CoolIT OMNI A.L.C. 全球首个一体化万用显卡水冷散热器，支持 GTX 400。

Edison

ntroduction
Modern GPUs continue to push the boundaries of 3D visuals, but their sheer horsepower has ensured they remain one of the PC's hottest and often loudest components.

Take for example NVIDIA's recently-introduced GeForce GTX 480. The ultra-high-end card sports the world's fastest single GPU, but it lives on the edge of thermal constraints and its core has a habit of soaring past 90°C when put under load.
In order to keep it cool, the card's reference fan is forced to run at speeds of over 3,000rpm, creating a notably noisy experience.

Loud GPUs are nothing new, of course, and there's already an answer available in the form of the  inevitable water-cooled editions. Trouble is, such cards tend to warrant a significant premium, and with the GPU's tendency to be quickly superceded by the next big thing, it isn't always a smart investment.

But what if there was an easy-to-use liquid cooler that offered compatibility with every graphics card you ever purchased?
Sound like a good idea? The folks at CoolIT Systems certainly thought so, and they've come up with a solution dubbed the OMNI A.L.C. (Advanced Liquid Cooler).

What we're looking at is what CoolIT describes as the industry's first "fully upgradeable, factory sealed, liquid cooled video card solution".

Expected to launch in the coming months priced at around $199 (approximately £150), it could become the only GPU cooling solution you'll ever need. Let's take a look and see if it's up to the task.
World's first universal liquid cooler for GPUs
When you think of factory-sealed, closed-loop liquid coolers, a few existing CPU solutions probably come to mind - namely CoolIT's own ECO A.L.C. and Corsair's Hydro Series H50.

Transfer that very same technology to the the GPU, and you're thinking along the lines of the OMNI A.L.C.
The idea, in principle, is very straight forward. Take a radiator, attach a compact pump and a decent-sized fan, run a couple of tubes to a GPU-attachable plate and hey presto - you've a closed-loop liquid cooler for your graphics card.

CoolIT's bit of magic is that it'll produce the GPU plates - dubbed interposer  plates - in multiple shapes and sizes, designed to attach to many of the industry's high-end graphics cards. For the end user, that should ensure your cooler lives on beyond the life of your graphics card - upgrade to a newer-generation GPU and you shouldn't need to change your cooler.


Here's the first piece of the puzzle - the OMNI A.L.C's combination of fan, radiator and pump. The standard radiator, sitting in the middle, is a 120mm solution and rated sufficient for any single GPU. Users wanting to run multi-GPU configurations will also be catered for, as CoolIT will be launching a 240mm model with the capacity to cool two-way SLI or CrossFire setups.


There's no news on a massive three-way solution, but there's nothing stopping you from getting both a 240mm and 120mm kit for three graphics cards - you'll just need a chassis big enough to house it all.


Like the ECO A.L.C. CPU cooler, CoolIT's OMNI GPU solution uses a similar compact ceramic-bearing CFF1 pump. Attached directly to the radiator, it'll circulate the coolant - which happens to be CoolIT's own low-toxicity blend with anticorrosion/anti fungal additives - between the radiator and the GPU plate. With a quoted mean time to failure of 50,000 hours, don't expect the pump to fail anytime soon.

What's useful is that a built-in controller powers both the pump and the attached 120mm fan via a single three-pin header. That can be connected to any unregulated  motherboard header, and whilst there's currently no way to manually adjust fan speeds, the OMNI A.L.C. will regulate fan speed based on coolant temperature.


The 120mm fan resting atop of the radiator can be fixed inside your chassis. Most users shouldn't run into problems with a radiator/fan of this size, but if you're planning on picking up the multi-GPU 240mm variant, you'll need a chassis able to support at least two 120mm fans.


The second part of the puzzle is the "universal liquid plate" - that's the silver bit in the above picture. Using "high density micro-channels and directional flow," it promises aggressive heat   transfer from the GPU and at almost 200mm in length covers a graphics card's key components.

Beneath the universal liquid plate is the last major component, the interposer plate. Our sample arrived with a interposer plate, designed to fit NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480, already attached to the universal liquid plate, but manual installation would involve nothing more than applying a coat of thermal paste and tightening eight screws to bring the two plates together.

When a user changes graphics card, you simply remove the current interposer plate and attach one that fits your new GPU. We'd expect CoolIT to bundle at least one fresh syringe of thermal paste to help users with future upgrades.


A look at the GeForce GTX 480 plate shows that it's entirely tailored to NVIDIA's hot-running GPU. The core contact patch comes with thermal paste pre-applied, as do perfectly-placed pads for the card's GDDR5 memory chips and VRMs.

Readers should note that our engineering sample isn't a finalised product. CoolIT tells us that it is still tweaking the design of the OMNI A.L.C and we'd expect to see the final product looking notably less industrial, as per the promotional image on page one of the review. Our early prototype should however give a decent insight into performance.

Before we get to installation and benchmarks, though, a word on price. It's subject to change at this moment in time, but CoolIT reckons a single-GPU OMNI A.L.C. (consisting of a 120mm loop and one bundled interposer plate) will fetch around $199.99, that's roughly £150 including VAT. Subsequent interposer plates are  then expected to retail at up to $79.99 (approximately £60 inc. VAT).

As a complete closed-loop solution, pricing is competitive. For comparison's sake, a standalone GTX 480 waterblock can fetch around $120.

Edison

Installation


Installing your own water-cooling kit has always been an unnerving prospect, and though CoolIT's OMNI A.L.C. is about as easy as they come, it isn't without drawbacks.

Key amongst those is the fact that you'll need to disassemble your graphics card's reference cooler, voiding your warranty in the process. And take our word for it, delicately opening up a £450 GeForce GTX 480 graphics card isn't a whole lot of fun.


Once you've past that hurdle, though, it's plain sailing from here on in. The OMNI A.L.C.'s interposer plate attaches directly to your GTX 480's bare PCB, and aligning the two isn't difficult if you use the screw-holes as a guide. A dozen screws then fasten the PCB to the plate, and that's it, you're done. As the meerkat would say, simples.





There's one obvious visual benefit, because NVIDIA's chunky GeForce GTX 480 transforms into a far sleeker solution. At just under 25mm thick, it'll ensure there's plenty of room for SLI configurations. You'll still be stuck with the dual-slot PCI bracket, though, as that's fixed to the PCB itself.



Tailored to fit. One interposer plate won't suit all, but we'd expect each variant to be perfectly sized for the card in question. The GTX 480 plate encompasses the card to a tee.




Remembering that your graphics card is attached to the other end, fix your fan/radiator/pump unit to your chassis. Working with a capacious Corsair Obsidian Series 800D, we've ample room to manoeuvre and attach the unit to one of three top-mounted fan slots. There's a small LED visible on the left of the unit, and it'll glow green to let you know the pump's up and running. We've yet to see red, touch wood.

The length of the OMNI A.L.C's tubing may change prior to final release, but our sample suggests there's enough to keep the graphics card and radiator well spaced.

Edison

Power consumption, temperatures and noise

At idle, the card draws about the same amount of power as NVIDIA's reference design.

Put it under load and GTX 480 is expectedly power hungry. With the 16 per cent overclock in place, the OMNI-cooled card requires around an extra 30 watts.

Idle temperatures are seemingly identical for the liquid-cooled and air-cooled GTX 480s, but readers should note that the liquid-cooled card was tested on a slightly warmer day. In a temperature-controlled environment, we reckon the OMNI-cooled GTX 480 would come out a degree or two cooler.

Under load, CoolIT's liquid cooler is able to keep the overclocked card at 87°C after a lengthy spell of the GPU-intensive FurMark stress test. Considering the 16 per cent overclock and the slightly higher ambient temperature (3.9°C higher, to be exact), the OMNI A.L.C's cooling ability is very good.
At reference clocks, we found the Omni A.L.C. was able to lower load temperature to 82°C - significantly lower than NVIDIA's reference air cooler.A real-world assessment
Examining the whole noise/heat/power issue in more detail and taking a real-world game into account, we played through Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and noted where system-wide power-draw was highest. The game works the CPU's cores and gives the GPU(s) a good going over. We then left the card rendering the high power-draw scene for 10 minutes and logged the maximum temperature, fan-speed, and power-draw.
The observations were noted with the card(s) installed inside a Corsair Obsidian 800D chassis with side panels on. The table below highlights our findings and provides a subjective analysis of the fan noise.

GPU	Power-draw (maximum)	Temperature       (maximum)	Quietness /10       (higher is better)
CoolIT GTX 480 OC 1.5GB	410W	73°C	7
GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB	419W	94°C	4/2
GeForce GTX 470 1.2GB	354W	94°C	5/3
Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB	488W	64°C	6.5
Radeon HD 5970 2GB	366W	77°C	5
Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2GB	324W	66°C	7
Radeon HD 5870 1GB	288W	76°C	6
Radeon HD 5850 1GB	260W	63°C	7

Let's explain the table. The noise perception is a subjective rating out of ten for the quietness of the card when under gaming load. Simple rpm doesn't always tell the full story.
During our session of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the temperature of our OMNI-cooled GTX 480 rose to 73°C - a massive 20°C less than NVIDIA's reference design.
Furthermore, the cooler remains remarkably quiet. With the radiator fan spinning at a moderate speed, it is barely audible and quieter than most of the comparison air-cooled cards.

Edison

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Sirlion

晕，nv下一代莫非自带水冷么？

gz_easy

降了21度，Quietness和2块风冷58同为7，说明负载时水冷散热排风扇也不算安静。

asdfjkl

水冷要是可以重复使用就比较好，这一代 、下一代接着用；
但感觉PCB板的布局总是会改变的，所以设计出通用的显卡水冷估计不容易。

Edison

如果水管引出机箱的话，应该可以再降低一些噪音。

shoppingwang

单12CM冷排能有效散发480的热情？

sleepyboy

炎炎盛夏即将到来，要开始注意散热了。

luckissy

意义不大

achaley

冷排小了点。。。

娃娃脸雪糕

耳机兄说480也许只需要被动散热即可