Iceberg Thermal IceGale Xtra Review

Introduction

The IceGale Xtra is Iceberg Thermals' response to the ever-growing high-performance fan market! Blowing at up to 3000RPM, they tried their best to deliver the best performance possible. It's time to take a closer look and find out where they are standing on the general Benchmark list!

What's in the Box?

Iceberg Thermal delivers its IceGale Xtra in the most beautiful packaging we have seen. A simple brown carton box featuring some specs. Inside, the case is wrapped in a sheet of company-designed paper with pieces of carton keeping everything in place with additional Iceberg Thermal Logo- cutouts. So far, this is, by far, the most beautiful packing we have received. Simple but beautiful.

Once everything is unboxed, we will be left with the fan itself and a 4x set of case screws.

Down below you will find a short summary of the fan's specs:

Installation

Installing an IceGale Xtra is no different than any other fan. Position it where it is supposed to be installed, screw in the 4x screws, connect the 40cm long PWM cable, and there you go!

Due to this fan being capable of spinning at up to 3000RPM max, it would be wise to immediately set a custom fan curve to prevent any unnecessary fan ramping which would create an incredibly loud noise. 

Appearance

The IceGale Xtra, and every other Iceberg Thermal product, follows a very "special" design principle. 
All across their lineup, Iceberg tends to use geometrical-looking cuts that resemble cut ice. 

Additionally to this obvious word-play using their company name, Iceberg tends to offer their product in different color options, one of which is a turquoise blue. A design that will inevitably draw some attention. 

Other than this noticeable color option, the IceGale Xtra is also available in black with turquoise highlights and in an All-grey color scheme.

As usual, if the design is "liked" will always rely on the personal opinion of the potential buyer, which in this case becomes even more important considering the special type of design that Iceberg Thermal is offering.
Generally, we can conclude that the finished product is perceived as upper-shelf quality. The rubber pads on the corners are well-implemented, and there are no obvious malformations or damages on any of the parts of the fan.

However, the design is definitely something special and needs additional planning if the finished build is meant to look a certain way.

Looking closer at the fan blades, Iceberg decided to go for a 7 blade design which are relatively short and bend in a slightly "double"- bend way. An interesting design choice, which paired with the dual ball bearing might end up being slightly louder compared to other fans in this category.

Benchmark

We benchmarked the Iceberg Thermal IceGale Xtra on both our Case-Fan and Radiator-Fan setup.

While letting the Fans blow at their max 3000RPM speed on the Case-Fan machine, they managed to keep the CPU at 34.6°C above ambient. This positions them as Nr.3 on our list, even above the Noctua NF-F12 Industrial.

Slowly lowering the fan speed whilst noting the created noise at each step allowed us to create a noise-to-performance graph.

Here we were able to observe that although these fans were capable of delivering outstanding performance, they tend to be quite loud compared to other fans like the NF-F12 Industrial.

On the Radiator benchmark machine, the IceGale Xtra were able to deliver again with them keeping the water at 7.8°C above ambient, just a tick behind the Phanteks T30.

On the corresponding Noise-to-Performance graph, we got very similar results compared to the Case-test.

Although they weren't as far behind this time, they were still quite far behind the Phanteks T30.

Conclusion

Brutal would be an understatement. Whether Radiator or Case Performance, the IceGale Xtra delivered brutal performance. 

However, this came at the cost of noise, a lot of it. 

That being said, 3000RPM fans are not really supposed to be quiet, they are supposed to deliver upper-shelf performance while being allowed to slightly lose on the noise part. Something which our Benchmark charts reflected. 

But one point that nobody can challenge is the unique design these fans are coming with. The combination of a turquoise frame paired with the grey fan blades makes for an eye-drawing end product that may or may not be liked by many, but it's definitely something special.

The last question still remains, to buy or not to buy. Max-Performance-wise, there aren't many fans capable of competing, however, the noise-to-performance line doesn't look as good compared to another fan competing in the same category. This a tradeoff that the customer must be willing to take if he strives for absolute maximum performance.