Alphacool Eiswolf 2 AIO - 360mm RTX 3080/3090 FTW3 with Backplate (14414)

Product Review (submitted on June 8, 2022):

This is going to be fairly lengthy so TLDR: Its good, worth the money. Helps thermals and noise quite a bit. Overall I'm happy with the purchase. Is it as good as a "custom loop"? No but for anyone new to water cooling or just lazy this is an option worth exploring.

First off, big shout out to Josh Knapp. He works at ModMyMods and was extremely helpful throughout the entire time of me asking stupid questions and having the patience to deal with a complete novice (i.e. me).

So in talks with Josh, the plan was finalized. I made the pre order for the Eiswolf back in April so I had ample time to use the air cooler and get "familiar" with the GPU long before introducing water to the situation. The only prior knowledge of water cooling anything is in CPU AIO fashion and a RTX 2080 from EVGA I put the Hybrid kit on. The process is very similar in taking screws off the back plate and cooler, separating the PCB, applying thermal pads and paste and screwing it all back together.

The Alphacool kit is daunting at first, but do able. The 360 rad, full water block and back-plate are all really good quality, no cheap flimsy platicy parts. Everything went together very easily, all I had to do was follow the directions. There are plenty of tear down vids on YouTube if you are curious about anything in the process. I have the 12 GB FTW3 and its the same as the 10 GB model. The only "hiccup" I ran into was when separating the cooler from the PCB. All screws were out but it wasn't coming apart like I had seen/expected. Till I watched some video and they recommended the use of a hair dryer to heat up the thermal pads and paste, just a bit, making it easier to shimmy the PCB from the cooler.

The instructions from Alphacool are really good, everything was labeled well and clear so that even a dolt (like me) can do it. Seriously, I have Spastic Paraplegia and severe "brain pain" when I concentrate or focus too much too long... even I was able to do this. The other problem I ran into was NOTHING BUT MY DUMB LUCK, and that is the thermal paste I ordered separate literally broke in the box ha. Don't know how a syringe does that but apparently it did.

Idle - Air, 36 Water, 29
Synthetic (MSI Kombuster) Air, 76 Water, 62
COD Vanguard - Air cooled, temps were 75-78 Water, 58-61
Horizon Zero Dawn - Air cooled, temps were ~74 Water, ~59
Dying Light 2 - Air cooled, most demanding for some reason, temp 72-78 Water, 59-62

I had a slight OC on air (+55/+475) and the fans would ramp up on a custom curve that had them at 100% at 75 degrees and fairly aggressive across the spectrum. LOUD
On water the OC went up (+90/+950) significantly. The clocks stay at 2150 solid on the core, there is no fan noise cause the fans barely spin, and the temps are 10-15 degrees lower still.

Really happy with the way it turned out, honestly I'll try a full custom loop on my next build with Josh as point lol.