Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N RTX 3090 Founders Edition missing a standoff!!!!

dtech

New member
Been an Alphacool customer for countless years, but this is the first time I've been unimpressed.

I got through mounting the cooler on the card, and right near the end it was time to put the port bracket on and then I realised that there is a standoff missing, I've heard of quality control issues with most manufacturers, but how does one miss a standoff??!!!!

I have the Alphacool active backplate for the card too, so I've just wasted a couple of hours and all the pads and paste putting all of this together to be hit by this. Sure I checked all the parts before assembly, but one does not expect to check the product itself for something like this.

I ordered from Watercooling UK, so will contact them tomorrow, but this really is appauling.
 

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Thomas_S

... the nice marketing guy next door
Staff member
Hi, you are right. Unfortunately, that is very annoying. But you will have to contact our support team by email. (info@alphacool.com) - for quick help, please link to this article in your email.
 

dtech

New member
Hi @Thomas_S , the product was RMA-posted back to Watercooling UK today. Yes it was an annoying experience, we can replace almost everything but our time, now I shall be experiencing the inevitable delay which will hold up my build.

On another note, I also noticed that the standoff near the x16 PCIE header on the card is extremely close to a SMD cap/resister, like fractions of a millimetre, thankfully nothing got damaged, but surely there should have been a little more clearance at that point, maybe round standoffs rather than the nut-type standoffs would have been a better choice in that location.

I was also surprised to find that unlike nearly all the other waterblock manufacturers for the 30xx series, Alphacool do not include a replacement PCIE rear bracket (a seperate item to purchase it appears), nor any additional support of the combined weight of an active backplate and the eisblock gpu cooler. When comparing to Bitspower and EK, it seems Alphacool simply under-engineered the design, rushed to market so to speak. Not really what one expects of 'German Engineering'.

I guess I will use some additional external bracketing support to reinforce the card.

Things like the above really can destroy the reputation of a company specializing in the enthusiast market, I do hope this isn't a taste of things to be with Alphacool.
 

Thomas_S

... the nice marketing guy next door
Staff member
Hi @Thomas_S , the product was RMA-posted back to Watercooling UK today. Yes it was an annoying experience, we can replace almost everything but our time, now I shall be experiencing the inevitable delay which will hold up my build.
There is probably a reason why you have been using our products for countless years. I think it's because you've been satisfied so far. It's annoying that the stand-off is missing in a delivery, but it happens sometimes. The coolers are assembled by hand and where people work, mistakes happen. We would have sent you the standoff immediately via contact with our support.
I was also surprised to find that unlike nearly all the other waterblock manufacturers for the 30xx series, Alphacool do not include a replacement PCIE rear bracket (a seperate item to purchase it appears), nor any additional support of the combined weight of an active backplate and the eisblock gpu cooler. When comparing to Bitspower and EK, it seems Alphacool simply under-engineered the design, rushed to market so to speak. Not really what one expects of 'German Engineering'.
Additional PCI cables must be purchased separately & are not part of an Eisblock cooler. Ultimately, every cooler is designed and constructed so that it can be reasonably mounted in the case together with the card (also due to weight). If you then expand the hardware, you must of course make sure that your setup can handle it all. Often the case is the limiting factor here. Do we also have to plan struts for the different cases? I don't think so. Water cooling also requires precise planning in advance.
 

dtech

New member
Careful planning in advance is crucial for any build. Now in my mid 40s, having been watercooling since the late 90s, custom building before the days of social media and the infancy of youtube, I can assure you I do not pass negative comments lightly, over the years sometimes I am in shock at how terribly flawed designs of coolers and cases have been. Feedback is crucial, critique is necessary, without it, there becomes a disconnect between consumer and company.

It is rather surprising that you would go off on a tangent such as "do we also have to plan struts for the different cases" as that is an absurd point to even consider and has nothing to do with the perceived shortcomings of the engineering in-hand of said product.

We are talking graphics cards built upon a 6-layer PCB process, especially these 3090 cards where everything is so tightly crammed together. The initial block weight itself should be supported better than just relying on the rigidity of the backplate and cooler across two screw points, in-effect placing more load on the card itself. Even in the case of the two crucial load points > those screws provided are exceptionally thin (any material defect in the screw itself would lead to much quicker failure than if compared to a thicker screw).

If we look at the standard FE cooler, it is clearly screwed into the bracket with multiple screws, all the screws used by the manufacturer of the card are thicker.

Now let us look at the way other manufacturers are supporting their aftermarket 3090FE coolers, for example consider this cooler by bitspower:

bitspower.jpg

In green, we can clearly see where the additional support is provided. This particular cooler is within the same price-bracket of the alphacool equivalent, yet it comes with a bracket, plus the additional support in the mounting design. If we look at the higher cost blocks such as EK's Vector FE and the Mobius, they also physically screw the block into the bracket. Also looking at the user-manuals for the different coolers, they are all using screws that are 'thicker' than what Alphacool is using.


In summary, would we not prefer to see companies do their best?, take customer concerns into consideration?, because if one customer raises an issue or more, you can be sure that particular issue(s) may have been noted by countless others who chose not to waste their time raising their concerns, instead they choose to move to another brand on future purchases.

Constructive critique of a product means someone cares about a company, especially when coming from a long-term customer, because we would like the brand we love to be the best it can be and not fall short in the ever-competitive market it sits within.

Looking back at history, Aquacomputer were the top-dogs out of Europe, and Alphacool were the close second. These days Aquacomputer doesn't focus as much on supporting the latest cards quickly, possibly because they are focusing more on the overall loop and control of loop rather than individual waterblocks. EK came into the market with great prices and top performance which put the others against the wall because as we know when more players enter a market, it is always great for consumers becauses now prices tend to become more realistic due to competition. However, lately I have noticed a drop in quality across the board, maybe it has something to do with the pandemic, who knows, what is clearly evident is that most brands in the watercooling segment have been hit hard by quality issues of late.

My particular case of a missing standoff is a very small issue in the grand-scheme of issues hitting consumers, one only has to browse reddit for a few hours to see the nightmare of issues affecting the community.

Once upon a time, over-engineering was the gold-standard of german-engineering, now it seems it is all about cost-cutting and average quality control, a rather unfortunate state-of-affairs. If all it takes is to slap an extra 20 euros to produce a gold-standard product, then companies should do it, rather than try to undercut the competition by making their products more attractive at a lower-price-point, because remember, it is the real enthusiasts who notice the cost-cutting the most, and they are the truly loyal customers.
 
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Eddy

Iceman
Staff member
I understand your criticism, but there is also a reason why we don't use these screws on the slot bracket for our coolers. The simple reason is compatibility. This may still work for the Reference Design or Founders Edition, but not for other coolers. Because depending on the card, these screws sit in different places. So we have to decide if the cooler is as broadly compatible as possible, or if it is specifically designed for certain models. Our goal is to cover as many cards as possible, so we do without these screws at this point. So far, we have not encountered any problems even because of this. Not with any card, not with any model. Therefore, we see no relevance to change anything here.
Whenever you have to make a decision on a product, we think very carefully about which direction we want or need to take. Do you go a more practical way, do you go the enthusiast way, do you have to compromise..... the decisions are not taken lightly. In the end, however, not every customer will be happy. For economic reasons alone, we sometimes have to make decisions that are not particularly pleasing to the enthusiast, but are important to the mass market. In the end, the product has to sell so that we can live from it. And since we rely on organic growth and therefore act rather cautiously, decisions are made accordingly. Because if we make the wrong decision, it won't break our neck. You can see from another Brand what happens when you gamble too much, you have to make massive staff redundancies and cut costs everywhere.

The water cooling market has changed a lot. Enthusiasts have become the absolute minority. They make up less than 5% of water cooling customers. Water cooling has reached the masses. That used to be different, true. But some brands are now fighting for their survival because they are trying to serve only enthusiasts. We are number 2 in the world behind EK on the DIY market. However, we are well on our way to overtaking EK. And after that, there will be nothing for a very long time, then Barrow and Byski, then nothing again for a very long time, and then the rest. Purely in terms of revenue and market share. Some brands don't want to grow at all, but focus on a specific part of the water cooling market. I just want to say that you don't have to see it negatively if a brand is not that big. You can also live well in the niche of a niche. That is a business decision.

So we're probably doing a few things right. After all, we don't have to lay off people, but are desperately looking for personnel. Our factory has been massively expanded in the last 2 years. There are now 100 CNC machines in continuous operation. Injection molding, radiator production ect. everything is still coming. We even manufacture the screws ourselves. We are the only brand that manufactures almost everything itself with almost 400 employees worldwide.

However, our objectives will soon change somewhat. On the one hand, we are expanding our enterprise area very strongly. Then we will split the end customer area. Once in Core for the broad mass of end customers and Apex for enthusiasts as an over the top solution. In terms of pricing, we have a more or less fixed margin plan. In other words, we don't artificially raise prices to increase the margin. If something is more expensive, it is only because it really is more expensive. There are other brands that like to offer a standard fitting for 20€ that we would offer with our margin for 10€. This also applies to other products.

That's a bit of background information.

PS: Another small note about the price... whether a cooler costs 20€ more or less, makes a significant difference in sales figures.
 

dtech

New member
Indeed, watercooling is definitely more mainstream today than ever before, and I will be the first to admit I am not of a 'business mindset' and would not even know where to begin to market and run a successful watercooling hardware business.

I absolutely hate the idea of RGB in everything, just doesn't make sense to me, a computer is there to do a task, it needs to perform exceptionally well to facilitate the tasks required of it. Watercooling is about keeping those temps down at a lower noise profile when under high-loads.

When I see the angle of RGB anything in something, pretty much immediately I conclude there will be cost-cutting in other areas to provide that pointless feature.

But it is the 'mass-market' that is driving that pointless feature, and I just have to accept that is the norm today.

If there is a planned direction for the future where more enterprise/high-end enthusiast products are alternatively available without the mass-market gimmicks which naturally promotes the classic over-engineering philosophy, then I look forward to that. Sure such hardware will be a little dearer, it is a given, but like all things, you do get what you pay for, usually.

I still stand strong on my concern regaring the screws, because we're totally relying on tiny threads on skinny screws, and it is more a concern on longevity, so issues may not be apparent until a reasonable time-frame has passed. Considering the mass-market, seeing how often youngsters tend to keep changing their builds for asthetics alone, they probably won't even hit those timeframes to reveal potential issues. One could assume this is another fact taken into consideration during cost-cutting by manufacturers.

I guess I need to just accept that the world isn't going back to how things used to be, nothing is built to last these days, and with so many businesses going under, I guess we can understand why things are the way they are with cost-cutting and mass-market appeasement through gimmicks and pointless fascinations (RGB).
 

Eddy

Iceman
Staff member
I wouldn't get too hung up on the screws and how they help with stability. If there were known issues here, we would figure something out about it. Because nothing is more costly than dealing with RMA processes. And especially RMA processes for graphics cards are extremely expensive. But we are not aware of any problems here.

Not everything is a cost factor. Many things I read again and again, where customers are of the opinion it was saved on costs, has nothing to do with it. I see a lot of products that customers think are expensive to make, but are actually very cheap to make. Take Distro Plates for example. There is hardly anything cheaper to manufacture. Neither the development is time consuming, nor the manufacturing. Yet they sell for a lot of money.

Honestly.... many of us don't understand the whole thing with the RGBs either. But without lighting, products sell much worse. And RGB LEDs basically cost almost nothing, that's pure mass production. High costs are more likely to arise from special manufacturing processes, for example the time needed for milling, the tooling for injection molded parts are actually always in the 5-digit range ..... LEDs are not really a relevant cost factor for a product. If you were to leave them out, it would change the price of the product almost nothing.

Today, products sell on the basis of three factors. Design, price and support. In that order. Performance hardly plays a role anymore. Special features don't either. If you have too many features, it is rather counterproductive. Most people don't understand the product to its full extent. We see this again and again in support. In over 90% of all support requests, you only have to look in the manual or read the article text to avoid the problem.
 
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