Hi everyone,
It looks like the new Alpenfön Black Ridge has some manufacturing problems. Some heatpipes are not soldered correctly with the base. Maybe you know I can’t give support by myself because it is not my product. My name is only printed on the carton because I helped EKL Alpenfön in the development process. However I forward the manufacturing problems to EKL and they ask me if I can post the following statement (I translate it from German to English):
“Dear customers, the first review samples were not affected by the problem, so we start producing the first batch with a rush order. This first batch is affected by the problem and is a result from quick manufacturing. We are very sorry about it. All already ready new batches and future batches will not have this problem. We informed all resellers. The resellers will contact you for a replacement process. We guarantee an easy replacement of the product. We feel very sorry that this happened due to quick manufacturing and we ask your forgiveness. - EKL”
Furthermore they confirmed that the current version with bad soldering will not perform as good as the flawless version. So everyone will get a new flawless version.
With best regards
Daniel Hansen
How do I know if my unit is affected? Does it mean we will have to return them for replacement?
How about the AM4 bracket? If they are going to fix the issues, shouldn't this be addressed as well?
I can't find the reason behind supporting old AMD sockets in this cooler, especially AM3 which doesn't have an ITX board available.
Can you forward this to the manufacturer to update AMD bracket design to focus only AM4 so it doesn't collide with components on asrock and MSI boards?
Also if possible for future revisions - I would gladly pay few more bucks for 1 cm longer cold plate with two mounting positions shifted by 1 cm so the pci slot would not be obstructed unless of course the position of the plate (heatpipe bend) could be fixed for this.