This review took place over several months, with a few days of hurried photography and testing followed by a few months of nothing for me. Those few months, however, were no doubt causing Alphacool a lot of anxiety. The Eiswolf 2 was all set to launch in May originally before COVID-19 struck globally, and the pandemic changed plans in many ways. The launch delay is no doubt the most obvious change, but arguably bigger is the limited number of SKUs at launch compared to what had been planned. Both of these are the result of manufacturing taking longer, forcing Alphacool to prioritize only the reference PCBs from the flagship gaming NVIDIA and AMD GPU offerings today, which people are more likely to pay extra to watercool. The added time also meant they were able to stock enough to meet their anticipated demand at launch.

The changes also put me into this weird situation of attempting to review a family of products based on a unit that will likely not make it to market in its current form. I was sent the Eiswolf 2 for the extremely non-reference ASRock Radeon RX 5700XT Taichi, a true flagship card from the Red team, and the GPU block here is as such also more specialized. The cooling engine will have the same base as those on the retail Eiswolf 2 units, however, with the GPU blocks being the Alphacool Eisblock Aurora GPX family. While the pump on this unit is also slightly different in its maximum-rated speed compared to retail offerings, it uses the same motor (DC-LT 2). The rest of the AIO is identical down to the tubing, fittings, radiator, and fans. No complaints from me about any of the parts other than the fans, with them arguably a letdown relative to the rest. This is especially so when considering that the other parts all feel and operate very well, especially for the money, with a nice balance of function and form. The fans, on the other hand, sell for ~$12 each and are the epitome of looks mattering more in today's RGB world.

Still, they do the job, combined with the relatively low airflow restriction radiator that is the NexXxos ST30. It won't win any awards as a low-profile radiator today, and neither will the fans, pump, or fittings by themselves. I cannot speak for the GPU block since I have not tested a standalone one yet, but what Alphacool did right was to combine all of them into a neat package that will not break banks and is an extremely easy, future-proof entry to the world of semi-custom watercooling. If you don't mind these particular aesthetics and buying from Alphacool in the future, with CPU AIOs and radiator expansion kits already being sold today, the Eiswolf 2 adds to this impressive portfolio and is quite worthy of consideration.