that are sealed shut and can’t be removed or replaced without voiding the warranty; there’s the radiator, water pumps and the adjoining pipes. CoolIT made sure everything is locked and loaded so all you need to do is mount the cooling.



The radiator with the accompanying fan should be mounted on the back panel of the case, where 12cm fans are usually mounted. The radiator is about 2 cm thick and the fan about 2.5cm. All this was done with compactness in mind as CoolIT wanted to make sure that its cooling system is compatible with smaller cases. Naturally, the smaller the radiator the lower the dissipation surface is and the cooling loses efficiency, but as long as you’re not doing extreme overclocking – ECO A.L.C. will serve you well.


 
For efficient cooling, CoolIT opted on a combination of a wide-fin fan and a radiator with densely distributed aluminum fins. The company pretty much aimed to fix all the downsides to its last year’s model Domino A.L.C., which was pretty loud. The ECO A.L.C.’s fan should be pretty efficient with low noise fans which produce less airflow but run quiet throughout.

Talking about airflow, the fan draws air through the radiator, cooling the radiator and getting the hot air out in the process.



The fan is connected to the CPU fan spot on the motherboard via a 4-pin connector. Fan speed can be controlled from BIOS of the motherboard or a separate fan controller. Maximum fan speed stands at 1800 rpm.

The water pump also needs power and you’ll connect it to one of the fan connectors on the motherboard, rather than on the CPU fan connector. Coolit CFF1 pump is pretty efficient with power consumption and requires only 1W.


 
The pump is rated as ultra low profile and is pretty compact. The pump, together with the base, is about 5.1cm tall and it’s well worth noting that no air cooling with similar efficiency can even come close to the compactness of the ECO A.L.C. The pump and the base are pretty light as well and won’t put pressure on your motherboard, unlike some large and pretty heavy air-coolers. As you can see from the picture, CoolIT’s pro advanced thermal compound is pre-applied for easy installation to the copper block but you won’t get more thermal compound with the ECO A.L.C.



Preassembled and preconfigured for Intel’s processors, ECO A.L.C. is pretty easy to mount. The hardest part is mounting the backplate, but this has become a common feature with cooling and we’ve done it numerous times. The mechanism for Intel’s processors is so simple that amateur users will easily mount it on socket 1366, 1156 or 775. As you can see from the following picture, CoolIT indicated the screw placement for specific Intel socket. For mounting on AMD AM2, AM2+ or AM3 socket, you’ll need to replace Intel’s mounting mechanisms with AMD’s.