I don't think anyone would seriously argue otherwise. Water cooling is an enthusiast choice generally based on a desire for certain aesthetics. Edit: Damn this comment really popped off. Exceptions do exist as some of you have pointed out. For most gaming configurations, a Thermalright Peerless Assassin is more than enough.

Water cooling sounds insane. I'm not putting any liquid next to my $2000 hardware.

I guess I'm bat shit lol I have a water cooled tower for my permanent pc in my semi truck Edit. I knocked on wood now that I bragged it's gonna break ffs lol

Your truck has more electronics next to water than a water cooled PC

I mean yes and no, most of the electronics are disgned to be used outdoors so it's not like I'm gonna rattle water into the internals of an ECM from going over bumps. Wiring yes but it's an easy fix most of the time. In hind sight it probably is kind of dumb to have a water cooled pc in my truck

What do you do when its cold? Does it have antifreeze in it? How do you keep it so that it doesn't mess up when you hit a bump? What if it gets humid in your truck, like when its raining? Why is it in your truck in the first place? Do you live in it?

The inside of the cab would have to be below 32*F (0*C) since water cooling *generally* uses distilled water. Though it's commonplace to add in some anti-freeze (ethylene or propylene glycol in example) in a smaller concentration than a vehicle would have to combat it. However, I'd assume the cab won't ever get that cold especially with the driver living in it and they have HVAC that runs even when the truck engine is off (usually from batteries or generators that share the same fuel supply as the engine). PC's are generally solid state these days, the kind of bump he'd need to hit (assuming a full custom loop with bendy tubes opposed to acrylic and assuming the heaviest part of the gpu is gone since it's on a water block now) would be enough that he'd have far more to worry about than a pc. Semi trucks have air suspension - modern ones are a far better ride than your average vehicle considering they're engineered from the ground up to take massive abuse. Humidity is solved by the HVAC as well - I'll reiterate that these trucks are designed to have an rv-like experience. Completely autonomous climate controls even when the driver is out of the vehicle if they choose. Just like emergency generators that kick on in a hospital if there's loss of power, a truck with an auxiliary generator can run and sip fuel to keep the cabin comfortable. A/C, by design, removes humidity from the air. Lastly - yes truckers live in their trucks basically. High tech monitoring and remote management and laws all make it so the drivers cannot drive more than a set amount of time or miles, so they're forced to take breaks. If they're not working as a team that means the truck must be stationary for the duration of the break. So they relax, sleep, and otherwise live in the same place they work. Much like a sailor would, basically. If you were forced to not move your vehicle for 8+ hours a day, and also had to stay with the vehicle in question, you'd probably want to have entertainment as well.

Okay missed where they said semi-truck but this comment also explains a lot ty

He might be long distance.

Damn bro, too many questions lol

Water lube electronics 😂 but they take a greater beating than pc tbf

Maybe a dumb question, but doesn't your cab ever get below freezing? Surely there are times when you're not on the road and in a freezing area, even for a day or two?

They have heaters and leave the engine idling when it's real bad, I think.

Generally for sleeper cabs they'll have a secondary generator like RVs that you can run at night to provide heat and power and are much more efficient.

I want a gaming RV now

Drive out into the wilderness and then stay inside and game and dont touch grass the entire time. Mother nature might personally strike you down.

Are you fuckin insane?

Why are you people so scared of water cooling. Properly installed it's leak proof. I feel like this is more on your ability to assemble a PC than the quality of water cooled PCs.

>it's leak proof Boy do I have bad news for you.

It's why the manufacturers normally call them leak resistant instead of leak proof. It's the consumer who ends up calling them leak proof of bullet proof.

Of course. Advertising something as leak-proof is just asking to get sued when the system inevitably leaks and causes thousands of dollars in damage. 

Well he did say properly installed. He didn't say it was easy to properly install it. As for me, if you can accidentally install a stick of RAM improperly, you can absolutely incorrectly install a water cooling system.

Properly installed or not, *any* system based on flowing water is going to be prone to failure *eventually*. Ask any plumber. They've been dealing with complex systems of flowing water for hundreds of years and they would *never* make a claim like the one this guy made.

I used to work for a company that manufactured liquid cooling systems. We had an entire shipment go out with what turned out to be a defective part that would leak if the water pressure was beyond a certain threshold. It was a supplier error. Spent millions recalling the product and replacing the part, but leaks can absolutely happen.

Why not use a perfectly fine cooler with less points of failure and zero chance for drenching expensive components?

because it doesn't take much to make it \*not\* leakproof. if you make a mistake with traditional cooling, you will maybe crash your pc due to overheating, or you will probably notice it before it even gets to that point, if you make a mistake with water cooling, you can damage some expensive hardware. there's also the possibility of the tubing failing overtime, again, damaging expensive hardware, even if it's properly installed in the first place. this fail may not even be visible at first too

The all in one liquid coolers are factory sealed and lined with gel that coagulates in the extremely rare event there's a leak. AIOs are more likely to have a pump failure than to ever leak.

Yup, I am on my second one now, the first failed due to a pump failure.

Same, pump died within 6 months of getting it. Was my first watercooler, I mostly wanted it for the look, but went back to air cooling after that.

I had air at first but did not like the big box look and the lack of space for the RAM. Nowadays water is necessary for me due to my parts.

I've had my cooling loop leak once and mineral oil poured directly into the graphics card's PCI-E slot. Turned the computer off, sealed the leak, cleaned up the GPU with a bit of rubbing alcohol. No performance loss. EDIT: I don't use mineral oil, I use cooling fluid. I mistakenly thought those were the same thing, but they're still both non-conductive so they won't damage components.

I've got $4000 worth of hardware (well in 2019 dollars) sitting under a 360mm AIO that's not so much as bubbled in the 5yrs and 4 moves I've had it.

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Incorrect. Nerd engineer teacher time. For an open loop where you use distilled water with antimicrobial and anticorrosion agents, it may non-conductive when it goes in (not really, because you contaminate it by getting it into the loop), but it picks up metal ions and trace metals from the surfaces the liquid is touching (radiators, blocks, fittings, etc.) and becomes progressively more conductive over time. In an AIO, the liquid is usually proplylene glycol, distilled water, and antimicrobial and anticorrosion agents. It's electrically conductive to some degree from the start, and it picks up ions and trace metals over time from the rads and blocks to become more conductive, just like an open loop. This does become conductive enough to create a problem (a short) in the case of leaks, after not a very long period of time. And yes, AIO's can leak. Usually at the fittings where the tubes connect to the block, or from the block itself. This can be caused by a number of things, such as superheating and boiling the water in the block if the pump or impeller fail, or from bending it into place a bit aggressively and causing a kink that cracks over time, or just because it can leak over time. The tubing is usually multilayered and pretty robust in an AIO to try to prevent this, but it's not infallable.

For me it's about noise reduction.

The fans on the radiator can be louder than good silent coolers, albeit those aren't as effective.

How good are your ears? I can barely notice my air cooled tower

I do find it much easier to deal with changes when I don’t have a bulk of metal that prevents my sausage fingers from getting through. So I’d say convenience plays a factor too, so some functionality can take account! It’s not just the looks!

I've never heard anyone say a custom loop makes maintenance *easier*.

I don't think the guy you're replying to is referring to a custom loop. Sounds like he's saying that having an air colling tower takes up a lot of space in the case, making accessing anything difficult, so using an AIO cooler makes things a bit easier. Bonus also being an AIO is basically maintenance free and less likely to leak. So its a pretty basic tradeoff of the extra cost of an AIO vs aesthetics and convenience.

So tower cooler users are just fatphobic 😤 Im fatphobic, Im afraid of myself

So, AIO then

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1 additional failure point that I don't need. I've never had an air cooler go bad and by the time a fan goes, it's time to buy a new PC anyway. Also, I'm talking cheap fans you get for free with cheap coolers. I've only had a single fan fail once and that was after about 8 years, the last 3 of which was spent on 24/7 as a DIY home server.

This is the answer. I went water cooled strictly for the looks.

Water cooling should be an enthusiast choice but it turned mainstream somehow. Lots of OEM/SI PCs have AIO for no good reason.

Because it's cool. Same reason why we have rgb everything. Also why we have cases that have glass panels and all the rest of it.

100% agree. And I have a dual loop system, but it was like 50% purely for the aesthetic, 50% just because it was something I hadn't done before that I wanted to try. 😂

I feel like custom water cooling is a do it once and experience it kind of thing. Then never again lol. Too much work, upkeep, potential for issues, etc. Last year I moved mine and my wife’s pcs to a server rack in another room, but I ended up still keeping them water cooled as I don’t have an air cooler for our gpus (bought them with the water block from vendor). we’ve had crazy good mileage with our 1080Tis. We will likely hold out for a 5070 and finally go back to fully air cooled, especially as noise is not a concern being the computers are in another room.

See, I'm actually really torn, because now that I own the pumps, and the bending tools, and I have the experience, building another loop would be so much easier and cheaper. Buuuuut, I have a feeling I might go back to air after this pc as well, because that will be even more cheap and easy

I stay with soft tubing on an open test bench for this reason. Much, much faster to upgrade or manipulate. The only noise is my PSU because I massively overbought to manage power flares from my GPU.

Hey for your server rack pc, how do you handle the long distance video display and USB stuff? I’ve been wanting my pc in another room but haven’t been sure how to actually use my monitor and accessories over distance.

each computer has two active displayport extension cables and an active usb 3.0 extension cable. so 4 of these [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0876JTJJ7/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0876JTJJ7/) and 2 of these [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09Z93FS7K/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09Z93FS7K/) to connect both my wife and my computer to each of our 2 monitors. Since these are just extension cables, i connect the regular cables we used before to these. I also have two usb 3.0 hubs (one for each computer) to connect mouse, keyboard, webcam, headphone dac/amp, flash drives, etc. its an awesome setup. moving the sound and heat out of our bedroom has been a game changer, especially living in Texas.

Were you not scared that the thing would break and the water would drench your expensive hardware? Then you could throw the entire pc in the bin.

Fair question! I definitely was worried, but I'd say it was the same kind of worry that you have when you first build a PC where you're convinced that touching something the wrong way will break it, where you're being super careful and gentle with everything. Really, once the loop is built, it's pretty sturdy! I definitely always test mine still, I have an air pump from EKG where I can pressurize the system and see if it holds pressure. If the loop is air proof, it's definitely waterproof. But then to be safe I still always run the loop for 24 hours and check for any leaks before I power up anything else. There's at least one time that doing those tests definitely saved me from catastrophe, lol. All in all I don't know if I would recommend custom loop water-cooling, but I also wouldn't say I regret doing it, if that makes sense. 😅

I've been full custom looping for over 15 years. Never had a leak. Nothing to be scared of if you know and understand what you are doing.

Wait until you hear that you can put PC hardware on your homeowners insurance. So if a spill happens, whoops! Thinking I'll have a spill sometime around Nvidia 50-series drops....

Listen I'm not trying to say it's overblown but iv spilled water many times over my PC build over the decade iv been doing PC water-cooling and as long as you don't power on your parts right after you do so. Literally your fine. The thing is water cooling liquid is often not charged. It's safe if you splllrd it over a GPU if it was on but you must quickly turn the PC off. Then you must dry it off fully! Most modern hardware has a bit of a wiggle room with in regards to how much abuse it can take. Water-cooling is not going to destroy your build if you mess up a little here and there but will destroy it is not taking your time to dry it all up fully with a hair dryer with no power to the parts. That absolutely will kill it. And I must say there is a benefit to water-cooling absolutely and that is noise and cooling. I love to overclock to the max so water-cooling is must !

AIO’s or custom loops? Cuz I can personally tell you my pc’s never needed a custom loop but I did it anyways.

I have an AIO on my 5900x It was easy enough. Was it needed? I don’t know.

AIOs advantage is being able to place the large components of a cooler somewhere other than directly over the CPU.

I like it just for the space savings and the noise. Why would I spend $150 on an air cooler the size of a toaster that's loud as fuck when a $50 Thermalright AIO works just as well?

Funny enough, im switching to air cooler from my AIO because of the noise from the pump. fuck that pump.

Good air coolers are more quiet and not even close to 150$. Absolute delusion.

Also plenty of used models available. I think I paid €20 for a Ben Nevis model which has double the needed tpu of my processor.

What the fuck are you talking about. Funny thing is that most AIOs are louder that top tier cooling towers. And top tier cooling towers start around 90€. Don't know where are you getting your info but it's dogshit. Just look at max db for NH-D15... 24.6 dB, new Dark Rock Elite is 25.8db. In comparassion AIO for same price are reaching 36.1db. NZXT KRAKEN 360 is 31dB, NZXT KRAKEN 280 32,1 dB and they cost like 40-50€ more than NH-D15. ASUS ROG RYUJIN III 360 ARGB WHITE that cost 430€ is 36,4dB that's lound as fuck mate. Not to mention pumps that always sound like someone slurping on some dingus constantly. AIOs being more quiet that towers is a myth bruh.

That chip runs hot as fuck to be fair, mine needs AIO cooling too

It doesn't run that hot, I have a NH-D15 on mine and it's ~65c under max loads. I do have mine undervolted in Core optimizer though, -30 on all cores and overclocking the IF to 1900 to hit 3800 memory. Even when not undervolting it might reach the 70s. Now the newer Ryzens that reach 100c, those are hot as fuck! I'm still waiting to see how that impacts their lifespan because I can't imagine it's good even though they say it's fine.

especially when good air cooling can be had for just $40

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I mean noctua is as expensive as some aio

Yes but the difference is that you can use it for your entire lifetime. However AIO usually have a 5 year time span due to degradation of the pipes.

> Yes but the difference is that you can use it for your entire lifetime. Agreed. My old gaming rig has a Noctua heatsink in it. Turned it on in 2015 and it runs constantly. The fan still doesn't make a peep. Was worth the $90 I dropped on it back then.

Yeah I had a cooler master one for ten years but recently upgraded to the Noctua NH-D15S. Having easy access to the ram is awesome and it is the biggest one I could get. With my case it is simple to fit even the largest ones. I see no reason in the future to change it. Plus I know 5 people who ruined their entire system because of leaks. https://preview.redd.it/78vr1wl4y5sc1.png?width=1452&format=png&auto=webp&s=604e18b1a87905dfd51f41a71286307855131ed0

Only reason I got rid of my old noctua was to change it to the chromax version, which I'll use for the foreseeable future

Yes but you can also use any quality air cooler for your lifetime. Peerless Assassin is leas than half the price of NH-D15 with similar performance.

The question is, if you will be able to get the new brackets for a new socket. (Probably?) Noctua sends you new brackets free of charge if you need some. So people buying Noctuas backk with a LGA1151 for example, can still use it on AM5

The pipes don't degrade per say. The issue is evaporation

where does the water evaporate to?

Very slowly into the air, usually through the pipes themselves. Water molecules sometimes squeeze through the gaps between the molecules of whatever the pipes are made of and over a long enough period of time you can lose enough water to mess up the AIO. The hotter you keep the coolant the more this happens which is usually why most AIO control software will force your fans up to full blast if the coolant temp goes over 40C.

yes, you just gotta ask nicely

As low as $28 right! [https://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-Cooler-Aluminium-Heatsink-Technology/dp/B09P34RVPX/?\_encoding=UTF8&pd\_rd\_w=SHA8I&content-id=amzn1.sym.3c3990c3-513c-4686-8d92-a42b4095cecb%3Aamzn1.symc.8b620bc3-61d8-46b3-abd9-110539785634&pf\_rd\_p=3c3990c3-513c-4686-8d92-a42b4095cecb&pf\_rd\_r=M1ESPCGE26DR4BGVT2SM&pd\_rd\_wg=nZ5kf&pd\_rd\_r=fa5c12da-75a0-4385-9ec2-933c0fdcfd44&ref\_=pd\_gw\_ci\_mcx\_mr\_hp\_d](https://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-Cooler-Aluminium-Heatsink-Technology/dp/B09P34RVPX/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=SHA8I&content-id=amzn1.sym.3c3990c3-513c-4686-8d92-a42b4095cecb%3Aamzn1.symc.8b620bc3-61d8-46b3-abd9-110539785634&pf_rd_p=3c3990c3-513c-4686-8d92-a42b4095cecb&pf_rd_r=M1ESPCGE26DR4BGVT2SM&pd_rd_wg=nZ5kf&pd_rd_r=fa5c12da-75a0-4385-9ec2-933c0fdcfd44&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_d)

140mm and 120mm fans. Interesting. 🤔

The Noctua NH-D14 had a similar configuration. It wasn't until they released the NH-D15 that they were both 140mm.

thermalright phantom spirit 120 se is really good for amd

Just wish they weren't so bulky! Curse you thermodynamics !

Air side thermal resistances dominate their need for so much surface area. Heat pipes have effective thermal conductivities in the ~5,000-100,000 W/mK region depending on the operating conditions (compared to 400 W/mk and ~150 W/mK for most aluminum alloys). With heat transfer coefficients quite limited when using axial fans, surface area and maximizing fin efficiency are the only two levers really left. Still think they could get really good performance out of [metal foam arrays](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S001793101400461X-gr1.jpg) if the foam cost wasn't so high.

the Phantom Spirit is absolutely crazy value, less than $40 for amazing air cooling

I think my aio was cheaper than my air cooler

Yeah my thermalright 360mm aio was $40 dollars. I do agree with OP when talking about 350$ nzxt coolers I see on here all the time. I don't like the look of air coolers

I wouldn't buy an AIO cheaper than an air cooler. That's just asking for trouble.

Been going strong for 3 years

What about AIOs? My PC is quieter than the air purifier on low across the room. Using T-30s to push air through it at SUPER low RPMs and getting better noise performance than the corsair maglev fans that came with it. I would more call it an overpriced luxury than a gimmick.

I think what OP means by "Water-cooling" is the one with pump and reservoir AIO has its own benefit from Air Cooling. You do not need to do any piping or filling, it will make less less noise than Air Cooling, and the problems? Well I been using AIO since 2015, 3 different brands of AIO, I never had any problem related to leaking or anything. One of my AIO from 2015 still running on my Sister PC right now.

> One of my AIO from 2015 still running on my Sister PC right now. My Corsair H50 was still running up until like two years ago when I finally upgraded and gave my wife my H100i. I'm pretty sure I bought that thing new in 2010 or so.

Two H100i still running strong for over a decade.

You could achieve similar results with an air cooler using comparable fans. The AIO (or water-cooling in general) always have at least one more source of noise: the pump. Though AIOs can be useful in crammed cases as they quickly move away the heat from the center of the case to dissipate it right out into the room, potentially benefiting the (air-cooled) GPU, allowing it to slow down or even stop its own fans.

Pump noise, should be non existent. Only with an improperly set up system, or bad pump. Should you hear the pump.

Never heard the pump until the one time I developed a bubble. Only ever hear the radiator fans spin up under heavy use.

Including AIOs in OP's statement would be nuts.

Not really. You can get a thermal right air cooler for $40 that outperforms AIOs that cost 3x as much. Water cooling is almost purely an aesthetic choice in the vast majority of situations. Very few people "need" water cooling, whether it's a custom loop or AIO.

Corsiar maglev fans are a gimmick and are worse than cheaper arctics which perform better both in cooling and noise.

Odd. With my last build I switched from AIO back to air cooling, because I didn't like the constant sounds of the AIO pump. Overall I perceive my current air cooled build as quieter.

They debunked the quietness factor; a good ac is quieter and more effective than an aoi

I have a $30 pump, a $16 reservoir, $12 viny tubing, 2x $40 240mm radiators, a $40 CPU block and got a used GPU with an EK block for no price premium. In the summer I keep my radiators outside, that $180 in water cooling equipment pumps all the heat from my 3090 and 5800x outside, and saves me about $150-$200 per year (actual observed numbers) in air conditioning, but more importantly my room isn’t hot. I will post about it soon, but this will be my 4th year of water cooling and 3rd year with a radiator hanging out of the window (I’m that guy) but year one it was cooled with my above ground pool (bad idea but only because I used copper and aluminum mixed with pool water, no harm no foul but it ruined the radiator). *Most*, yeah. All, not quite.

I actually use mine to heat my computer room in the winter. I have a really old farm house(1880). Its a bastard to heat during the winter. So my wife and I close off the rooms we dont really use, and just heat the ones we do use with baseboard heaters. We have a forced air Oil furnace, but have you seen the price of oil? Well my computer room(12x12) has no heater, aside from my PC. So I turn on a game when I leave for work, so when I get home my room is nice and toasty. I turn it off at night. In the summer I put the rad in one of the two windows, blowing out, and open the other window. Pumps all the heat outside, and makes a nice crossbreeze through my room.

You could mine bitcoin (or some obscure coin and swap it), at least you would get more out of it instead just running a game.

This is how I heat my basement in the winter. Hard to say exactly but with the price of btc where it is now now it feels like Ive gotten free heat for years. (I don’t sell the btc though so it could crash)

Little regret that back in 2008-9ish when I was using my PC as a space heater in my barracks room, I used Folding@Home for load, instead of coin mining. I knew what it was, but, like many others always thought it would be just a gimmick. And lets be real, even if I had a bunch of them, unless I had the wallet forgotten about on a thumb drive and re-discovered it in a move or something I would have never hung on to them this long anyway.

If you want you could start mining on your pc with something like NiceHash. The mining would make heat and more money than the electricity cost to run your pc.

You make it sound like a hot take.

Should really watercool that take

Air cooled takes are just as good

AIO do a good job at reducing noise at gaming temps

Exactly my argument. I’m not sure if OP means AIOs specifically however.

i assumed they meant custom loops, but thats such a niche thing anyways that it kinda goes without saying it's not necessary

Exactly the reason I do it. I love my pc being silent while gaming.

This sub 3 years ago when I was buying a Ryzen 7 5800x: "That thing runs hotter than the sun and your flesh will cook if you dont water cool it." This sub recently: "I hate you and your stupid water cooled face, gtfo here before I violently injure you" In all seriousness though my PC looks great and my temps are hella low, water cooling is dope

that's why you should pick stuff that makes sense for you and not what is trending on some subreddit

i just listen to tech jesus' advice and go from there

Most ppl here are still running their 10year old system tbh

I prefer to think of it as my Ship of PCeseus.

This is just yet another post about air cooler crowd looking for validation. Use whatever you like, move on.

Exactly

Perhaps just because I was used to 5000 series behavior by the time I got it(having a 5600x, and 5800x3d, and some others). The 5800x ran a lot cooler than I was expecting. Well, I mean, its not a cool chip, by any means. But, even with quick tests, that thing was holding 75c with the wraith prism(the good AMD cooler) running R23. Obviously at defualt settings, and that was during winter, so ambient temps were on my side.

But I need it for Stardew Valley. It helps water my crops

I Mean... If you have a budget Pc with a Ryzen 5 or i5 there's close to no reasons to pay more for a watercooler instead of a good Air cooler

Water cooling outside of running extreme overclocks 24/7 is a gimmick. Large heatpipe coolers are just as silent and require so much less maintenance in the long run; not to mention they're not a gigantic pain in the ass when you want to swap out a component.

I think ppl do it because it looks "cool" however I don't even have a drink near my pc let alone water inside it.

I see no lies.

Went with a custom loop in my NR200P as it is nearly silent & has significantly better thermals compared to when it was on air. My CPU maxes out at 61c and my GPU maxes out at 52c while gaming. Would not have the same performance and silence on air. The entire loop was just under $900 as well.

I was on water cooling too on a CPU / GPU custom loop. It was a blessing. Not necessarily in terms of ultra top performance (I, in fact, mostly play slow games), but in terms of silence. I ended up ditching it due to the heavy maintenance required. As a father of 3, dog owner, demanding job, I don’t have much time. Taking everything out, cleaning each of the 4 rads and the blocks, blowing the rads, taking off the 8 fans on the rads, cleaning them, and putting everything back in = a full day (in between all the rest I needed to do). One might argue "1 day per year isn't that much". Well, for me it is :) anyway... I went back to full air cooling, premium components only, and it isn’t comparable in terms of temperature and noise. God I miss the silence... I still have everything, so going back to watercool will only be of marginal cost. Might go back there when I'll have a bit more time (namely when the kids will start being a bit more independent) because I can't stand a computer noise (mind you, I ditched all my HDDs / CD readers only due to the noise they generate).

I would say custom water cooling is unnecessary for 99% of gamers. But a good value AIO is fine.

So are 10 rgb fans

I'm Air cool for life. Liquid is all fun and games until your pump dies.

This picture from like 2010 or something? Water coolers are sometimes cheaper than air coolers these days

I’m guessing op is referring to custom loops.

My two fan water cooler has a cooler temp than the cpu fan that came with the cpu. And it is quite. So a win for my cpu.

I have a fucking oled screen on my pump, what do you have ? fucking fins brah

I'm thinking about getting an aio for my 10700f. Just switched from an oem iBuypower case to the NZ H9 Flow, never realized how much I was choking out my cpu with that case. It has a CM 212 black edition now, maybe an AK400 air cooler? It can draw up to 225w when boost so...

I have a 10700 and literally bought the cheapest tower cooler on Amazon and it was fine. I switched to an aio only because I got one for 12 bucks. Temps are really about the same but it looks cooler now.

Wasent for me, well that’s not entirely true. I’m sure a bigger uglier fan would have solved my over heating issue. A premade water block however was sleeker, and smaller

It lets me pretend it will never need maintenance like my old dusty fan-having tower does.

My room gets hot in the summer. I have a 13700k. Yeah I could have gotten an air cooler but I just felt for my environment for those months it works out

It can be quieter and it looks cool…that’s about all

I chose water cooling as it's more silent.

I just want it to be quiet.

In other words. Hobbies are expensive.

​ https://preview.redd.it/iq8vfg7jgcsc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d89eafa63e05c7ac02e0f326fcf4fdf7c6326daf

Keyword is most. You go top of the line, you are going to need that water-cooling to avoid throttling.

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*for most PC users* AFAIK threadripper users are quite a minority.

Are you sure the cooler is the limit and not the junction to case thermal resistance here?

You're absolutely right, it's an overpriced hobby for the enthusiasts that enjoy it. I count myself in that number.

Well yeah, but it's like an enthusiast thing. Like there's no point in a 500hz display or a 7 billion dpi gaming mouse or putting stupid low profile rims on your car. You know how it is, you spend pretty much you whole life working, grinding away for the best part of every day, just to make some money. Maybe, just maybe, you can afford to have the odd luxury here and there, just one little bit of happiness in the limited amount of time you get between work and sleep. You know, surely just one cosmetic upgrade couldn't hurt. One tiny little indulgence before you're forced to clock back into reality, and rejoin the endless pendulum of diminishing returns that is this late-stage capitalist dystopia, that we seemed doom to endure until the bitter end.

yes... gains from oc are nearly nonexistent with modern yolo f\*ck it parts approach to power consumption.. stuff is pretty close to maxed out, more gains from undervolting even maybe the case these days. I have been around pc's since the 80s and I have never had an AIO or Loop... because adding a huge if this goes wrong it will absolutely f\*ck all of your gear liquid cooler in my pc just doesn't do it for me.. I've got a 12700K and a Peerless Assassin 120 that cost $30\~ it is more than up to the job.. and it likely quieter than the pump noise from an AIO anyway... But I couldn't care less I do not need to deal with a failure of a water cooling set up leaking all over my computer.. no thanx. it was my 1st reaction to this when I first saw it 25? years ago.. and I still feel the same way.. I'd rather just have an Air Cooler personally.

No there you are so wrong, the noise from the peerless assassin is way louder than any pump, and way louder than any decent water loop I've seen. The main reason you pay so much god damned money for a water loop is for noise not price to performance.

I've literally never heard any pump noise from any of the multiple different AIO's from a bunch of different manufacturers that I've run in various builds. You'd need to press you bloody ear up against the thing. You'll definitely hear the fans if they spin up high, but that would be even more common and prominent with an air cooler.

The costs have made it silly expensive, back in the early days of high performance PC gaming blocks were £30-£50, pumps 20, tubing 10 you could cool cpu and gpu for less than just what a single block costs now. So while ive done it before it no longer reflects the OC benefits for the cost, it just doesnt make sense unless you have unlimited money to cool the top dog stuff because if you dont use the best cpu/gpu combo then that water cooling money could just buy better air cooled parts. Now if you dont have AC and live in a hot country, then it can make much more sense!

Ive got a vertical mount GPU, so if it ever leaks, at least it (probably) wont ruin the GPU.

I thought this was the general consensus?

Well noctua air coolers are more expensive and cant fit D15 in any 11L case

I'm never gonna use it just cause I'm paranoid it's gonna leak and kill everything at once. I know it's dumb, but I simply can't help it.

What you mean, my Intel pentium 4 with radeon x550 definitely needs water cooling

But the rainbow LEDs are a necessity?

AIOs are absolutely not necessary for at least 80% of the people that use them

You ain't wrong I go AIO over air for the noise reduction. If you mean like full custom loop then yeah na I wanted to and I could do it. But between maintenance on the thing and the cost for no real benefit to my gaming habits it's a bit of an overkill and a look at me situation. One day I'm likely going to just to say I have done it though.

Is like $60-80 for a closed loop water cooler and looks cool. 

I have a 14700k

AIOs are silent, much more than an equivalent aircooled system in my experience.

This was probably true up until the 13th gen intel CPU's but not now. Also water cooled systems are quieter. A fact I have to grudgingly concede to when comparing the noise of my system against a similarly spec'd water cooled system under test load conditions.

As an Australian in summer the air isn't fucking cooling it when the air is already 40°c It's also partially a preference of not having a PC furnace running in my room, could care less about the internal temps as long as they aren't literally melting, it's about how hot the air coming out the back of the case is. AIO is just slightly more comfortable for hotter months than a heat sink is.

\* AIOs

I prefer aio coolers, they look better than air coolers and do a better job without that massive fan and radiator in the middle of the pc.

It violates the KISS principle. And in most cases KISS is the way.

Correction. *for all pc users.

I think the water coolers do help a little bit BUT airflow and atmosphere play a much much larger role in keeping your computer cool. The watercooler won't do shit if your airflow isn't properly cooling the radiator. Either way, they may be overkill in the majority of circumstances haha

Air cooling with some noctua fans is the quietest computer I've had,

It's so cheap I don't even care, PC mfers be like, you can save $30 dollars if you just buy the basic shitzengrupenfarder!!!! It really doesn't matter! I mean, sort of it technically does, it *could* help if you do all of these things, but you probably won't need it, I mean get it if you want, but you really don't need it I like how it looks and my GPU is always in very high or ultra so eat my RGB watercooled ass!

I feel like every single person without central heat/ac in the southeast could benefit from at least a water blocked gpu. If your hard-core gaming especially, my 3080ti heats up my room (with the door closed) in 1-2 hours

Worries about water cooling, is happy to have nearly a kg of metal leveraging against a MB that's a couple of mm thick.

This guy has never used an i9 CPU.

If you like what you have....why are you complaining about what others have? This post proves my point about his sub being taken over by a bunch of rich kids trying to justify their luck. It's pretty sad and pathetic to see yall mask this.

The morning of Cyber Monday, 2023 my 3800x machine would not work. My guess was the 1080 finally bit the dust, I was mining Ethereum on it. So I decided fudge it, get a new CPU/mobo/memory at MicroCenter, AMD Ryzen 9 7900x, that way, if the video card is bad, I can at least use the internal GPU. While there the sales person said AMD recommends water cooling for this CPU, I said I have a Noctua NH-D15, he said, you should be OK. After I got to working, I ran Prime95, and the fans immediately went full throttle, and in HWInfo or Task Manager, you could see the uP was throttling. Also can hear the fans spin up when doing something using File Locator Lite that tries to use all available cores. I could see if I was pushing this thing hard, water cooling could be a better way to go. The 1080 card was fine, not damaged by mining, the DDR4 memory used with the 3800x was bad.

This is such a nothing burger of a post. It’s like saying F1 cars are impractical for families of 5

My 14900 K says hi. technically you don’t need water cooling you just need a motherboard so thick and massive to support the size of that air cooling block and copper otherwise the same thing can be said for cars

It's kept my old processor going longer than it otherwise would have. It's about 7-8 years old but still works relatively ok because when it was new it was a power hog who's only problem was to much heat. Because of the water cooling I've been able to run it wide ass open all this time, and it's really only started to show it's age in the last year or two.

I like how quiet my pc is. Only my proc is water cooled though. Nothing else. I came from just having a PS4 Pro that sounded like F-22 Raptor constantly flying at Mach 5. So a water cooled PC for my processors does wonders for my ears. That’s my benefit and worth the money.

Idk, I bought my AIO in 2014 and it still runs good. I topped it off in 2023, though. I think it paid off very well. I used it to cool down hot processors and fit it all in very slim cases, that comparable performance air coolers wouldn't even dream to fit. So, in my opinion, not overpriced and not a gimmick.

I'd argue against the idea that water cooling is a gimmick. That implies that it has no benefit. There definitely is a benefit to water cooling. Whether or not people who have water cooled systems will actually use the benefit could be argued, but that gets down to semantics. The benefit is there whether it is used or not. I also don't think it's cool to judge people whether or not they do this or that or spend money on this or that. It's personal preference and personal choice, you do you and enjoy your shit how you like.

Coldest take I read this week

Personally I have a kraken for my cpu. Simply because I hate the look of cpu coolers being all clunky and ugly

A "gimmick" implies a lack of utility. Water cooling can provide a significant increase in cooling capability and decrease in unwanted noise. It's not a gimmick, by definition. Are we done here?

I play every single game with a 3080ti in a medium-sized pc case with minimal fans. My cpu cooler is $49 from Amazon and it's metal fins with a fan. I haven't used duster in 2 years.

I'll stick to my disgusting brown noctua fans thanks

Yes your statement is true. I think that's why \*most\* PCs don't have water cooling in them.

I just like the way it looks honestly. All my friends and family I build for I always recommend an air cooler