The effects of alloy elements and cooling rate on the solidification path and the formation behavior of $eta$ phase in Fe-containing Al-Si alloys were studied based on the thermodynamic analysis and the pertinent experiments. The thermodynamic calculation was systematically performed by using Thermo-Calc program. For the thermodynamic analysis in high alloy region of Al-Si-Fe ternary system, a thermodynamic database for Thermo-Calc was correctly updated and revised by the collected up-to-date references. For the thermodynamic-based prediction of various solidification paths in Fe-containing Al-Si system, liquidus projection of Al-Si-Fe ternary system, including isotherms, invariant, monovariant, bivariant reactions and equilibrium temperatures, was calculated and analyzed as functions of composition and temperature. The calculated results were compared to the experimental results using various casting specimens. In order to analyze various solidification sequences as functions of Si and Fe content, 4 representative alloy compositions, low Fe content in both low and high Si contents and high Fe content again in both low and high Si contents, were designed in this study. For better understanding of the influence of cooling rate on the formation behavior of $eta$ phase, 4 alloys were solidified under furnace and rapidly cooled conditions. Cooling curves of solidified alloys were recorded by thermal analysis. Various important solidification events were evaluated using the first derivative-cooling curves. Microstructures of the casting samples were studied by the combined analysis of optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).