Closer Examination

Packaging is minimal here, so getting the Alphacool Eiszykon Aurora fans out for a closer examination is a piece of cake. The first thing you will notice is the adoption of a more rounded frame as opposed to the fully square frame, which is an interesting design choice and one that might well hamper performance when up against a radiator frame. I have tested several such fan designs in the past, and it often comes down to the base design from the OEM the company (Alphacool, in this case) wants to build upon. The color scheme is mostly black and translucent plastic given the RGB lighting support here that no doubt will shine through the impeller blades and ring on the frame itself. The corners are closed and have integrated rubber pads to help dampen vibrations passed on from or to the case. The front hub has a sticker with an Alphacool logo that lets us know that this fan is part of their larger Aurora LED series, which in turn all support RGB lighting of the same kind.


The rotor has eleven blades which are thinner and of a design that is more a hybrid for airflow and static pressure-optimization as opposed to more of one or the other. Each blade has a narrow raised lip toward the frame's inside edge, as well as striations that no doubt were designed to aid in performance and noise optimization, combined with the usual four perpendicular stator vanes on the back, but we will test how the fan fares as a radiator fan in due time for ourselves. This particular fan is rated for 1300 RPM, which is in line with the demands of the EU market that prioritizes noise over performance (there is another, even slower version rated at 1100 RPM), and at 2.4 W on the 12 VDC line (0.2 A), which includes start-up boost. In practice, the fan consumed a maximum of 0.08 A (0.96 W) during operation, so you will get away with powering a good number of these off a single standard 1 A fan header on your motherboard. There are two cables for each fan here, one for the 12 V RGB LEDs and another to power the fan motor itself. The latter has a daisy-chained full-size MOLEX connector for power straight from the PSU, but most would want to go with the 3-pin fan connector for voltage control instead. Both cables are unsleeved and instead use black insulation on their individual wires, which allows for a flat ribbon implementation for easier cable routing in a cramped, watercooled PC build. No information is provided by Alphacool on the bearing, which is usually a sign for a sleeve/long-life or sleeve/hydrodynamic bearing.


Here is a look at the running fan with its RGB LEDs on. This is not a digital RGB fan in that the sixteen LEDs distributed throughout the fan can not be individually controlled, but it still makes for a nice light show, and the white is truer to color than with most RGB implementations I have seen to date. The video above demonstrates some of the lighting effects as well, used in conjunction with Alphacool's Eismatrix controller, but compatible with most motherboard/external LED control regardless, although you might need an adapter in some cases. There are many other possible dynamic lighting effects, with the extent of control dependent on what the LED controller allows, including breathing mode, color fade, marquee, RGB wave, color pulse, and so on.