Keep It Cool

Since the conflicts of the ancient world have bought collateral damage, and so the cost of constructing and configuring a HTPC has been my desktop computer. I've been all too eager to take parts from and build testbeds, the significant fraction of which have been pre-blogged and the end result left me at a loss of one video card. The Desktop PC is now part of the plan and there are three changes to make straight off the bat.

• A CPU Cooler
• A Video Card
• Four more gig of RAM

I've put the RAM on ice just for the moment, as memory prices have doubled since I last looked and to be honest the other two are higher priorities. I'm still using a stock cooler and have a noisy nVidia 7800. The Gainwood 7800 GT is a good card, and actually capable of running all the games I want to play at a decent frame rate but between its wind-tunnel cooler and the CPU fan the noise is unbearable.

So I've made the switch to a Domino-ALC CPU cooler and a fanless GeForce 9800GT.

The 9800GT is a pleasant upgrade from the 7800, providing good antialiasing at 1280x1024 and faster-than-you-need frame rates in the latest titles from Valve and whichever Total War game I'm playing through at the moment. Don't you find world conquests just kind of blur together?

Passive cooling is obviously its advantage over the framerate and image quality increases although they are both noticable and very much appreciated. Thankyou very much Gigabyte and nVidia, this is The Way It's Meant To Be Played. The card is a brick sized array of fins and heatpipes and does get hot to the touch but not (yet) scarily so.

While I understand it is both feature-poor and slow, being still several generations behind the cutting edge, it meets and exceeds all of the quality and speed bars I've set and is silent to boot so I can't in all honestly come up with a complaint. Its a 9/10 product, based on being fast, silent and pretty. Its loses half a mark for being second-rate technology and another half-mark because speed freaks can buy faster cards for less. View speed benchmark and price comparisons online to make up your own mind. The review score will gradually decay over time, maybe a point per year I based on how much bias I put on speed and the requirements of new games.

Next off the mark is the Domino ALC from CoolIT Systems. Its a Peltier Heat Exchange, connected to a high surface area radiator with a water based working fluid and 120mm exhaust fan. From a technology perspective its got quite a geek chic including a blue-backlit LCD temperature, fan and water pump speed indicator and I'm pleased it hasn't clocked a temperature above 40'c yet. Of course, this means its either not drawing much heat from the CPU and i'm going into meltdown or its drawing loads of heat and cooling it really well. The constant hot airflow from the exhaust fan makes me think the latter and believe its very good at cooling.

What the Domino is not good at, is being quiet. All of the coolers I've had from Noctura, Scythe and Zalman have been quieter and carry a lower retail price. Fundementally, you can spend less on a quieter cooler. If you care about its cooling more than its volume then it'll get a comfortable 9/10, but I value the peace and quiet enough to relegate it to the 8/10 range.

The High Tech feelgood factor of all the technology in the Domino is almost enough to pull it into the 9/10 (or higher!) range but I'm reviewing it as a cooler NOT as a 'gadget'. The Domino has staying power for as long as it can be mounted on a CPU so should stay with me through and beyond my next PC upgrade.