Is water cooling better than air cooling?

[Belle Delphine Targaryen!]

Like the AIOs that are seen everywhere these days?

[Emrys]

So that you don't die completely stupid, I'll tell you something about temperatures and hardware death.

My old AMD notebook with integrated graphics (APU) got up to 100°C hot in the summer because the ventilation worked less and less well towards the end and dust accumulated inside (I was too lazy to clean it). Of course it felt a bit hot on my hands when typing. But it just didn't break and I only have a new one now because the old one was too slow and constantly ran at its limit, even recently with Linux. When I stopped using it, the battery was of course the first thing to break and that was it. I just booted it up after months and it still works.

What I'm trying to say is that all this cooling madness is no longer necessary these days, as the components installed can now withstand much higher temperatures.
The only point of cooling these days is to avoid throttling, which is how the hardware protects itself from overheating. As has already been mentioned here, water cooling is more of a waste of money than it is actually useful. So is it any wonder that some "specialists" are constantly telling you that you have to get as many FPS as possible? 120 and far more, because there are now monitors that can actually put this number of frames per second on the screen. This madness started back when there were no 120Hz monitors at all and people were saying that they could actually "see" over 60 FPS on 60Hz monitors. You wouldn't believe what a fun time that was for me, even though latency wasn't even being discussed back then, or hardly anyone even knew that such a thing existed. :)

But what do these high FPS values ​​do, to get back to the topic? Right! It may not warm your hearts, but it does warm your hardware, and there is a solution for that, isn't there?
YES! The holy water cooling! Hurrah, we are all saved, as long as the wallet can keep up!

[Dutchgamer1982]

Emrys a écrit :

So that you don't die completely stupid, I'll tell you something about temperatures and hardware death.

My old AMD notebook with integrated graphics (APU) got up to 100°C hot in the summer because the ventilation worked less and less well towards the end and dust accumulated inside (I was too lazy to clean it). Of course it felt a bit hot on my hands when typing. But it just didn't break and I only have a new one now because the old one was too slow and constantly ran at its limit, even recently with Linux. When I stopped using it, the battery was of course the first thing to break and that was it. I just booted it up after months and it still works.

What I'm trying to say is that all this cooling madness is no longer necessary these days, as the components installed can now withstand much higher temperatures.
The only point of cooling these days is to avoid throttling, which is how the hardware protects itself from overheating. As has already been mentioned here, water cooling is more of a waste of money than it is actually useful. So is it any wonder that some "specialists" are constantly telling you that you have to get as many FPS as possible? 120 and far more, because there are now monitors that can actually put this number of frames per second on the screen. This madness started back when there were no 120Hz monitors at all and people were saying that they could actually "see" over 60 FPS on 60Hz monitors. You wouldn't believe what a fun time that was for me, even though latency wasn't even being discussed back then, or hardly anyone even knew that such a thing existed. :)

But what do these high FPS values ​​do, to get back to the topic? Right! It may not warm your hearts, but it does warm your hardware, and there is a solution for that, isn't there?
YES! The holy water cooling! Hurrah, we are all saved, as long as the wallet can keep up!

100+ fps is needed and I had it for a decade.

better 1440p with 100+ fps than 4k without.

only the 4090 can do 4k 100fps.
4090 uses insane 450w.
normal top models used 250w every titan evety x90 evey x80ti upto the 2080ti.

these insane voltages are lousy i not care them jacking up the prize but i just wont accept 450w powersdraws.

but even than you can aircool a 4090 and a cpu supporting it with just good quality aircooling just fine.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Emrys a écrit :

No, water cooling is not better than air cooling in the PC sector. The only advantage of water cooling is that the PC is quieter. However, you accept that other components are not cooled as well because you cannot cover everything with water cooling. As far as I know, this is only possible with much more expensive motherboards, where the cooling pipelines are distributed across the entire board. If you have SSD drives, for example, that get hot when in use, they also need to be cooled. The same applies to other hardware that is not installed directly on the board but is in the PC case; it then requires air circulation in the case, so again fans.

Depending on which coolant you use, the water cooling can also break over time because the pipes become clogged with coolant residue and have to be cleaned at great expense (if at all possible).
It is therefore much more sensible to undervolt the hot components a little and in this way reduce the electricity costs at the same time, as the fans can then also work more quietly (win-win).
You should also use more large fans than small ones, as they are quieter in operation because they work at lower speeds.

It is also not recommended to always play games on the highest settings (e.g. Ultra) with as many FPS as possible, unless you are doing benchmark tests and want to find out the limits of your hardware. In any case, you will not be able to play games with these high settings in the long term. I know that this nonsense is often spread on YouTube, for example, but the real intention behind it is that your hardware should break as quickly as possible and you should constantly upgrade, which makes them and their financiers happy, but constantly costs you more. I recommend setting a stable 60 FPS with enough reserves so that the graphics card doesn't have to constantly bungee jump and the latencies don't constantly jump up and down while your PC becomes a furnace and your power supply has to work in the kilowatt range to be able to supply everything accordingly.

It's actually NOT quieter.
Pumps are louder then Fans.

The loudest part anyways would be the GPU

[Emrys]

Bad 💀 Motha a écrit :

It's actually NOT quieter.
Pumps are louder then Fans.

The loudest part anyways would be the GPU

Sorry for you, but I have never had water cooling because to me it is nonsense.

[C1REX]

I have two PCs: one with Noctua NH-d15 and another one with Arctic Freezer Liquid II 420.

For me the water is quieter but it's a different CPU and a different case so not a fair comparison.

I think the biggest difference is how much easier is to upgrade PC parts with an AIO instead of a huge Air Cooler. Even changing the GPU can be hard on some motherboards if the CPU cooler is blocking the GPU release lever. Also cable management, adding and replacing nvme, etc.

But overall I think the Peerless Assassin (air cooler) is generally the best cooling solution. Spending more on cpu cooling takes money away from GPU budget.

[Dutchgamer1982]

C1REX a écrit :

I have two PCs: one with Noctua NH-d15 and another one with Arctic Freezer Liquid II 420.

For me the water is quieter but it's a different CPU and a different case so not a fair comparison.

I think the biggest difference is how much easier is to upgrade PC parts with an AIO instead of a huge Air Cooler. Even changing the GPU can be hard on some motherboards if the CPU cooler is blocking the GPU release lever. Also cable management, adding and replacing nvme, etc.

But overall I think the Peerless Assassin (air cooler) is generally the best cooling solution. Spending more on cpu cooling takes money away from GPU budget.

with am aio perhaps.
but with an custom waterloop everything is a chore.. want to install an m.2.. ofcourse your pump is exactly before the place on your mobo where it needs to go.. so you need to empty the entire loop.. remove a gazillion screws to remove the pump... just to install a drive...

vs that.. a block on your cpu is 10000x simpler.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Emrys a écrit :

Bad 💀 Motha a écrit :

It's actually NOT quieter.
Pumps are louder then Fans.

The loudest part anyways would be the GPU

Sorry for you, but I have never had water cooling because to me it is nonsense.

So you've never used Liquid Cooling first-hand? And in your previous post you're on and on about a troubled Laptop you've had... Remind us again what you are contributing to the conversation?

[Emrys]

Bad 💀 Motha a écrit :

Emrys a écrit :

Sorry for you, but I have never had water cooling because to me it is nonsense.

So you've never used Liquid Cooling first-hand? And in your previous post you're on and on about a troubled Laptop you've had... Remind us again what you are contributing to the conversation?

A long time ago I was trying to overclock the CPU, but of course I quickly reached the limits of what I could do with an air cooler. Despite this I managed to break a record on Geekbench. But that was just for fun.

Nowadays overclocking no longer makes sense to me, as today's processors have enough power and I only use them to their full capacity for a short time in some cases. Today efficiency has become much more important to me, as the power consumption of processors has also increased significantly. "Underclocking" and "undervolting" are now my magic words. Cooling plays a much smaller role than before.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Emrys a écrit :

Bad 💀 Motha a écrit :

So you've never used Liquid Cooling first-hand? And in your previous post you're on and on about a troubled Laptop you've had... Remind us again what you are contributing to the conversation?

A long time ago I was trying to overclock the CPU, but of course I quickly reached the limits of what I could do with an air cooler. Despite this I managed to break a record on Geekbench. But that was just for fun.

Nowadays overclocking no longer makes sense to me, as today's processors have enough power and I only use them to their full capacity for a short time in some cases. Today efficiency has become much more important to me, as the power consumption of processors has also increased significantly. "Underclocking" and "undervolting" are now my magic words. Cooling plays a much smaller role than before.

Obviously you have not used modern CPUs which can be quite power hungry by default and require proper cooling. Not like the old days where slapping on a CM Hyper212 with very little if any Case Fans was overall good enough to keep the system running well enough for a couple years.

Yes they don't need as much considerations for Overclocking to get better game performance and such but you can't skimp on things like Power Supply, CPU and Case Cooling otherwise these modern CPUs would easily run into problems. Look at all the YT videos regarding problems with Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs because of how lazy so many of these system builders are these days.

[Emrys]

Bad 💀 Motha a écrit :

Obviously you have not used modern CPUs which can be quite power hungry by default and require proper cooling. Not like the old days where slapping on a CM Hyper212 with very little if any Case Fans was overall good enough to keep the system running well enough for a couple years.

Yes they don't need as much considerations for Overclocking to get better game performance and such but you can't skimp on things like Power Supply, CPU and Case Cooling otherwise these modern CPUs would easily run into problems. Look at all the YT videos regarding problems with Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs because of how lazy so many of these system builders are these days.

I wrote that nowadays a CPU needs more power than it did back then. They are often already overclocked/overvolted and have to be optimized manually in the BIOS. Then they run with almost the same performance, but with significantly less power consumption and therefore generate less heat. It's similar with graphics cards.

Some CPUs are so poorly optimized that the pins in the socket on the motherboard melt or become deformed. I always build my PCs myself and stay reasonably fit in them that way.

[Kobs]

Is water cooling better than air cooling?

Imagine that your hand is on something hot but you cannot remove it from there.... would you like someone to blow air on it to cool it down or would you like someone to pour water over it?
Let's face it, for cooling, water is far superior to air because water gets cooled back everytime it goes into the radiator VS air in your case gets warmer and warmer and passing through your air cooler fins. Your cooler is normally right over the hottest thing in your case... the GPU and no matter how much air you can pump into your case it will never be cooler than room temperature

[Χάρης]

Belle Delphine Targaryen! a écrit :

Like the AIOs that are seen everywhere these days?

It you run a high end cpu and play demanding games on high resolutions, then AIO/ liquid cooling is the way to go.

[Shaggin'Wagon]

Dutchgamer1982 a écrit :

than there is the ^%&%%&^pumps that keep breaking... believe me the pumps last like 1 year... where an aircooler will last like forever...

You must of bought some awfully crappy pumps if they only lasted a year. I have a lot of MCP-355 SwiftTech pumps that I bought back around 2001 - 2005 and they are still running fine in my main computer and my spare computers today. Two of my oldest ones are powering the water loop in my computer I'm using right now.

Dutchgamer1982 a écrit :

but with an custom waterloop everything is a chore.. want to install an m.2.. ofcourse your pump is exactly before the place on your mobo where it needs to go.. so you need to empty the entire loop.. remove a gazillion screws to remove the pump... just to install a drive...

vs that.. a block on your cpu is 10000x simpler.

That's your own personal problem in how you chose to route your tubing. You created that problem.

It would be great if you could try to be more objective for people in here. Just because you bought low quality crap components that failed often and created your own headache by choosing poor routing for your tubing doesn't mean that custom water cooling is bad.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Shaggin'Wagon a écrit :

Dutchgamer1982 a écrit :

than there is the ^%&%%&^pumps that keep breaking... believe me the pumps last like 1 year... where an aircooler will last like forever...

You must of bought some awfully crappy pumps if they only lasted a year. I have a lot of MCP-355 SwiftTech pumps that I bought back around 2001 - 2005 and they are still running fine in my main computer and my spare computers today. Two of my oldest ones are powering the water loop in my computer I'm using right now.

Just because you bought really cheap parts does not mean that custom water cooling overall is bad.

I bought EXPENSIVE parts

Raijentek 360 green, AIO, price 240 euro, died after 9 months
(also forced me in a 15 month RMA due GPU shortages not having a replacement for my GPU it took out with it, FORCING me to eventually buy a gpu with stock a waterblock on it as those were the only ones available at all)

XSPC Ion white, pump+reservoir combo, died after 12 months, price of this thing 230 euro, I did order a replacement pump for 170 euro but it was never delivered (had to order from usa.. as it was not longer sold here.. and it just was lost in shipmment)

replaced by : EK-Quantum Kinetic price : 180 euro.,. died after 14 months

replaced by EK-DDC, died after 12 months, price 230 euro

replaced by.. same, another EK DDC, currently running for 14 months.. so will it die soon on me again?

and thats just the pumps... each repair ALSO costed me at like 1000 euro in wages (as they charge an outrages 150/hr to do work on watercooling.. and most shops won't do that kind of work.. forcing you to use the services of the one shop that does)

AND each time it came with expenses in new fittings, mounting racks etcs.. adding another 200-300 per repair..

[Dutchgamer1982]

Shaggin'Wagon a écrit :

Dutchgamer1982 a écrit :

than there is the ^%&%%&^pumps that keep breaking... believe me the pumps last like 1 year... where an aircooler will last like forever...

You must of bought some awfully crappy pumps if they only lasted a year. I have a lot of MCP-355 SwiftTech pumps that I bought back around 2001 - 2005 and they are still running fine in my main computer and my spare computers today. Two of my oldest ones are powering the water loop in my computer I'm using right now.

Dutchgamer1982 a écrit :

but with an custom waterloop everything is a chore.. want to install an m.2.. ofcourse your pump is exactly before the place on your mobo where it needs to go.. so you need to empty the entire loop.. remove a gazillion screws to remove the pump... just to install a drive...

vs that.. a block on your cpu is 10000x simpler.

That's your own personal problem in how you chose to route your tubing. You created that problem.

It would be great if you could try to be more objective for people in here. Just because you bought low quality crap components that failed often and created your own headache by choosing poor routing for your tubing doesn't mean that custom water cooling is bad.

I did NOT buy low crap component... my loop is expensive.. the radiator alone was 600 euro...
the store just keeps saying.. I get bad luck.. these ARE quality components...

as for fitting... lets blame that on the type of mounts made... my case should have the reservoir mounted to the back of the case... (or on the left if you watch).. but pumps that fit there aint no longer made..

(look up phanteks luxe white), first version.. that case should have PLENTY of space for pumps and reservoirs).. but somehow the store everytime only manages to squak in these tiny things barely... as I use my harddrive bays and not want these out.. and the "mount to back of case" pumps or rackets are not made or such..

basicly meaning it has to be mounted against the harddrive cage,, in front of the motherboard, thats also an e-atx one.,... with 8 ramslots.. so it has more hight... whgere the puimp is.,. meaning below it.. my gpu.. and above it my 420 radiator with full thickness 140mm fans on it...

so it's kind of a tight fit.. despite having a massively large pc case with space..

I stick to my conclusion.. watercooling : a headache case..

yeah my pc use IS kind of extreme.. with my pc pretty much 24/7 on.. which will ofcourse mean parts get ussed more...
but aircoolers always could take that kind of punishment... waterpumps cannot.