Air is better than water
Where there is a will, there is a way
Got to love that condensation that will happen in the PC
At last instance…
I like not having to worry about a leak destroying all my expensive hardware.
I once had a PC with watercooling. It died because I was drinking with a friend and wanted to show it off. So I removed the sidepanel and my drunken self tipped the beer bottle which promptly spilled over the running mainboard. Welp, it was some form of water that killed my PC I guess.
I think it depends on the use case. Personally, I simply don’t jive with the idea of conductive liquids swirling inside my expensive PC.
You’re supposed to use distilled water which is not conductive. At least that used to be the case last I saw liquid cooling.
In the end it’s simply not worth it for me. You still need to radiate the heat out, which usually means a big fan, which most air coolers nowadays have anyways.
I think water is rather rare as a coolant these days. Organics (chemical sense not farming sense) like propylene glycol or some kind of glyme aren’t potentially corrosive to metals if spilled, are harder to grow shit in, have lower volatility, and have a higher thermal limit. Maybe also with a little bit of antifouling agent thrown in. My main gripe with them is that if you do spill them, they don’t evaporate and you’re slipping over the floor for the next few days because you missed a spot.
But yeah, air cooling ftw
No coolant is non-conductive after it leaks. It will mix with dust that has built up on the surfaces of the components and become conductive.
The main reason for distilled water is to prevent corrosion and deposits forming inside the loop.
Liquid coolers are by definition just an extra heat exchange step unless you’re venting heat into the ocean or something like a nuclear plant. Otherwise, the atmosphere is your final heat sink either way.
Unless a liquid cooling radiator is significantly larger than the air cooler that would fit directly on the CPU there’s no point whatsoever.
there’s no point whatsoever
I’ve been building my own PCs for a looong time, and I’ve been skeptical of using water cooling in any of my machines.
This changed recently for me, when I got my first 4000 series nvidia gpu, that fucker is huge! And it runs hot, spewing all of its heat directly into the middle of the case. I had serious concerns with this gpu + massive cpu air cooler getting in the way of positive airflow through my case.
And this is where water cooling made perfect sense to me: transport the heat away from the cpu, thus clearing a ton of space from the middle of the case, then have a radiator at the top of the case dissipate that cpu heat.
This allows for a ton of air to go through my case, evacuating all of that heat blowing out of the gpu. This also allows for other heat sinks on the mobo and other components to passively cool better
I agree with you in most cases.
There is a point though as a water cooler can cool an extremely small area better than heatpipes. Look at Zen 4 processors for instance. The CCD is so small and offset that many air coolers don’t properly line the heat pipes with part of the CPU making the most heat. Because of this Noctua even makes and sells an offset bracket to try and move the heatpipes over the CCD. Meanwhile a waterblock should cool the entire area at effectively the same rate as it doesn’t rely on vaporizing the coolant and condensing but just pushing coolant through regardless of heat saturation.
Only a fraction of people should really notice that like overclockers and generally people buy coolers they don’t need.
Noctua master race
NH-D15 supremacy
I love the sound of jet engines during morning boot-up.
I didn’t know they even made a three-phase computer fan. That’s nuts.
Nothing like a gamer sandwich
Quieter, less point’s of failure, and in many cases taking up less space. I have compressed air for dust. In the consumer sphere and almost any enthusiast sphere, air cooling > > > water cooling
The only downside really is RAM slot clearance when you need a beefier air cooler.
less point’s a failure
Why is a “less point” a failure?
He means ‘less points of failure’.
I CAN’T SPELL it’s less points of failure.
*fewer
Compressed air is magic. Just cleaned my case and it all looks brand new.
It’s definitely easier, simpler and cheaper.
Water cooling can be quieter, though. Some big radiators and you can cool a gaming PC with hardly any airflow.
Cries in SFFPCs
Hard to tame a 5800X3D in a 8L case
I slapped an arctic 240mm in my Hyte Revolt 3. Had to… Change things up a bit though
It’s a fun thing to do. I like my setup (O11 dynamic XL, two 360mm rads, dual pumps, both CPU and GPU blocks), but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone. It’s a lot of effort and expense for a little gain. But it’s a hobby on top of a hobby, and that’s fine if you want to go for it.
Yes thank you. I went through a water cooling phase, what a pain in the ass. Worrying about the pump, algae, topping off reservoir, leaks ruining your motherboard. The concept is nice, but the reality is high fucking maintenance for no added value.
Water cooling feels unnecessary and expensive. Like most of my hobbies. I don’t get this particular one, but I can appreciate why people might.
Like i give a fuck what cools best. I want my system to look awesome and the AIO sure looks better imo. At the end of the day: build the PC that makes you happy.
Some suggestions here, the first a good GPU that can run Cyberpunk or the Witcher III at 300 FPS
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/1-7x-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-gpu-scaling/
Just bought one of those brown monsters for a new build, can’t wait to try it
The noctua air coolers work so well. As long as you don’t care about the station wagon color scheme I think it’s the best cooler for that price range by a large margin.
My GPU had a shitty blower cooler, switching to water-cooling made my system so much more quiet!
I don’t understand why they sell GPUs for up to $2000, and they still come with the same crappy fans we had on $150 cards.
Want watercooling? Have fun invalidating your warranty.
Blower style coolers on gpus can be quite good just depends on the card. I’ve had good blower cards and bad blower cards also in certain cases it may be beneficial to get a blower card over a normal card for temps alone as they stuck air up and blow it out towards the back
Removed by mod
The problem with Noctua is that you need a lot of space…
