Quality impression and assembly experience
While the brackets have taken a step forward, the standoffs and screws have unfortunately taken a small step backwards. This is because they were simply painted over the thread and not recut, meaning that at least the first assembly and disassembly must be done with a screwdriver. There is no other way to fully tighten the stiff threads.
But once you have mounted the block and connected the RGB cable, the Aurora RGB miracle is a sight to behold. Unfortunately, this is marred by scratches and dirt in the acrylic element. Even with the lighting deactivated, the fine blemishes are unfortunately very noticeable and even with another sample of the Core 1 LT (see below) this was unfortunately no better.
Whether you should have to put up with such minor flaws at this price remains to be judged, but the impression of quality is in any case tarnished and does not match the expectations of “made in Germany”.
Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story, because after the fourth assembly at the latest, a crack had formed in the acrylic element at one corner. This is precisely where the socket brackets transfer the force downwards into the block and this is probably what caused the crack. I can’t say for sure exactly which assembly caused the crack, but the block should be able to withstand a total of 4 cycles in any case.
The crack does not (yet) go all the way to the inside, but the core of the block consists of this piece of acrylic and therefore a leak could develop over time. And even if only the outer corner remains affected, the block can no longer distribute the force evenly there and the contact pressure and performance could potentially suffer as a result.
After describing and communicating the problem to Alphacool, I was sent a new Core 1 LT. I was testing this one extra hard now, because LT or not, a block must not break during assembly. So this time I used a lot of thermal paste, tightened the screws unevenly and almost up to the yield point, a total of 5 times per socket. But the new block holds and does not crack!
We can only guess what caused the first sample to fail – possibly a material error. I was assured that acrylic of this thickness should be able to withstand the prevailing forces without any problems. Accordingly, any customer with similar problems would immediately receive a replacement block from support.
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