the powerc blog

If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming (or any high performance) system and want liquid cooling, you will normally be looking to spend 100s of pounds, which really increases the price of the system. These expensive systems also require a fair bit of maintenance to top up and keep them running efficiently. You could also have to choose a different case to house these often-bloated cooling systems. All this puts many people off going for a liquid cooled system.

the Domino liquid cpu cooler

Introducing the new Domino liquid cooling solution from CoolIT; this unit will give you liquid cooling for your CPU for around £80! It’s an all-in-1 piece which consists of a radiator, fan, pump and reservoir all of which is very compact, taking up practically no room whatsoever in your case. The Domino will fit into almost any case (it requires 120mm fan mounting holes at rear of case therefore, unfortunately, it does not fit into an Antec 900 case).

Fitting the Domino

The Domino in a typical PC case

To install the system all you need to do is replace the CPU fan mounting plate/bracket on your AMD (socket AM2, AM2+ or AM3) or Intel (socket 775 or 1366 [i7]) motherboard with the new mounting plate/bracket supplied with the CoolIT Domino, then fix the unit to the rear of your case using the supplied rubber fixing (to ensure minimal noise and vibration). Then screw the CPU block to the newly fitted mounting plate/bracket.

Once fitted this liquid cooling unit requires no maintenance as it is completely sealed and uses special materials to ensure that no liquid is lost during use. It also allows you to easily adjust the speed settings using the integrated speed controls on the side of the main unit itself and monitor all of the speeds and temperatures using the inbuilt LCD screen.

The Domino gives better cooling performance than standard air cooling systems and is comparable to the high-end air cooling systems from top manufacturers such as ThermalTake and CoolerMaster, which would cost you around the same, if not more, and will be a fair bit louder than the Domino.  The unit does not boast the kind of performance given by high-end liquid cooling systems, which can cost up to around £600, but is a much cheaper and a worry-free solution to getting a liquid cooled system that guarantees you at least 50,000hours of maintenance-free cooling performance.

The informative status panel

The Domino automatically adjusts its speeds according to the temperatures ensuring that your CPU does not overheat and gives an audible alarm to alert you of any problems. The unit creates a great environment to over-clock your CPU, providing your other hardware can sustain the increased speeds. This allows you to push your CPU further than you might have done on air cooling, whilst still maintaining a good running temperature.

At Power Computing we have been using this new cooling system on some of our i7 gaming PCs and find it very easy to install and also reliable. If you would like to try customising one of our i7 Machines to see how cheaply you can get a liquid cooled monster PC, please click here.

Here’s a video of how the Domino works: