When Is Liquid Cooling necessary In PC Builds?

[☢No Flex]

Nure if I should spend the $80 on liquid cooling or just go with a good fan?

[RevolutionaryOptimism]

Certain GPUs run really hot. Liquid cooling is necessary when you plan on doing serious overclocking or have a very tight build (small case) Usually it's unnecessary. It certainly can look awesome though!

[Stymie]

Most cases it's unnecessary. Usually it's used for serious overclocking and looks. Other reasons is for the less noise. And also takes up less space compare to the large high performance air coolers.

[_I_]

212evo can match a $80 liquid cpu cooling kit

[Chocolate]

There's air cooling, CLC, and custom liquid cooling.

Air cooling is efficient, simple, and cheap.

CLC is good if you're carrying your PC around and for looks. But only $100+ CLC's outperform very good air coolers.

Custom liquid cooling is the best but very pricey and complicated.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

212evo can match a $80 liquid cpu cooling kit

On idle and normal yeah. But it's not going to match the heavy load or OC that an $80 water cooler or something like a Noctua. Some test have the 212 being as much as 20 degrees C warmer on OC/heavy load compared to expensive air coolers and liquid coolers.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Level 30 Grand Weeaboo Wizard:

Custom liquid cooling is the best but very pricey and complicated.

I prefer air coolers because when liquid cooling malfunctions, it tends to take a number of other parts with it. Air coolers not so much.

[Stymie]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 100% Recycled Awesome:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Level 30 Grand Weeaboo Wizard:

Custom liquid cooling is the best but very pricey and complicated.

I prefer air coolers because when liquid cooling malfunctions, it tends to take a number of other parts with it. Air coolers not so much.

Yeah that's the main pro for air cooler, is that there is zero risk and are much more reliable on a long term.

[bmac1191]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 100% Recycled Awesome:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Level 30 Grand Weeaboo Wizard:

Custom liquid cooling is the best but very pricey and complicated.

I prefer air coolers because when liquid cooling malfunctions, it tends to take a number of other parts with it. Air coolers not so much.

This is not true at all.. maybe 10 years ago.. todays components have fail safes in place. A cpu will shut down before over-heating. The only way you can kill a component these days is by some type of physical volt mod. Ask my 780tis that I fed 1.6v underwater ;)

[bmac1191]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Stymie™:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 100% Recycled Awesome:

I prefer air coolers because when liquid cooling malfunctions, it tends to take a number of other parts with it. Air coolers not so much.

Yeah that's the main pro for air cooler, is that there is zero risk and are much more reliable on a long term.

You do understand that an air cooler use a fan right? Just like how a custom liquid cooling build uses fans on the radiators....

The only additional hardware you're adding that may fail is the water pump. Pumps are made to run for years non-stop.

[Wampum Biskit]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 100% Recycled Awesome:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Level 30 Grand Weeaboo Wizard:

Custom liquid cooling is the best but very pricey and complicated.

I prefer air coolers because when liquid cooling malfunctions, it tends to take a number of other parts with it. Air coolers not so much.

i think he's talking more about a leak , however even that nowadays is a moot point since any decent water cooling uses non conductive coolant... , it'll be messy yes , but that's it.

[Rove]

Actually I have to agree that a quality air cooler (not all are quality or well enough designed) can match a liquid cooler. It's simply a question of having enough copper heatpipes and a proper design. A heatpipe is basically passive liquid cooling, it's filled with liquid coolant that evaporates (cooling the CPU) and then condenses in the cooler parts of the pipe where the cooling fins are. Then a special material lining the edges of the pipe "wicks" it back down to the CPU just like wax on a candle wick or oil on a lamp wick or water through cloth. So as long as you get enough heatpipes that have good enough coolant with fast enough wicking and great cooling for condensing then you should be able to keep just as cool as a liquid cooler I think. However some liquid coolers do use water or coolant that has actually been chilled, a aircooler can't compete with that.

Still like a said a good aircooler is basically a liquid cooler just with heat as the pump so it doesn't need extra moving parts, just the fan(s). Though I suppose a liquid cooler might keep lower temps at moderate load. At heavy load I think they'd start to be equal as all that heat would start to work the heatpipes as well as possible while it would not help the liquid cooler at all. Not all aircoolers are good. However liquid cooling usually starts at the same price as good aircooling, $40 to $70.You can sometimes get a deal on a good aircooler for cheaper.

[Wampum Biskit]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

212evo can match a $80 liquid cpu cooling kit

and again... you bring mis-information to the table...

idle's and 50% loads on stock speeds maybe... anything decently over clocked and/or running at full loads and the watercooler will be lots cooler...

maybe it will match up against an H60 or something similar of that size but the 212 is NO match for anything with a 240mm radiator or a double 80mm radiator

[Wampum Biskit]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Rove:

Actually I have to agree that a quality air cooler (not all are quality or well enough designed) can match a liquid cooler. It's simply a question of having enough copper heatpipes and a proper design. A heatpipe is basically passive liquid cooling, it's filled with liquid coolant that evaporates (cooling the CPU) and then condenses in the cooler parts of the pipe where the cooling fins are. Then a special material lining the edges of the pipe "wicks" it back down to the CPU just like wax on a candle wick or oil on a lamp wick or water through cloth. So as long as you get enough heatpipes that have good enough coolant with fast enough wicking and great cooling for condensing then you should be able to keep just as cool as a liquid cooler I think.

Still like a said a good aircooler is basically a liquid cooler just with heat as the pump so it doesn't need extra moving parts, just the fan(s). Though I suppose a liquid cooler might keep lower temps at moderate load. At heavy load I think they'd start to be equal as all that heat would start to work the heatpipes as well as possible while it would not help the liquid cooler at all. Not all aircoolers are good. However liquid cooling usually starts at the same price as good aircooling, $40 to $50.You can sometimes get a deal on a good aircooler for cheaper.

Not entirely rove , a radiator has far more surface area to dissipate any heat in the liquid that flows thru it then an air cooler with heat pipes has , also a pump can move more liquid then a heat pipe can as it uses forced flow vs natural flow..

there for the more demanding the cooling system get's the better the watercooling get's as it has an increased cooling capacity due to the increased surface area AND forced flow.

another point is that MOST watercooling blocks (even the kits) have pure copper bottom inside the block it has about 40-60 small copper fins were the water gets forced thru...again...more surface area to dissipate heat...

[_I_]

if you want to compre an $80 air cooler to $80 closed loop
the nh-d14 will easily beat the h80

212evo is the best budget air cooler under $30
and it is capable of keeping 125w cpus cool while overclocked

[Rove]

Right but a good aircooler with 6 to 8heatpipes (or equivalent such as the Zalman 9900 MAX series which have 3 heatpipes that loop down to touch base 6 times as well as cooper cooling fins, may actually be better than 6 conventional tower style pipes) is going to match a 120mm entry level watercooler at about the same price. Maybe even a expensive 120mm depending on quality of the aircooler.

A ultra-quality $100+ monster aircooler with like 12-16 heatpipes (or equivalent) and at least 2 120~ mm cooling towers (radiators) is probably going to match most or all 240mm watercoolers if it's been well designed. However I simply can't find such a monster on the market. So I have to agree with you that due to lack of availability and designs the 240mm and above watercoolers take the top bracket for commercially available cooling.

I still do think that a custom aircooler with a proper design could take them on in equal competition though. However it'd be beastly heavy which may be why no one makes one. It might stress out the motherboard pretty bad unless it was lying flat.

Also that bit about forced flow is true, it can force through more liquid. The question then becomes does it actually force through more? Also does that liquid absorb and carry heat as well as the heatpipes & evaporative coolant? Evaporation can be powerful cooling, just pour some alcohol on your skin and feel the cool, it evaporates faster than water thus feels colder. Same thing with butane or something but careful not to frostburn yourself cause this stuff can actually freeze you by evaporation due to it having been under pressure.

The coolants in heatpipes have been designed for the coldest evaporation & best wicking.

@ OP: Liquid Cooling (or a performance aircooler) is only really needed when overclocking your CPU. Otherwise the free stock cooler will be fine. You also need 3rd party cooling if your CPU did not come with a stock cooler, though most do some do not.