Introduction

It is hard to believe that Phanteks, a mainstay in the PC DIY business today, is barely over a decade old as of the date of this article. Since they were established, Phanteks has added product lines galore, including cases, CPU air coolers, fans, and even PSUs. With their entry into custom watercooling a couple of years back, Phanteks also showed that there is room for the larger brands to get involved to make custom watercooling more accessible to end users across the world. The Glacier 1080 GPU water block impressed us with its good build quality, aesthetics, and performance alike compared to products from more seasoned manufacturers, if I may say so myself, and today, we take a look at their CPU water block. Thanks a lot to Phanteks for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp.


Phanteks likes to put things under a series name to define characteristic features, and as of now, all their custom watercooling offerings fall under the Glacier series. This very CPU block is called the Glacier C350i thus, with the "i" standing for Intel to denote that the block is only compatible with the more popular Intel CPU sockets for DIY enthusiasts. There are separate versions for AMD sockets, and there is even yet another just for the massive AMD sTR4 socket for Ryzen Threadripper. This review will help give a good estimate of the relative performance of the more general AMD socket version only, so be aware of this. As it stands, the Glacier C350i is similar in design to their GPU blocks in that an acrylic top with metal sideplates greets you from the top, and there appears to be integrated lighting as well. So let's get on with the review by beginning with a look at the specifications below.

Specifications