Cooling Alphacool SUCK.

So about a week ago a friend of mine from another forum posted this pic. She was devastated.



Apparently Alphacool make a SLI bridge that has no bolts or screws holding it to the blocks. At all.

So she contacted them, and after giving her the runaround for over a week this was the response she got.



Have a great day. Wait, is he actually taking the piss? And then, strangely enough, this appears on their Facebook page this morning.



And at no point have they offered to compensate for the enormous amount of damage their poor design has caused.

I had a instance like this with Coolit! many years ago, and tbh? I thought their coldness was the worst I had ever encountered ever. But this? this takes it to a whole new level.

Sorry Alphacool, but I didn't like your products before (they look cheap and tacky and some of them are just rebranded Phobya crap) but this takes it to a whole new level. Using the people who keep your company in business as guinea pigs for your terribly designed products.

What idiot designs a press fit part in a high pressure loop?

Here, let me show you how the real companies do it.



Do you see? two bolts ! that is all it takes.

 

TBH I'm not being bad to my friend Lucy but I would have taken one look at that and literally split myself laughing. There wasn't even a barb to stop it pushing out under pressure. LOL seriously who designed it?

Funny how the Facebook post turns up and the "fixed parts" are nothing but a render.

Alas, though, it's left her in a world of pain and they are telling her to have a great day. Jokers.

 

If she has home insurance - check if it covers against water damage.

Also this is why I dont like putting PSU at the bottom. Once forgot to close the reservoir - ended up only with a wet desk (and clean case), wouldn't be so lucky if there was a a PSU at the bottom.

 

I made a cover for my PSU out of the side of a frosties box arched such that it would just flow past onto floor. it was great!! (not that I ever tested it )

Never had a death by water cooling, I did manage to trip and drop a cup of tea on my PC which went through rad an fans on the top of case and fried the PC though.....

Can't really comment on Alphacool design here I can't see how that works but I find SLI bridges to be quite complicated to set up having run a couple of 3x and 4x bridges I now just stick to big loops of pipe, but I don't care what it looks like just that it works and is reliable.

 

Look at the pic of the two fittings. The first type (IE not the "Cover our asses render") is just a straight piece of pipe. In the SLI bridges there are Orings that you push onto the fittings. On straight, very shiny pieces of metal. No barb, no screws, no fixing. And they expected them to stay put once the loop is under pressure. LOL.

That is like pushing a piece of hose over a tube of metal and thinking it will stay there. That is why old fittings were barbed *AND* you used some sort of clip or cable tie. Seriously, how they ever thought that would actually work is a mystery.

 

Clearly a design fault - they have admitted so. I would expect them to offer more than just a replacement for the defective part.

How much of your mates system is toast?

 

That’s pathetic that they will offer to exchange the bridge and not compensate for the rest.

I also dislike Alphacool. The only time I ever had any of their fittings was because they were on sale. They leaked with the slightest bit of pressure on the angled ones... so the pipe had to be perfect. It was utter bollocks.

Barrow fittings (Bitspower OEM...?) and EK blocks for me... I don’t mess around with that stuff anymore.

 

She's not sure yet. Has ordered the isoprop etc to do the cleanup. Of course now she has to go through the massive inconvenience of literally stripping the entire rig down to bolts and cleaning everything in isoprop and etc.

TBH I think she has quite a strong legal case here. They've clearly admitted that the part had a fault, and have offered the "safe" replacement after the fact..

 

How long that WC setup operated before failing? From the picture it looks like the rig was either off or turned off very soon after the failure (rez is only half empty). Was it during leak test phase?
Were, at any point, blocks removed and put back on without changing the o-rings?

I wouldn't trust the 'new' design either, you are still relying on the o-ring to hold everything together, but now only one oring for sealing. Best course would be some sort of bracket that clips on the GPU watercooler.

 

It was within 24 hrs. She was still running it without power to the rig, IIRC and just nipped to the kitchen and came back to that ^

The thing that gets me is she is running SLi, with four "barbs" (if you can even call them that) inserted yet it still came out.

 

If the rig was not powered on, the components should all be fine. Just give them a really good clean, take those **** blocks off and melt them for scrap, and then shove the bare PCBs into the dish washer on a clean rinse, with no detergent or salt. Remove the CMOS battery from the motherboard, too, unless you want to end up with a leaky battery staining your precious board.

 

Could it have been user error - she didn't push the block all the way on, so it only engaged on the first o-ring?
ACool's blocks of this design have been on the market for over a year now, there would be a lot more posts on the internet if it was a common problem.

 

Nope no user error. Look at the original fitting. It is round, smooth and even has a 45' edge to help it come out easier lol. If this was user error AC would not have put up a render of a barb fitting after seeing countless pics of her rig (she had been sending them pics for about a week before they told her to naff off). Also, the reason this probably hasn't happened before is because no one SLis any more. Well, not with cards like this, using cheap blocks like this. A decent block costs over double what those ACs do, but that is really no reason for them to fail that is simply bad design. As I showed, Aquacomputer, Watercool and all of the others use two bolts to hold edge blocks on. Also bear in mind there were four of those fittings all holding it in place and it still blew out. It would be even worse using just two.. The block design is OK (if a little ugly and cheap looking) it's that SLi thing that isn't.

Brend - yeah, hoping no damage has been done. She's got rice, and has ordered isoprop.

 

it may be worth your friend talking to a solicitor if she wants to go down that road for compensation. This is why companies have product liability insurances. They won't be happy but it may be a way for your friend to get up and running.

 

Yup they are finally at the bartering table so we shall see And yeah, you're right, in this case it was not user error so more than enough grounds for legal action. They can't just recall a product and then stick a finger up to every one who had it fail before hand. Even if it was just one person.

 

I've had a look into the fitting and it looks like if there was any lubrication of the o-rings on assembly this could have caused it to pop off - still agree this is a crap design though.

As for a reason - what is your friends loop order?

As for being better/worse with more/less, essentailly it would be worse with SLI as you have a higher pressure drop over the cards - acting on the SLI block pushing it off. For each fitting you have pressure vs o-ring friction, and with one card you would have X force acting on the SLI block. With two cards and a linked SLI block the force acting on the second block would be simalar to X, but the force acting on the first would be higher.

It would be interesting to do a 24hr pressure test on the bits she has to see what they can withstand - I wonder if Alphacool know.

 

I do like David. I spoke to him a few times and he’s a great guy. I’m glad to see that he stepped up and has started something for this lass.

I still stand by my original statement in which I do not wish to deal with AC products. It’s a preference thing... and one bad experience was enough to put me off. I can’t change that, I’m afraid.