Installation:
Installation of the
CoolIT Systems Freezone Thermoelectric CPU Cooler was much easier than you might expect. Installation really requires mounting the water block with 2 retention brackets and four fasteners that are installed through the backside of the motherboard.
As the below left image depicts, the water block arrives with thermal paste pre-installed from the factory. The paste looked thick and uneven, so it was removed with alcohol wipes and replaced with Arctic Silver Ceramique. The same thermal paste was also applied to the stock Intel heatsink that the Freezone was later benchmarked against. The second picture below is provided for reference - it reveals the mirror finish on the smooth aluminum water block.
Moving forward with the installation you will notice the following pictures show the mounting hardware being installed onto the
ECS-PN2 SLI2+ motherboard previously reviewed at Bigbruin.com on March 21st, 2007. The pictured processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 which was tested at stock speed (2.13GHz) and overclocked speed (3.05GHz). Installing the water block to the motherboard requires the four fasteners you see below which go through the motherboard to a backing plate which supports the tension the brackets exert on the processor. Installation involved nothing more than placing the water block on the processor, loosely turning the four bolts into the cylindrical sleeves, and then positioning the retention brackets through the notched portion of the water block. Then you tighten the fasteners in an alternating fashion until the fasteners bottom-out on the metal sleeves.
The following images are provided as a reference. After installing the
CoolIT Systems Freezone Thermoelectric CPU Cooler (below right image) you will notice how much larger the unit is than a conventional air-cooled heatsink (below left image). Just look at the difference in occupied real estate when comparing the
Scythe Mine CPU Cooler to the CoolIT Systems Freezone CPU Cooler. The Freezone barely clears the side panel of the Antec One Performance Midtower test case. Also note how the Freezone makes it difficult to access a large portion of your motherboard; RAM slots, IDE connections, and some fan connectors are now more difficult to manipulate.
