The Legend Returns

nVENTIV’s product range, which at the end consisted of three products (the basic Mach II, the “tuned-up“ Mach II GT and the cheaper Mach II ST), has got shorter as they do not offer the “value” version anymore. Instead, ECT offers a renewed list of available CPU kits, i.e. the evaporator fasteners for different CPU sockets. And the most surprising news is that the recommended retail price of the products has also been considerably reduced when the systems came to production again!

All the true devotees of nVENTIV’s products should also be thrilled at the news of the return of the legendary “Prometeia” trademark. That was the name of the first Freon cooler from Chip-Con (that model is usually referred to as “Mach I” today), but when the company changed its name to nVENTIV, they abandoned the well-promoted brand and the official product name of “Chip-Con Prometeia Mach II” transformed into the simple “nVENTIV Mach II”. Well, the affectionate nickname “Prommy” or “Prommie” had already come to be strongly associated with any product from Chip-Con/nVENTIV, and now Extreme Cooling Technologies puts the famous brand forth again – their new systems have the word Prometeia in their name!

Besides selling the new systems, Extreme Cooling Technologies offer technical support for systems sold by Chip-Con and nVENTIV which is very good news for all long-time customers and partners of the Danish company.

We should not expect any changes in the product range any time soon. Phase-change cooling systems are a rather conservative market and the originally clever design ensures high efficiency of the modern Prometeia models. It is just impossible to improve much on the performance of the Mach II GT. In near future, ECT will only be adding new CPU fasteners when new-generation platforms arrive.

The object of our tests today is an extremely top-end offer from Extreme Cooling Technologies: a Prometeia Mach II GT system in an aluminum casing designed by Lian-Li accompanied with a special version of the Lian-Li PC-60 middle-tower system case. I should acknowledge that this solution is not as exclusive today as it used to be at the time of nVENTIV, but this is even good. Those very few nVENTIV Mach II GT systems produced were sold by the distributors at fabulous prices (this cooler + system case kit would have easily cost $1500, I think) and were scarcely available anywhere. Today, the price of the most feature-rich version of the kit is below $1000.

Here is a brief specification of the device:

• Refrigerant: R404a
• Cooling Performance: -65°C at 0W/-30°C at 200W
• Case: Standard black or upgraded to match Lian-Li aluminum top cases
• LCD Display: Blue programmable display
• EasyMod CPU Kits: Supports AMD Athlon 64/FX, XP and Intel Pentium 4