Gigabyte has always been known for its beauty and quality in PC DIY circles, and GIGABYTE has a wide range of products, including graphics cards and motherboards, as well as a range of SSDs, memory and even liquid coolers. Today's product we're reviewing is GIGABYTE's upcoming liquid cooler, the Ice Sculpture x 360.
GIGABYTE's water coolers are named according to color and size, with black products being named the "Water Sculpture" series and white products being named the "Ice Sculpture" series. The Ice Sculpture x 360 we reviewed today is a new white liquid cooler for GIGABYTE, which has been upgraded in terms of fan and water pump performance in addition to the LCD display in addition to the previous generation, so how does this high-end liquid cooler perform in terms of product strength, and today's review article will give you a comprehensive understanding of the GIGABYTE Ice Sculpture X 360.
The high-end positioning of the product is highlighted from the packaging, the main color of the packaging is white, and the brand and product name on the packaging are all printed in bright silver metal-like materials, which can reflect different colors of light at different angles.
The front of the package is printed with a drawing of the product's appearance, **showing the product features of the Ice Sculpture X 360 with ARGB lighting effects and an LCD screen, while the back of the package is printed with the specific specifications of the product, and the fan equipped with the Ice Sculpture X 360 is a building block fan, which is connected by magnetic suction method.
In general, because the packaging uses a relatively simple color combination and font printing of different materials, it gives people the feeling that the product design is more expensive.
In the process of taking out the product, it was found that the packaging and storage method of Ice Sculpture x 360 was gift box, and the unpacking process of flipping up and lifting the lid not only gave users a grand sense of unboxing atmosphere, but also made it more convenient for users to take the product. After opening the package, it is found that the radiator and fan of the product are placed separately, and the user needs to install the fan by himself after getting it, and the installation accessories of the product are placed in the lower left corner of the package.
The accessory box includes fasteners for current Intel and AMD platforms, both with metal bases, and a small tube of GIGABYTE's own silicone grease.
The cold head of the Ice Sculpture x 360 adopts a cylindrical design and has a large three-dimensional size, with a specific data of 876*87.6*77.7mm。The top of the cold head is designed as a protruding square shape, with scales on the upper and lower sides of the square type, which is visually similar to eagle claw scratch marks, and in the middle of the square is a circular LCD screen with a recessed treatment, so the overall appearance of the cold head is three-dimensional.
In terms of screen, the product is equipped with a 60 60mm LCD full-color screen, the content of the screen can be adjusted by software to adjust the display angle, support**JPEG, MP4 and GIF and other format files.
In terms of performance, the cold copper bottom of the product is slightly convex to achieve better contact with the CPU surface. The maximum speed of the pump is around 3400 rpm. According to the official introduction, in order to achieve better heat dissipation, the size of the pump blades of the Ice Sculpture x 360 has increased by 8% compared with the previous generation, and the pump flow rate has increased by 44%.
It is worth noting that there are only two cold head cables in this product, namely a 9pin USB cable for data transmission and a SATA cable for power supply, and there is no traditional 4pin or 3pin motherboard pump interface cable.
In terms of fans, the Ice Sculpture X 360 is equipped with three custom-made ARGB 12cm fans, which use FDB fluid dynamic bearings to reduce noise and vibration, and the lower part of the fan blades is designed in a zigzag shape to increase air pressure. The official nominal maximum air pressure of this fan can reach 315mmH2O, the maximum air volume can reach 72cfm, and the maximum speed is 2400 10% rpm.
The three fans are connected by magnetic suction method, and the cold head of the product can be connected to the fan through the cable buried in the radiator pipe, and the radiator of the product is designed with a special 4pin power supply interface and a 3pin argb interface for the fan. As a result, the Ice Sculpture x 360 is visually clean, and the only cables that can be clearly seen are the two cables of the cold head mentioned above.
We have built the Ice Sculpture X 360 on the LGA1700 platform, which has a metallic base with a more advanced touch, and the four screw holes used as fixation can be slid to fit the LGA1700 and LGA1200 platforms. The finger-screws are equal in length at both ends, and they have a non-slip design with vertical stripes, so the process of attaching them to the base is very convenient and easy. There is a certain gap between the opening of the fixing bracket of the water block and the hand-screwed screw, which is convenient for the user to adjust. However, the slight disadvantage is that the threaded end design of the hand-screwed screw of this product is short, which makes it easier for the nut to slip off when installing the cold head, and the nut needs to be slightly downward when twisting, otherwise the nut may not be installed.
In terms of cable management, because this heatsink does not need to connect the traditional motherboard CPU fan and pump interface cables, it only needs to connect the 9PIN USB cable extended from the cold head and the SATA cable for power supply, so the difficulty of cable management of this product is almost zero, and simple visual effects can be achieved after installation and fixation.
The Ice Sculpture X 360 control software uses GIGABYTE's official Gigabyte Control Center (GCC).
The GCC software is divided into four main sections, and when you open the software, you will see the main screen that shows the installed GIGABYTE hardware. For example, in the case of the PC in this review, the software shows that GIGABYTE's liquid cooler is installed, and below the liquid cooler icon, you can directly click "RGB Fusion" to enter the lighting control interface, and click "Fan Control" to enter the performance control interface of the radiator.
The control interface of Ice Sculpture X 360 is divided into three modules, namely the "RGB Fusion" lighting control interface, the "Fan Control" performance control interface, and the "LCD Panel" screen control interface.
GIGABYTE has 12 ARGB lighting effects including Constant Bright, Breathing, Flashing, etc., which can be adjusted by the software, and on the left side of the interface, the software provides a simple preview of the effects**.
In addition, there is an inconspicuous inverted triangle at the bottom of the lighting selection, and when clicked, the option to turn off the lighting will appear.
In the "Fan Control" performance control interface, users can adjust the radiator fan and pump operating modes, with the pump operating mode being "Balanced" and "Full Speed" in two settings, while the fan offers 7 operating modes including "Custom".
It should be noted that the fan speed curve can only be adjusted when the "Custom" operation mode is selected, and even if the preset "Full Speed" mode is selected, the fan will not operate at full speed in the full temperature range, and the only way to achieve true fan speed operation can only be achieved by manually adjusting the fan speed curve in "Custom" mode.
In the "LCD Panel", GIGABYTE provides users with 5 animation presets, named after Faith 01-05, in addition to which users can also choose between custom, gif, and "carousel" screen modes, all of which can be adjusted by software.
The software provides 5 preset modes that allow users to choose whether to display real-time CPU operating information, including CPU operating temperature, frequency, power consumption, and CPU usage. The text color, refresh time, and temperature measurement units that display the operating information can be adjusted within the software.
In the "Custom", "Custom GIF" and "Custom" modes, users can upload JPEG, GIF and MP4 format files as screen display content respectively, and at the same time, they can also add and display CPU operation information and switch temperature measurement units on the custom content through the software.
However, it should be noted that only files within 10 MB can be uploaded in the "Custom**" mode.
Finally, the "carousel mode" is introduced, in which the cold head screen will change the **mode at a certain frequency), and the user can customize the replacement frequency of the **mode in the software.
Another interesting thing is that Ice Sculpture X 360 is the official cooperation product of HWINFO, users can view the real-time operation information of Ice Sculpture X 360 in the HWINFO software.
Overall, GIGABYTE control software GCC experience is relatively comprehensive, and the UI design is beautiful, and the page layout and guidance are intuitive to the user, so it is almost easy to get started. However, in the process of personal use, I feel that the brushing speed of custom**、GIF and**upload is slow,If you quickly and frequently switch the preset screen display content,The water block screen will also be unresponsive,There is a delay in operation。
The test platform uses the Intel Core i9-12900K and MSI B760 platform for thermal testing, in which the CPU power is set to 260W, the room temperature is about 27, and the temperature rise of the CPU is recorded by the test data obtained by copying the CPU for 15 minutes (CPU temperature - room temperature).
In order to make a better unified comparison, we also convert the heat dissipation performance index of the heat sink into the super energy index (EXP), which is actually a simple conversion of the heat sink thermal resistance, the larger the EXP, the better the heat dissipation performance of the heat sink. Under each power consumption, the thermal resistance value of the radiator under the same conditions is basically the same, so this super energy index is also a fixed value, and it can be approximated that every 1 point higher in the super energy index will have a good cooling effect on the 300W CPU1.
From the data, it can be seen that the heat dissipation performance of the Ice Sculpture X 360 is very good, and the CPU temperature rise of the test platform in the baking test is only 596. The heat dissipation score is slightly better than that of other high-end liquid cooling radiators, and the score of Ice Sculpture x 360 is 83 after converting the Super Energy Score2 points, such a strong data performance of the Ice Sculpture X 360 is definitely at the first echelon level in the current liquid cooling radiator products.
It is worth mentioning that when testing the fan, we found that the maximum speed of the built-in fan of the Ice Sculpture x 360 can reach 2855rpm, and after communicating with the official, it was confirmed that the maximum speed of the radiator fan hardware specification is indeed 2800rpm, but the maximum speed of the fan will be controlled to 2400rpm after connecting the radiator interface. In order to test the extreme cooling performance of the Ice Sculpture X 360, we connected its built-in fan to the CPU fan port of the motherboard, and adjusted the speed of the three fans to full speed through the BIOS.
In this test, the data is based on the air volume and air pressure test device made by the super energy network, which is prepared according to the relevant national standards and ISO standards, and measures the air volume and air pressure of the fan through the multi-nozzle orifice plate of the pipeline test air chamber, and the air volume under different system impedances (ordinary radiator, ordinary tower radiator), and monitors the real-time speed of the fan through the speed tester.
The official nominal value of the Ice Sculpture x 360 fan is a maximum airflow of 2400 10%rpm and a maximum static pressure of 315mmH2O, maximum airflow of 72cfm. In the actual measurement, the maximum speed of the fan is 2508rpm, and the maximum static pressure is 386mmH2O, the maximum air volume is 764cfm, fan speed, air pressure and air volume values are better than the official nominal values. If you connect the Ice Sculpture x 360 fan directly to the motherboard and set it to full speed, the fan will have a maximum speed of 2855rpm and a maximum static pressure of 485mmH2O, the maximum air volume is 868cfm。If you are still vague about the air volume, air pressure, and system impedance, you can refer to our popular science article "Really Understanding the Air Volume and Air Pressure of Cooling Fans".
Here is the test of the pressure of the heatsink on the CPU surface, too low pressure will affect the contact between the heatsink and the CPU surface, long-term excessive pressure may cause the motherboard to deform, generally speaking, the thermal resistance of the silicone grease between the heatsink and the CPU surface will slowly decrease with the increase of pressure, when the pressure reaches a certain level, the thermal resistance of the silicone grease will tend to stabilize. According to our long-term observation and testing, the pressure of the general air cooling radiator is recommended to be more than 15kg, and the pressure of the water cooling radiator is recommended to be more than 20kg.
We installed the Ice Sculpture X 360 with an LGA 1700 socket and tested it with a pressure sensor to show that the installation pressure was 319 kgf, which can completely minimize the thermal resistance of silicone grease.
The important role of the mounting pressure is that when the heatsink is in contact with the processor, the greater the mounting pressure, the smaller the thermal resistance between the two. In the process of increasing the installation pressure, the greater the installation pressure, the faster the thermal resistance decreases, but after reaching a certain level, the decline rate will slow down until it is in a flat state.
The noise test scene is our specially built anechoic room, the lowest ambient noise is about 15dB(a), the fan is located in the center of the room, and the distance between the noise meter and the center of the fan suction surface is 30cm.
The single fan of the Ice Sculpture x 360 idles at full speed with a radiator connected to the noise level of 508dba, the overall noise level is 54 after the three fans are installed to the radiator5dba, the noise control level of the product is average, and the noise is more obvious when the fan is running at full speed. The noise test can only be used as a reference, and the user's use environment is related to the chassis style.
As a high-end 360 liquid cooling radiator product, Ice Sculpture X 360 has outstanding performance in terms of appearance and performance. The product is excellent in terms of cable management, and only two cables need to be connected to the machine to use normally. Moreover, the product design language is rich, the cold head part is more three-dimensional, and the lighting effect and screen customization are also high. The most important thing is that the product has excellent heat dissipation performance, with a super energy index of 83The high score of 2 is enough to prove that its heat dissipation strength belongs to the first echelon of radiator products.
However, the GIGABYTE Ice Sculpture X 360 has a mediocre level of noise control as a high-end product, with slightly louder noise levels when the fan is running at full speed, and the control software is fully functional but has room for optimization. At present, the GIGABYTE Ice Sculpture x 360 is not yet available, so how much do you think this product sells?Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment area.