Review : Ahanix Iceberg 1 Water Cooling Kit

For a kit selling for under $100 US, you do get a bargain for your money. Near silent operation and respectable cooling levels make this unit a good choice for first-time water cooling rigs. The kit as a whole is compact enough to fit into most mid-tower cases without the need for excessive modifications. The online documentation makes it very easy for novice users to install the kit quickly and safely. Good quality tubing means you can round tight corners without the worries of crimping the line, and the Socket 478 installation is a snap. However, the water block design doesn’t allow for optimal heat transfer from the CPU, with fresh coolant being introduced at the side of the CPU, instead of the core where the highest heats are generated. As well, the contact area of the water block is far from perfect, suffering from multiple machine marks, and in the case of the test system, a huge gash running across the base. While the Socket 478 mounting is painless, the Socket A/370/462 clip design is weak at best, and I would gamble that under the higher temperatures of an AMD system, performance would not be as good as with the cooler Intel chip. Overall, I’m rating this product a final score of 7 out of 10, and would recommend it to users looking for a simple, cost-effective entry-level product to break into water cooling with, preferably on a Socket 478 design.