CONCLUSION

   Although the EISWAND 360 is considered by many to be an AIO external liquid CPU cooler it does require you to cut and mount the bundled 4m tube and waterblock and so in our book at least it's yet another complete water cooling kit which is why we compared it with all the others we've reviewed over the years (still since the same system is used for our AIO and mid/high-end CPU cooler tests feel free to compare the results directly). Now although as you can clearly tell from our charts the EISWAND 360 does extremely well in terms of performance both at 12v and 7v it’s actually not what we’d call perfect. So let’s start from the obvious thing which is the lack of an on/off switch. This is not important if you choose to feed power to the EISWAND 360 from your power supply unit but if you choose to use the external power supply you will have to plug it into the power socket right before you power up your PC and unplug it once you’ve powered it off. This is by no means a deal breaker but we all agree that this should be a priority for Alphacool in future models and/or revisions. Another small issue is the fan/pump noise levels since although overall they are not what we’d call extreme still for an external water cooling kit which some people may even place on their desks it may become annoying. Now Alphacool does bundle a 12v to 7v power adapter which can be used to reduce the speed of both the fans and the pumps (we also tested the EISWAND 360 with that adapter) but even after 30 minutes of testing the adapter was so hot that we could hardly hold it in our hands. This may not result in damage to the adapter (it just might) but either way a button/switch or even a software control panel via USB would be a more preferred solution. Overall we think it’s a great first step into this specific product line but we all think Alphacool has much more to give to consumers both in terms of features and performance (we hope an EISWAND 420 is in the works).

   Since Alphacool just released the EISWAND 360 we had expected that it would not be widely available yet but you actually can find it for USD367.64 inside the USA (Aquatuning.us) and for 349.99Euros inside the EU (Aquatuning.de) a price tag which is indeed set quite high. Of course after taking into consideration that the cost of just the water cooler parts alone (radiator, reservoir, 2 pumps, waterblock, 6 fans, 4 meter tube, 2 anti-kink springs, 2 quick-release connectors, 4 compression fittings, 2 single liter cape kelvin cooling fluid canisters) adds up to roughly 340Euros (again from Aquatuning.de) that seems justified and well balanced (not including the body of the tower along with the EVA sheets, external power supply and the 12v to 7v adapter). So if you’re looking for an external water cooling kit and you can go as high as the EISWAND 360 we think it will offer anything you’d expect and then some. Sure it’s not the perfect water cooling kit but then again is there such a thing? At the end of the day we enjoyed using the EISWAND 360 so much that we gave it our Golden Award.

PROS

- Very Good Build Quality
- Excellent Cooling Efficiency
- Fast And Easy Installation (Compared To Internal Kits)
- Design
- Bundle
- External Power Supply
- 12v To 7v Power Adapter

CONS

- No On/Off Switch
- Noise Levels (12v)