Alphacool Eisbaer 240 assessment: cool, quiet, and unobtrusive liquid cooler

The Alphacool Eisbaer is on the market with a radiator of just about each measurement and configuration you might presumably need in an all-in-one loop. It’s accessible in 120mm, 240mm, 280mm, 360mm, and 420mm type elements – you possibly can even decide up the pump by itself and supply your personal tubing and radiator for max compatibility. For at this time, nonetheless, it’s all concerning the standard 240mm type issue.

The Eisbaer comes with two PWM 120mm Eiswind followers, which might run from anyplace between 550 to 1700 RPM. The radiator is an all-copper design and constructed upon the NexXxoS standalone sequence additionally by Alphacool – it’s not the sleekest radiator out there however appears to be like aren’t every little thing.

Even so, the Eisbaer isn’t a really ugly unit. Sure, it’s not received flashing rainbow lights and sleeved tubing, nevertheless it’s received an… industrial type. The fairly sizeable DC-LT ceramic pump contains a window that lights up with a faint blue glow, as does the brand on prime, and that’s about as flash as you’ll get with the Eisbaer.

 

As for the pump, it runs by default at 2600 RPM (however options some wiggle room on voltage), and whereas comparatively quiet by design, the monolithic pump design does function a barely  awkward locking mechanism to suit it to the motherboard itself. It’s not that it doesn’t get the job completed in a approach that retains a good strain throughout your CPU’s warmth spreader – and it’s appropriate with AM4, LGA 1151, and 2011-3 – it’s simply terribly awkward to put in with out unfettered entry and visibility inside your rig. Or a serving to hand. We positively suggest putting in outdoors of your case earlier than becoming your motherboard with this one.

Thanks to the swappable design of the Eisbaer and ¼ inch threaded connectors, the AiO elements aren’t deemed solely nugatory if a single piece of the puzzle goes awry otherwise you improve to a customized liquid loop down the road. One of the tubes from the pump to the radiator options Alphacool’s quick-lock closure, and this becoming permits for pre-filled cooling components from Alphacool to be added into the loop as vital, together with their very own Eiswolf GPX-Pro graphics card cooler.

In ditching the software program for this not-so-closed-loop cooler, the Eisbaer 240 will run straight out of your BIOS. Subsequently, fan curves are simply modified (producer BIOS interface dependent), and no intermediary software program interrupts your gaming with frequent pop ups or irritating inconsistent behaviour. That will get two thumbs up from me.

In this case, the customized fan curves we put in place throughout the BIOS allowed for slower RPMs, and subsequently decrease quantity, than comparable 240mm coolers we’ve examined beforehand. While nonetheless no match for the silence of the maglev followers filled with the Corsair H115i Pro, the Eisbaer 240 manages incredible temperature benchmark scores versus even the most well-liked and expensive liquid coolers of at this time. This is very prevalent at inventory clockspeeds, however even a hefty 5GHz overclock on our Intel i7 8700K wasn’t sufficient to knock the Eisbaer 240 from among the many prime coolers we’ve had on our take a look at bench.

Gone is the meddling software program and extreme cabling, and you may neglect the unnecessary gimmicks, the Alphacool ticks all of the packing containers for easy out-of-the-box efficiency and that alone. It’s serviceability solely provides to the worth on supply, round $126 / £103 at present, however you possibly can simply discover it for much less should you store round – the worth is commonly identified to fluctuate within the buyer’s favour, too.

The Alphacool Eisbaer 240 is every little thing a high quality liquid cooler ought to purpose to be: cool, quiet, and unobtrusive.

SE7EN.WS verdict: 9/10