Ikonik Ra X10 Liquid review - Introduction

You know, sometimes I have a positive gut feeling about a company, and today we'll review a product of a company that you probably never have heard of, yet after this year most of you will most likely know them. A couple of months ago I was contacted by this friendly lady from a  company called Ikonik. After a brief checkup on their products I already figured, that this might be an interesting company to follow. It was however early December and we were stiffed with other product reviews in the waiting queue, so I decided to postpone a review for them towards Q1 of 2009.

Word on the street is, the company was founded by one of the leading computer casing and power supply engineers at Gigabyte. Regardless of that insignificant information, in the past we've tested a lot of Gigabyte's chases, and I do see some faint resembles. Ikonik certainly made a jaw-breaking entrance to the market by releasing their latest product series; the Ra X10 series chassis.

Ikonik is a company with a clear vision. They target the more enthusiast PC audience (that would be you guys) and smother them up with some really exciting products. Their product line embeds their Gaia, Taran and Vulcan line of power supplies and several chassis with extraordinary looks and designs.

A trend we spotted over the past year or two is the increasing demand for exotic cooling mechanisms. We have air cooling, peltier (TEC) cooling, phase-change cooling and a lot of variants based on these. The one cooling solution that everybody hated became extraordinary popular. Yes, cooling your PC down with water. See everybody is so afraid of leaks .. water plus highly sensitive (and expensive) components just do not mix, we all figured.

Time has changed and so did water-cooling; it has become very accepted for the masses. And when I say masses we land into a spot in the sales-channel they call mainstream. Mainstream products simply mean that masses of people at the very least are interested in buying such a product. For a product to become mainstream it will need to meet several requirements: the product must be appealing, easy to use and install and be priced right. In short; the majority of consumers must find the product interesting and affordable. A couple of weeks ago we asked Ikonik if they'd be interested in a review of their most popular chassis, the RA X10 series.

The series contains three cases; Ra X10 LIQUID, Ra X10 SIM and Ra X10 Smooth (aimed at the noise concerned users).

The Liquid comes ready with liquid cooling, 13 (!) fans and Ikonik's own SIM (System Intelligent Management).