My original review of the Eisblock XPX (which hilariously is now called the Eisblock XPX Original) was fairly positive. However, I was skeptical about the ramp system's novelty as it pertains to its practical use in flow rate and thermal performance. At that time, other companies were also in the midst of updating their CPU water blocks to cater to the forecast increase in demand due to AMD's AM4 socket, as well as Intel's LGA 115x and 2066 sockets entering the scene. I suspected that the Eisblock XPX had not done enough to keep up with newer blocks released since, and it turns out Alphacool decided to iterate upon this design and release variants over the years since. There was the nylon top version for lighting support and a better look at the coolant flowing through, and then came the 1U units for the mainstream and HEDT CPUs. This Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge is another take on that formula, using the same cold plate and most of the same cooling engine, but with more icing applied on this cake.

The Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge is on the other side of the scale from the XPX 1U we saw before as it is higher in profile and has a clear top and d-RGB bling. Alphacool has sought to offer first-party options to cater to different audiences, and the consumer market will no doubt relate more with this block. The higher profile is not a concern for us, especially considering we typically use cases and not server racks, and even so, it is lower in profile than most RAM sticks, and of course air coolers. There is a lot going on here with a nickel-plated copper cold plate, the brass underlay, a thick plexi top, and an aluminium side cover housing d-RGB LEDs, which all work well. They even updated their installation manual, which was one of my complaints from before. Unfortunately, and this is again something quality control should have caught, some things should not have happened. One of the Intel mounting bracket pieces was warped out of the box and required manual flattening prior to installation. A corner of the brass inlay did not have uniform black coating, and the rainbow pattern on the underside is something I have only seen with Alphacool blocks to date. More importantly, one of the translucent O-rings was slightly loose out of the box, although Alphacool does say this was a one-off as they have not had other such complaints, even having taken apart multiple units to check.

Hopefully, you will not have these issues should you go ahead and purchase this block as there is a lot to like even beyond the aesthetics. The block performs well and is good value for money overall. The quality issues with my sample mean that I am unable to recommend it universally, unfortunately.