Air cooling is just better

Where there is a will, there is a way

Kind of beautiful
Got to love that condensation that will happen in the PC
- At last instance...

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.

Yep, it’s the GPU fans that are the real noisy ones. I can tolerate a noctua CPU cooler but GPU’s are like jet engines under load.
- I use a PowerEdge T620 as my daily driver, let me assure you the CPU fans at full speed can be heard clearly through 3 closed doors :P

Nothing like a gamer sandwich

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
- 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.
- 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.
It's simple for me. Points of failures of air cooling: fans. Failure states: fan fails, system heat protection kicks in and shuts down.
Water cooling? Points of failure: fans, pumps, tubbings, fittings. Failure states: fan fails (best case), worst case? Liquid goes over electronics while they are powered.

Remember kids, if you're ever feeling useless, you'll always be more useful than a 120mm AIO.

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.

Yeah, I'm CPU/GPU cooled for a good while now (4-5y). It's a lot of efforts and make it harder to upgrade. You gain a bit of silence, but it's really not worth for most people. Like you said, it's more of a hobbit than anything.
- it’s more of a hobbit than anything.
  Bilbo Fannings
- Yeah, upgrading is definitely a pain and more costly. Redoing the tubes if you went with hard tubing is part of it. If you didn’t go with some generic waterblocks you’re stuck with them fitted to the motherboard and good luck reassembling the fan cooler on the gpu if you kept the 50 small screws that held it all together.
  That said, I personally won’t go back to air cooled. The low noise and steady temperature are worth it IMO.

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.

Not necessarily, but one, it's a lot cheaper, two, air leaks are not a problem.

the bigger the air leak the better the cooling 🗿
Yes, this is the best argument in favor of air cooling. Air cooling has less points of failure.
With water cooling there's tons of potential problems that "haha wind go brrrr cooling" just doesn't produce: Water block gummed up with mold? Take a performance hit. Pump dead? Sucks to be you. Leak in the system? Enjoy replacing your motherboard.
Main issue you might encounter in air cooling is just "fan died, replace fan". (Obviously not counting thermal interface materials since they are required for both cooling solutions)
- Air cooling has less points of failure.
  One of the main reasons why brand name workstations and servers are still air cooled... and will probably be for a very long time.

Molten Salt cooling. That can handle CPU temperatures of several million degrees. Your CPU may not handle that, but that's not my problem.

Technically, no, air is a much worse thermal conductor, and most liquids are significantly better. It's a pretty efficient thermal INSULATOR, however.

The practical applications, however, make the movement of air OUT of your system an efficient cooling method.

Not trying to be contrarian or a smart-ass, but aren't water cooled systems kinda just air cooled systems with the radiator moved elsewhere?
- Yes. The advantage is that you can make the surface area of the air cooling part much, much larger. I had a water cooled system that could do web browsing and other basic tasks with zero fan speed (though it was better to leave it on very low speed to avoid hunting behavior).
  Also, there's some benefits to thermal mass. Short term spikes can be absorbed by the water without increasing fan speed.
- Every liquid cooling system is pretty much that. Eventually you need to give it to the outside and the outside is usually air. Heck even river cooling for Power plants ends up "air cooling" through the rivers surface.
- I think that the point is to get a much bigger radiator by moving it to a less cramped location. The point is to make the process more efficient, not to change its nature.
Usually copper heatpipes that are found in most air coolers have a drop of liquid in them to boost perfomance.
- Which are already build-in and don't require you to fill them with possible leaks.

A big ass CPU heat sync and fan like that is usually at least as good as most water cooling options. Often times it scores higher on performance tests. It depends on your exact hardware of course.

I have a huge fuckin Noctua fan like that, and it's the most silent shit I've ever had in a computer. I don't even understand how they achieved that.
- Just a high quality fan I guess. If they're good they can be really really quiet. If they use brushless motors that can be almost completely silent.

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

Don't use compressed air on your fans while they're plugged into the board! It generates current that feeds into your mobo. Usually nothing bad happens but there can be problems associated with it.
- That "usually nothing bad happens" will have to do.
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.
The only downside really is RAM slot clearance when you need a beefier air cooler.
Compressed air is magic. Just cleaned my case and it all looks brand new.
Definitely not quieter. I never regretted building my custom loop.

The only true path to water cooling is eliminating the air gaps between your block and CPU surface via full submersion.

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.

yea but whatercooling is a complete new space in the whole building process, when building alone gets boring it opens a whole new door to customization, dedication and „learning“ (its not a really usefull skill), but if its something that pleases you, its just freakin cool, even tho it sucks compared to air cooling its a huge subspace in the custom pc scene. its an enthusiast thing for people who are a bit freaky :) i love it and im always happy when i look at my machine

Eh, how does it suck compared to air cooling? I mean, yeah it’s expensive and requires more maintenance, but it’s way quieter and keeps the components cooler than air cooling.
E: a lot of people who are saying all the stuff that could go wrong sound like they’ve never built a WC system and refuse to acknowledge that many of these issues are likely operator/installer error. Installation absolutely does require more care and effort than an air cooled system. I’m not trying to suggest anyone WC or that it’s better than air, you do you, I don’t care, but WC is trouble free if done correctly with good components.
- It has more points of failure, and that failure can be more catastrophic. If your air cooler falls off somehow or the fan dies, CPUs these days are pretty good about shutting themselves off before they melt. If your fittings leak, it can destroy everything.
- you can destroy your graphics card before even putting it in the system when you fuck up the installation of your block? your system can leak and everything dies because of a short? one cirtical component in your loop dies (like the pump) and all of the work starts over again? it doesnt suck, but if youre not into this whole builiding thing, it sucks compared to aircooling because you have almost no advantage beside temps and noise, even those can be worse if you dont know what youre doing. it doesnt suck as a whole thing, but compared to aircooling its not worth the money, the work or even the flex of you dont enjoy the process of putting it together!

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.

That is why you have dust filters
- It'll take dust over water any day of the week and weekends too.

Small form factor computers are a lot easier with water cooling. That way the GPU can be put right next to the motherboard, and the CPU radiator moved away from that area.

Noctua master race

NH-D15 supremacy
Two NF-A14s as intake fans.
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.

I literally just installed an NHD-15 and it dropped my idle temps 10 degrees vs my old AIO. Load temps are about 5-10 degrees cooler, too.

IMO, if you aren't using at least a 360mm radiator there's not a lot of point water cooling.
The point of water cooling is that you can transfer the heat from the heat producing component out to a large surface area by physically moving the hot liquid. 2x 360mm radiators give you a ton of cooling capacity. 1x 240mm? You can do almost as well for much less money with a really nice air cooler.
- I'd also offer that it allows you to dump all the heat outside the case and avoid warming other components (assuming you put the radiator on an exhaust fan). This is a benefit with any size of radiator.
Even cheaper models are incredibly capable.

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.
- There are also great coolers that come on stock cards, you just have to pick one that isn't shitty. No temp issues with my EVGA or Gigabyte cards that have huge heatsinks and 3 big fans on them.
- I don't follow. The cooler designs on modern midrange and high end GPUs are way bigger and more elaborate than anything that has ever shipped on a $150 GPU.
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

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 all fun and games until you want a beefy setup in an ITX form factor.

just admitting you dont know how cooling works. thats cool.

Okay but what is there to know that isn't there to know via basic physics and chemistry?
Any cooling works by allowing heat to gather in a source like say a heat sink combined with a way to conduct the heat to somewhere. Either into the surrounding air or liquids.
Then you need something to move the hot conducting matter away to replace it with cold conducting matter. A fan happens to be convenient for moving the hot air that gathered around and inside the heat sink.

Unless you need extra gpu cooling. Which I don't so I'm a hurricane boy weeeeeeeeeeee

I've got an FX era noctua still going strong on a 5900x. They even shipped me the adapter kit for free.

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/

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.

The only reason I have water cooling is that I bought my pc used and it came with water cooling. I'm too lazy to change it. At least the RGB lights on the motherboard were switched off with a simple toggle in the BIOS.

If it came with it. You may as well use it! Look into overclocking your cpu if you xanAio generally is wat more efficient than air coolers. Although I would never buy one myself. To much hassle

Didn’t Linus tech tips do a video on this and find that water cooling doesn’t make much if any difference.

Water cooling is just air cooling that moves the fan. If you have a crappy radiator, you aren't going to get great cooling. Water is a great way to move heat, which is why we use it for cars, heating, and power production.
I wouldn't cite LTT for much, but IIRC, that was only true to a point. The NHD-15 is great, but a lot of cases can't fit one. Same with many other high end air coolers. It might also cool to the same temperature, but is also running the fans harder to get there.
- *NH-D15 🤓
The entire computer is throttled into a power consumption you can sink through air coolers. So, unless you are overclocking something, it should always be enough. That will hold until companies start to design the components specifically for water cooling.
But the people claiming it can be quieter or thinner are quite right.

Eeeehhh it's about on par

The biggest bottleneck on both of them these days is getting the heat away from the cpu and into the cooler fast enough. Unless you're de-lidding your cpu, using a peltier or some other lower than ambient powered cooling theres probably a negligible amount in it.

The problem with Noctua is that you need a lot of space...

Because a water pump, water block on both the CPU and GPU and tons of tubes, don't take up much space?
- Imagine having a big Noctua on every component...
  EDIT: I wanted a Noctua but with my two big GPUs, there is no space for a Noctua... and depends on which motherboard also includes water cooling tubes already built-in.
  Much more space on CPU (at least you see the RAM and other components), yeah, depends on how you built it. The PC can "breath". When I said "you need a lot of space" I mean on the CPU, if your RAM and 2 GPU is all near there... all the heat gets concentrated.
- Big air coolers don't fit because there isn't enough height off the CPU inside the case. An O11 Dynamic (regular size) doesn't fit an NH-D15, for example, but it fits water cooling with at least one regular thickness 360mm rad on top just fine. (And also one on the bottom, and a thin one on the side).

Welcome to brown town population cool

Wait till they find out about the PA120SE

Yes this correct. I always use air cooling for my self and clients computer builds. With water cooling, you are asking for trouble.