BCCHardware - Your Daily Tech News & Reviews

Product(s): CoolIT MTEC Control Center
Provided By: CoolIT Systems
Price: ~$119.99 USD (Coolitsystems.com)

Introduction: 

A few days ago we reviewed the latest cooler from CoolIT Systems, the Freezone (Reviewed Here). Overall the Freezone is a great cooler and performed very well, but we noticed a few things that could be improved, and according to CoolIT they were going to be able to be fixed with the soon to be released MTEC Control Center module. Well, we were able to get our hands on the new MTEC Control Center from CoolIT and as promised we are revisiting our Freezone review to see how it performs with the MTEC.

The MTEC replaces the TCM (Thermal Control Module) that comes included with the Freezone and Eliminator coolers. With the original TCM fan control was a manual adjustment, and quite honestly not all the convenient to change the speed of the fan, so even if the system was running idle and nice and cool, the fan would still be running full out and producing the maximum amount of noise. The MTEC solves that problem by automatically adjusting the fan speed, the amount of power supplied to the TEC units (6 on the Freezone, 3 on the Eliminator). It also uses Predictive Cooling™ to keep your system running cool, but also keeping the Freezone running as quiet as possible.

Now you might be thinking, "So What, Also of Coolers on the Market Automatically Adjust Fan Speed", and yes, your right most fans do, however, CoolIT has come up with a new system called Predictive Cooling™ which doesn't just speed up the fans once the temperature of the CPU reaches a certain level, but actually predicts how much cooling the system will be needing and adjusts the fans and the power supplied to the TECs accordingly. Normally a cooler is going to have "Reactive" cooling, which means that if the CPU is climbing up to 60 degrees for example, the fan will speed up to 80% of its max speed once the CPU hits 60 degrees, but until that point it will remain running at a lower speed.

With Predictive Cooling™, the MTEC monitors the CPU usage and increases the cooling before the temperature goes up at all. Under reasonable load conditions, this will keep your temperature at the target.

In the end what Predictive Cooling™ does is prevents your CPU fan from running at its minimum speed while you are doing minor tasks such as web surfing, but then when you fire up your favorite game you're not going to hear your fans all of a sudden kick into high gear to try and catch up with the CPU temperature, the MTEC isn't going to be playing catch-up with your CPU temperatures, it's always going to be one step ahead, as it constantly monitors CPU load in order to determine how much cooling (fans, TEC power) is needed.

So thats the theory behind Predictive Cooling™, lets see if it lives up to it's promises. . .

Test System:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
• MSI P965 Neo - Provided by Memory Express
• XFX 8800GTX - Provided by Memory Express
• 2 GB Kit of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000 - Provided by Crucial
• Western Digital 250 gig (16 MB Cache)
• OCZ Modstream 450 Watt PS
• CoolIT Systems Freezone - Provided by CoolIT

First Impressions and Installation:

Well the first thing you see once you open the box is that the MTEC Control Center is a bit more "Polished" than the original TCM Module. Everything seems pretty straight-forward and labeled nicely, so installation should be much of a problem. The pictures below show the original TCM (right) that is replaced by the MTEC Control Center (left). As you will also be able to see in the MTEC pictures, this unit can run two complete Freezone Coolers, which is a great feature to have, especially for all the Dual-Processor systems out there, it's a feature majority of people may never use, bits always nice to have that option.

MTEC Control Center Replaces Original TCM

TCM (Thermal Control Module) Shipped with Freezone

 

What's Included with the MTEC Control Center:

• MTEC Control Module [Hardware Thermal Control Module]
• MTEC Software CD
• MTEC Quick Start Guide
• Internal USB Cable
• Power Adapter Cable
• TEC Power Extension/Adapter
• Temperature Extension Cable
• Fan power cable extender
• Pump power cable extender

In the below pictures you'll see all the connections for the MTEC, the MTEC is run off a 6-pin PCI-E power plug (also comes with an adapter if your power supply doesn't have one built-in), also the MTEC is connected into a USB header on your system board.

PCI-E Power Plug

USB Connection

 

Freezone/Eliminator Inputs