4w ago

Switched back to air cooling after over a decade on AIOs

Left is idle, right is under full gaming load (Helldivers 2). My previous rig (Intel) easily went up to 85-90°C in the same circumstances. Ambient temps are slightly elevated as well since we've been having ~30°C temps daily here for a while now.

To me this is almost ridiculous. I had never dreamed I could get my temps under load under 70. CPU is at stock speed since there is literally no reason to push it any further at this point. Can always choose to up the clocks later if I still want to.

Cooler is a Noctua NH-D15 G2. I don't see myself returning to watercooling any time soon. And Noctua has a new customer for life.

26 comments

Air cooling is really quite good unless you're running a monster CPU with like 200W+ of TDP.
- I like the AIOs cause the fans don't sound like they're lifting an aircraft carrier. I'm more conscious of noise cause my gaming PC is near to the main tv so don't want my gf to be inconvenienced when she is watching TV, I suppose I could get a lower sound fan that'd do it well (haven't really looked at options for years) but most of them sounded loud when I switched and I like my toys too, though I swear my previous version was making a whining noise for awhile (pump I think) but long since upgraded since I forgot to check radiator size one case upgrade.
  
  Good air coolers are usually as quiet as an AIO, sometimes quieter due to no pump noise.
  
  GamersNexus has in depth data on fans, noise, and how much air they move.
- Or a have specific space constraints. AIOs are great for SFF builds.
Noctua is fantastic, their products are well worth the asking price. They are the only fans I will ever buy.
The NH-D15 performs as well/better as most 240mm radiators. More than that though and liquid coolers are still king, especially when paired with Noctua fans.
(Oh and Noctua are developing an AIO, well a pump-less one)
- Yeah I was gonna say I have a custom loop and Noctua fans, it blows the shit out of an AIO or an air cooler. Plus my GPU is under water also so there’s no gpu fan noise either.
That's the Noctua experience all right. 2-3x as expensive as most other options, but DAMN do they make great fans.
- They are so quiet while pushing so much air, it's fantastic.
I have a huge chonky Be Quiet! CPU fan and it works great. It's really quiet too.
- I'm switching to Linux soon, and I'll probably have to swap my NZXT cooler out for a tower cooler since their shitty control software won't work
Gekoloniseerd. And personally i've also been considering air cooling my cpu again just to switch it up a bit and see what it's like, plus on linux it might make my life easier because i can just let the bios control the fan speed instead of relying on reverse engineered open source alternatives to get it to work. I don't think i'll buy a new cooler until my current aio dies though. I'm pretty sure i've had it for 6 years now and it's still going strong.
I did the same when I rebuilt with a 9800x3d. It’s so nice not having to worry about the pump or aging parts that might leak. No gurgling sounds on startup.
I used the Thermalright Frost Spirit 140 as it was quite a bit cheaper than Noctua which used to be my go to.
I ditched air cooling because of the sound of the fans ramping up and down whenever I did anything briefly intensive, like installing a package.
- Needs some hysteresis. Something most custom fan speed curves lack is a hysteresis option. Basically for short loads don't ramp the fans up to full blast just because the CPU got hot for 0.5 seconds. Liquid coolers aren't immune to this either. If the pump speed is low then it has to start ramping up. And pump noise equally drives me insane.
  Like OP said Noctua fans are basically magic. I have mine set with a very not aggressive curve and hysteresis so I rarely notice them ramp up and down.
  
  Yeah, you can leave them set pretty high and they basically make no noise. No point having them drop super low, or go super high, as they push a lot of air for the noise they make. With a good hysteresis function, as you say, hardly ever hear them ramping.
- Thats an issue with how your fan curves are set up more than the cooler type. Not enough hysteresis and ramp smoothing.
  Its also just less obnoxious with a good air cooler that's still fairly quiet at 100% fans.
- That was my initial reason to go with an AIO. But this Noctua is damn silent. Its "ramping up" is a gentle whirr. An AIO's pump is generally about as loud.
- Have you had a look at your BIOS into the "Fan step up/down time" options?
Literally hollywood
I just got a new rig last week. I got the 9800x3d instead of the 9950x3d as it is exclusively for gaming. Also got the DH15 G2. Really happy with it and it's so quiet!

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