Watercooled vs Fans?

[Kyle Nuva]

thinking i wana switch to a water cooled PC for my next gaming pc
my piece of ♥♥♥♥ i have now has a fan that suddenly wants to be an ass and GRRRR's
have to kick its metal ass to make it shut up
barbaric yes but it works, yet i get a buzzing sound

is watercooled better at keeping it cooler and silent?

[𝓡𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓒𝓪𝓽]

In my opinion, a good air cooler like a Noctua performs just as well as any water cooler. Water cooling in most cases just isn't worth it unless of course, you like the aesthetics, then go for it.

[AustrAlien2010]

It could be worth it. Was it not for when they started placing fans on parts we would not have these current day graphics? We just don´t see many mainboards that have integrated water-cooling-systems that also fit in a case. Would there be those, things may be different.

[FireGryph]

Publicado originalmente por AustrAlien2010:

It could be worth it. Was it not for when they started placing fans on parts we would not have these current day graphics? We just don´t see many mainboards that have integrated water-cooling-systems that also fit in a case. Would there be those, things may be different.

Its simply not worth it. Air cooling is more than enough for most, and far cheaper and cost effective than any liquid cooling solutions. So why would a manufacturer bother with creating more liquid cooling parts when you get no value out of them?

LIquid cooling, at this point, is for aesthetics, enthusiasts or because you simply like it. A lot of people love to tinker with liquid cooling, but at the end of the day, putting a couple fans in a decent case and plunking on a tower air cooler is far easier, less time consuming, and more efficient than the hassle of working with tubing and liquids and pumps and reservoirs and radiators and etc etc.

[AustrAlien2010]

But the same could have been said about passive cooling before they started doing that, and it became a standard. I almost feel bad for having talked the OP out of it.

[r.linder]

Publicado originalmente por AustrAlien2010:

But the same could have been said about passive cooling before they started doing that, and it became a standard. I almost feel bad for having talked the OP out of it. :p2wheatley:

What are you even arguing at this point? There's little logical reason to go with liquid outside of overclocking or case limitation.

Liquid cooling is only really necessary if you're overclocking or your case can't fit a larger air cooler like the Dark Rock Pro 4. Cases like Lian Li's PC-O11 Dynamic are popular but don't support the DRP4's cooler height.

Otherwise, beefy air coolers are more than enough, and last longer because they don't have multiple failure points, and the only failure point can be easily replaced, whereas if an AIO's pump or tubing busts, the entire unit is useless and has to be replaced entirely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA4gXIeyrKs Example

[AustrAlien2010]

Against it not being worth it.

[r.linder]

Nobody is saying it's not worth it by itself, but it's overpriced compared to air coolers like Noctua NH-D15 and be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4, which costs LESS and performs very similarly. The be quiet! cooler is also quieter, which is what the OP is actually looking for.

The more fans you have, the louder the system will be under load when the fans have to ramp up. I would know, because my system has 3 on AIO, 6 case fans, and 3 on GPU.
be quiet! is massively successful at this point because they've somewhat overcome the acoustic issue, since their fans are so low pitch that it's not even noticeable most of the time.

[AustrAlien2010]

You're right. If it's raw computing power the OP wants, it may be better off buying a server mainboard or park, instead of messing around with liquid cooling on a pc.
But those too, may be water-cooled.

*imagines a network of pc's with reservoirs of water within them attached to a central pump*

Surely, that must be better than hundreds of individual fans?
Of course this is an insane thought, because the OP wants to assemble a pc, not a pumping station. But if the OP plans on building a computer of colossal proportions, water-cooling may end up being better.
(Sorry. I´m bringing this discussion into the absurd, forget I mentioned it. I lost myself in sci-fi there for a moment. )

What about cooling it with liquid nitrogen? There are way better cooling methods then a spinning piece of plastic on a heatsink.

[AustrAlien2010]

What about one of those vapor chamber heat sinks? Then you can have an in-between solution, and then you don´t have to pump water either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe

[r.linder]

Publicado originalmente por AustrAlien2010:

You're right. If it's raw computing power the OP wants, it may be better off buying a server mainboard or park, instead of messing around with liquid cooling on a pc.
But those too, may be water-cooled.

*imagines a network of pc's with reservoirs of water within them attached to a central pump*

Surely, that must be better than hundreds of individual fans?
Of course this is an insane thought, because the OP wants to assemble a pc, not a pumping station. But if the OP plans on building a computer of colossal proportions, water-cooling may end up being better.
(Sorry. I´m bringing this discussion into the absurd, forget I mentioned it. I lost myself in sci-fi there for a moment. )

What about cooling it with liquid nitrogen? There are way better cooling methods then a spinning piece of plastic on a heatsink.

Liquid cooling always needs fans unless you're using something else to chill the water.

LN2 is only use for overclocking because you constantly have to pour more LN2, and there's risks with LN2. You can easily kill hardware with moisture if you aren't careful.

[r.linder]

Publicado originalmente por AustrAlien2010:

What about one of those vapor chamber heat sinks? Then you can have an in-between solution, and then you don´t have to pump water either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe

Still requires fans, and that's still air cooler tech. A lot of air coolers have that type of heat pipe.

It can't replace fans because all it really does is carry the heat like any other heat pipe.

[Ad Hominem]

A high end tower air cooler (something like the Noctua NH-D15) comes within like 2 or 3 degrees of a big ass AIO liquid cooler. And has significantly less modes of failure and significantly lower consequences if it does fail. Not to mention air cooling is cheaper by a long shot.

To your point about your fan, you might need to double check that a wire hasn't found its way into the fan blades which would make the buzzing noise.

The only way to get more meaningful cooling performance would be a custom water loop.

[Ad Hominem]

Publicado originalmente por Escorve:

Liquid cooling always needs fans unless you're using something else to chill the water.

The only way to get away with not using fans in a liquid cooling setup is if you have enough radiators to remove heat passively without forced air. Think like a custom loop with 5 360mm radiators and no fans. I just made that number up, but theoretically it could be done with enough surface area.

While this can be done with a custom loop it isn't really practical for most purposes. At that point you probably also have such a high volume of fluid in the loop that it takes a very long time to even reach thermal equilibrium under load anyway.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

At the end of the day it's still always the copper block and the rad fans doing most of the work. You don't need a pumped liquid cycle. Heat pipes and fins do the job just as well when compared to any of these off the shelf AIO LC

[FluffyPinkDecoyBunny]

Don't forget that your case will play a significant role in this whole thing, too.

I had a CM Cosmos 1000 - I'd rate the air flow in it a 2 out of 5, it was pretty poor. Utilizing air coolers in it was not as effective as using a AIO in that case.

A CoolerMaster V8 and a Hyper 212+ couldn't keep my old Phenom II x4 940 as cool as the Corsair H50 could. Best overclock I could hit on air was 3.6, this was with 1.4875V. Only way to get to 3.71 was to push the voltage all the way to the boards max of 1.55V, but then the CPU temp would exceed the thermal limit (62C) and start pushing 70C and the CPU would throttle.

On the Corsair H50 I could hit the same OC of 3.6 on 1.45V. When I pushed the voltage up to 1.5 I could push the OC to a stable 3.71 and still run the CPU a couple of degrees cooler than what the air coolers could provide with 1.4875V.

If your case has poor air circulation, a AIO would probably be your best bet. If you have good air circulation you'd probably see a similar performance in temps with an air cooler vs an AIO.