Water cooling is a viable option for keeping the CPU cool, as it removes heat from components and transfers it elsewhere. Traditional CPU air coolers transfer heat from the CPU into a cooler, which can be expensive and not always effective. However, using an integrated pump block combo unit like an AIO can be a cost-effective solution.
A beginner’s water cooling guide provides information on liquid cooling for PCs, including pumps, reservoirs, radiators, and waterblocks. A typical cooling system includes a radiator on the case front or bottom side, fans facing outside to intake air, and a case, tubing, radiators, CPU blocks, GPU blocks, GPU backplates, memory blocks, reservoirs, pumps, and compression.
In general, water cooling is unnecessary unless you plan to overclock your CPU/GPU, which is unlikely on a budget. Budget CPU coolers like Thermalright’s Peerless Assassin 120 SE can compete with the best 240mm and 280mm coolers. To set up your loop and install water blocks, follow the manufacturer’s recommended amount of thermal paste and tighten screws incrementally in a cross pattern to prevent uneven pressures.
📹 Why you shouldn’t water cool your PC
AIO water coolers seem to be all the rage, but we’re here to tell you that big air coolers are where it’s at. Probably. Buy a NH-U12A …
Is liquid cooling better?
Air cooling is a cost-effective and simple option that uses fans to dissipate heat. It is ideal for overclocking and demanding tasks, as it offers superior thermal performance. Liquid cooling, on the other hand, is preferred by hardcore gamers and enthusiasts due to its sleek aesthetics and high thermal load handling. Air cooling is easy to install, requires minimal maintenance, and is suitable for standard usage, making it a reliable and cost-effective solution for your computer.
How do I add water cooling to my CPU?
The process of installing a cooler involves several steps, including selecting the appropriate Intel or AMD processor, determining whether the motherboard’s clips are needed for an AMD socket, installing the mounting bracket, and applying thermal paste. Intel builds do not include clips, so the backplate must be assembled and prepared according to the cooler’s instructions. If the backplate is not already installed, install it. If the cooler comes with multiple Intel and AMD brackets, ensure you use the correct one for your build.
To install the pump, apply thermal paste directly onto the CPU, about the size of a sunflower seed. Squeeze it into the middle of the CPU to ensure the paste is evenly spread across the CPU’s surface by the pump’s pressure. Finally, install the motherboard, radiator, fans, and all cables.
Is PC water cooling worth it?
Liquid cooling is a popular choice for high-performance computing, overclocking, and quiet operation preferences. It provides thermal headroom for high-end CPUs or GPUs that generate heat, allowing optimal performance and preventing thermal throttling. It is ideal for enthusiasts who wish to overclock their components beyond manufacturer’s specifications, allowing for higher stable overclocks and potentially improved performance in CPU and GPU-intensive tasks.
For quiet environments, liquid cooling can be quieter than air cooling due to its use of larger, slower-moving fans and noise-dampening qualities. For compact cases, liquid cooling offers a more flexible solution for thermal management and can enhance the overall look of the PC. However, for the average gamer, the decision to adopt liquid cooling should stem from a genuine need rather than its aesthetic appeal. High-quality air cooling solutions often outweigh the perceived benefits of liquid cooling, providing adequate cooling without additional costs, complexity, and maintenance.
Well-designed air cooling stands out as a practical, efficient, and sufficient choice for most, challenging the notion that liquid cooling is a requisite for peak gaming performance. Informed decision-making, grounded in understanding personal computing needs and preferences, should guide the choice between liquid and air cooling.
Is liquid cooling cheap?
Liquid cooling systems are more expensive than air-cooled ones, and they may require occasional maintenance to ensure proper functioning and longevity. Installation is harder than air cooling, and leaks or incorrect setups can occur. Both water cooling and liquid cooling are used interchangeably to describe cooling systems that use a liquid to dissipate heat from computer components. The choice of cooling system can significantly impact a computer’s overall performance and lifespan. The choice of cooling system can include various coolants, not limited to one specific type of liquid.
Is water cooling PC expensive?
Before building a water-cooled gaming PC, it’s important to understand that it’s more expensive than air cooling and requires a custom hardline liquid cooling system. This requires a computer case with ample space, liquid cooling tubes, fittings, coolant, and reservoirs. The best brands for water cooling parts include PETG plastic, AVADirect, and EK Water Blocks. PETG plastic is the standard choice for liquid-cooled PCs due to its ease of use.
AVADirect offers a variety of materials, including PETG plastic, soft-tubing, copper tubing, and borosilicate glass. EK Water Blocks, a leading manufacturer since 2002, produces water blocks, pumps, radiators, and reservoirs. Both brands offer high-quality products to meet the needs of gaming PC builders.
Can you water cool a CPU?
Both air and liquid CPU coolers absorb heat from the CPU and redistribute it away from the hardware. The heat is distributed to the CPU’s metal lid, the Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS), and transferred to the baseplate of the CPU cooler. The heat is then distributed to a fan, which blows it away from the cooler and the PC. However, the two methods achieve this heat redistribution differently.
Can water damage CPU?
Water exposure can cause severe damage to your computer’s internal components. To handle water damage, use dry ice vapor to locate faulty parts on the motherboard, allowing you to replace only what’s necessary. To protect your data from unexpected accidents like water damage, establish a routine of frequent backups, ensuring important files are preserved and easily recoverable. This will help you diagnose and replace faulty components and save your data.
Can a PC still work if it gets wet?
In the event of a computer becoming wet and a motherboard sustaining damage, a repair may be necessary. Nevertheless, in some cases, a computer may withstand a water spill without sustaining substantial damage. In order to facilitate the drying of the motherboard, it is recommended to follow the instructions provided in the discussion on the subject.
Is water cooling a PC difficult?
Water cooling is a popular method for customizing PC builds, but it can be complex and time-consuming. An AIO water cooler is an affordable, all-in-one kit that simplifies the installation process for less-experienced PC builders. The kit includes a water block, water pump, radiator, tubing, coolant, water dyes, tube fittings, and a bending kit.
Water cooling is better at conducting heat than air, resulting in lower temperatures. It is quieter than air cooling setups, as they don’t rely on noisy fans running at high speeds. Water cooling is also better at handling increased heat generated by overlocking, allowing for higher performance without overheating. Overclockers often consider water cooling as the best choice to combat high temperatures associated with faster clock speeds.
Liquid cooling systems are easier to customize and provide more opportunity to personalize your setup. From an aesthetic perspective, water cooling sounds and looks cool, making it a great choice for those looking to customize their PC build.
Can I use water to cool my PC?
Liquid cooling, or water cooling, is a popular method for cooling down a PC due to its high thermal conductivity. It consists of water blocks, a pump, a radiator, pipes, and a reservoir. The pump pushes the liquid coolant to and from the radiator through the water block attached to the CPU, transferring heat from the component to the cool liquid. There are two main options for water cooling: AIO (all-in-one) liquid cooling and custom loop cooling. AIO coolers come as a single unit, allowing users to customize every aspect of their cooling system for optimal performance and visual appearance.
Liquid cooling offers several benefits, including quieter operation, better performance for gamers, and visually impressive systems. Water cooling can bring down temperatures faster and more efficiently than air cooling, while custom loop cooling allows for a unique system by mixing and matching parts. Both options have their advantages and drawbacks, making it essential to choose the one that best suits your needs.
Is water cooling PC risky?
Leaks are a potential risk when running liquid through electronics, but they may not be as common as people think. In the four years since discovering custom water-cooling, only one leak occurred due to a cracked radiator. The author rushed through the final stages of their project, resulting in an orange pool in the bottom of their case. To avoid leaks, double-check everything, secure fittings but not overtighten them, and secure unused ports with stop fittings.
Additionally, don’t mount the reservoir directly above the motherboard or power supply, as this can cause liquid to pour out and ruin expensive parts. Taking time to double-check everything is the single most important rule when building a water-cooling loop.
📹 How to Watercool your CPU and GPU for under $250
Watercooling is typically a very expensive hobby… but how well does a complete kit including GPU block and a backplate for $239 …
My last build was AIO and the one I’m building now will also be AIO. I had previously rocked air using nothing but Noctua. Honestly, both applications work for me. I prefer AIO for the noise levels being pretty much ambient to non-existent. Sure it’s pricier, but honestly the AIO cooling solutions we have now are pretty nice for the price.
The point you said about heat pipes fundamentally being liquid is spot on. You can absorb much much more heat through phase change than you can through direct convection only. Those little heat pipes can conduct hundreds of watts of heat with only a few degrees drop across their length. And there’s probably as much fin surface area as the radiators.
A friend of mine mounted his desktop components on the wall of his bedroom since he didn’t like the fact of heat generating components being in a small contained space isn’t a good idea. So he had a window unit that kept the room at around 60 degrees and mounted the computer hardware on the wall with L brackets. Worked very well and was also a secondary lighting for the room.
I think in the past liquid cooling in its infancy was better only because air cooling wasn’t using heatpipes or not using heatpipes effectively. But now the use of heatpipes for cpu cooling has matured. Liquid cooling has the advantage of high heat capacity, but heat pipes has the advantage of latent heat of vaporization (of water inside the heatpipes) and conducts heat incredibly fast.
I used to liquid cool… AIOs, then moved on to custom loops with soft tubing, then on to doing builds with rigid PETG tubing, etc… Now I just stick with a Noctua NH-D15. Got sick of permeation on AIOs rendering them useless after a while, doing maintenance on custom loops (disassembling a PETG run is a pain in the ass), etc. A good air cooler with a graphite thermal pad gets you 90% of the way there and you don’t have to do a damn thing to maintain it. No repasting, no nothing. Blast it with some compressed air once in a while if you’re feeling generous. That’s it.
Coming back to this after taking a few physics courses I am realizing that the time it takes for the liquid inside the AIO to move to the plate it actually has time to warm up and because of the way a heat to cold pressure system works it is mixing temperature. Having the fans so close to the pipes it cools faster with less pressure required. Really neat.
If you adjust your parameters, like so: – noise does not matter (doesn’t matter if its 30 or 60 db since you do your job remotely) – cheap price matters (lower price the better) – ambient temperature matters (lower room temperature the better, CPU blowing hot air is a problem) Which one woud be the best? – regular fan, stock cooler (intel) – regular fan w heatsink (midprice) – regular fan w heatsink (noctua) – AIO (corsair) – full scale liquid cooling
it’s because there is a propertie of the pipes which is this, the copper pipes have just a drop of water, and then sealed at almost no pressure, so the water is nearly boiling point, when the pipes get warm the water evaporates and the heat transfer is from the cpu surface to the grills, don’t receber exactly, but something around 6 to 10x faster than the water pump can take the heat out. you can do a very simple experiment to test this: pick some metal(steel, iron some metal with low thermal conductivity) heat it up to 100°C and place the cooling device on top of it, and measure hope much time takes to reach some temperature like 20°C. with this you can derive the output power in terms of heat energy. just apply some thermodynamics into it.
one point that linus is missing that custom watercooling only matters if your CPU/GPU are even overclockable. I don’t see any reason to put watercooling on celeron, or i3 cpu, or even m1 mac. The alternative best option is to put liquid metal (75 W/m.k) if you really want that extra cooling on air cooling.
I had a lot of people who bought prebuilt PC’s tell me that my Noctua NH-D15 was crap and that I did not know what I was doing when I personally picked my parts and built my Custom PC at home. They said I should have gone with an AIO cooler rather than air cooled. However, I have never had any issues with Noctua.
I’ve been using Corsair air’s liquid cooling systems for many years now and 42 C is the highest I have ever seen for my CPU. I also should add live in a hot climate. ie. Queensland Australia I don’t overclock my system though. I also don’t want the weight of the coolers with heat pipes hanging off of my MB.
I made sure to go with air cooling in my new PC. Had water cooling in my last one. There’s no point in liquid cooling since I’m not gonna push my CPU super hard and air cooling is easy to monitor, install and clean. My last water cooler was a royal PITA to install, remove and reinstall. It seems like air cooling is a no brainer unless you will regularly be pushing your CPU to its limits. And I want to be able to just look at my cooler and know it’s working because I can see it’s spinning.
portbality is a big issue with huge sinks.. I remember switching solely for this reason as I didnt want to rip my CPU socket out in case I handled my case somewhat rough. I dont mind some 2-3 degrees more or some db more noise… safety of the pump is not an issue.. I am using AIO for more than a decade now, not once have i had to repair one system pump.. space saving etc is a big plus too.. water isnt the cooling agent, it is a means of transport, dont confuse it.. it is together with the pump the aequivalent of heat pipes.. the cooling agent is the fresh air… just like with the big fellas..
Interesting conclusion, but it conflicts with results from other websites. Would love to see a revisit. I’m a decade long user of Noctua coolers myself, and a big fan of their stuff and support. I’ve ordered an Artic Freezer ii 360 to make up my own mind. If i don’t get on with it I’ll flog it and buy a D15 and call it a day.
I nearly damaged my new Graphics card, my CPU and my Motherboard with the installing/removal process of my 120mm Tower air cooler being extremely difficult. I got VERY lucky nothing got permanently damaged. I bought the AIO for that reason alone. It REALLY cleaned the build up. Even being a cheap but trusty local brand. Yes, I have nightmares of it leaking, but there’s warranty for that
I liked that 1st equation. I had never thought of it. See, CMOS heats up because when a bit is changing state, both MOS transistors go through the conductive region. MOS (FET) transistors work by adding energy to the carriers in the website so they have enough energy to behave like free carriers. How can we add energy to the carriers? Well, one way is through an electric field (hence Field Effect Transistor); the other way is through heat! Therefore, when the CPU is hotter and the state is changing, both transistors will short at a lower resistance level (upper in the v-i curve). Therefore, the cooler the CPU is, the easier it is to keep it cool. Hot CPUs will cause charge carriers (dopants) to migrate through the single crystal structure and will, with time, destroy the structures inside the CPU. Keep calm and keep it cool!
I know this is a couple years old but I’ve been agonizing over options to better cool my tower. Using 2 GTX 1660 TIs (aka, the ugly redheaded stepchildren) the water cooling options are 1) severely limited 2) kind of pricey, 3) enter at your own risk. So, seeing these plausible air cooling options was super-helpful. Thank you!
thanks for providing this article. I had to investigate when I bought a 360mm corsair AIO (H150)correctly oriented setup with exhaust air cooling and found it performed worse than a 30 dollar cooler master budget air cooler, seriously though wtf? Also note that a radiator reduces over all case airflow so it’s probably not helping intake/outake cooling for other components. Quite dissapointed consider the price difference between top tier AIO versus cheapest air cooler and the later won.
Air cooling all the way here. After a Corsair H100 killed my article card and caused a very messy cleanup and salvage process, by springing a radiator leak and showering the electronics in coolant. Got a Noctua NH-D15 after that, and never looked back. Got way better cooling than the H100 provided too. If I had only checked that before I got the AIO. Expensive lesson learned. No more mixing water and electronics for me.
I see a lot of confusion in the comments about different tests finding AIOs have better outcomes. The TL;DR here is: In real world situations, an AIO will beat most air coolers, unless you’re dealing with a really good cooler like the one in the review, and even then it’s basically a draw… but the AIO will still likely win under most normal use case scenarios. Linus gives the reason why in the article, but it’s downplayed… that reason is that most compute workloads aren’t continuous max load. There’s also a problem with their test, which we’ll get into. Under max load overclocked in order to force heat, the motherboard is basically forcing as much voltage into the CPU as it possibly can at the stable overclock, which means MUCH more than under a standard load which radically reduces the efficiency of the chip, and that drives the heat on the silicon WAY up. This is basically flooding both solutions to maximum saturation until they reach equilibrium. At that point, what you’re really testing is the case’s ability to transfer heat out of the chassis, because now all of your components are saturating to that level, and that’s limited to the amount of egress space in the case and the other fan dynamics so now you have a case bottleneck that is influenced by the local environment’s temperature… which is also heating up with the computer. Now you’re probably saying “But there was still a difference between the components, and they were in the same environment.” Yes, but the environment is not the same for each test, it has variance, and your cooling will ALWAYS be judged against the ambient temperature as a baseline.
I bought a Noctua NH-U12P CPU cooler around 2009 (like 13 years ago). Since then I changed to different CPU sockets twice: to LGA1150 and recently to LGA1700. Both times I contacted Noctua customer support for an adapter for those sockets, and both times they sent them free to my home in less than a week. So 13 years later of buying an “expensive” CPU cooler, I still have it in my gaming computer and it works as the first day. Very very quiet too. And also, my computer case has 3 Noctua fans, apart from the CPU cooler: 2 intake and one exhaust. They are completely silent, and have only one working at 300rpm (no noise at all) for office work, and rest working at 0rpm (stopped). When gaming, they start working automatically (the motherboard does it when temperature increases), but they are not even close to their maximum 1200rpm, so even gaming the Noctua fans are quiet!! I have never been so happy with any component in my system as I am with the Noctua fans. And I have been building my own computers for gaming for 28 years now!!
It was probably around 1999 when I built my first water cooled PC. And this was way before all these cool ‘ All in one ‘ type setups like you have in the article. I had a very large reservoir and used a chevy chevette Heater Core and a Danner magneto impeller water pump and Danger Den water block. At the time, water cooling was vastly better than air cooling. It would be somewhere in the Range of 14 years later when Heat Pipe technology was discovered for air coolers that was really the downfall of water cooled. And after 10 years or so of my first water cooled pc and the upkeep of keeping clean the tubes and reservoir and also the water block from residue it became clear (to me) that Air cooling was going to be superior to water cooling and I’ve preached that to all the people that asked me about it since then. The risk of losing a 3 to 4 hundred dollar cpu from a failed pump or possible tube failure was simply not worth it when you can easily see if there is a problem with your cpu fan. I just had to post this because it is funny to me that more than 5 years later the biggest nerd on the internet is finally putting it out there. Without some way to either chill the water using faze cooling or a chill plate and then having to worry about condensation.. Air coolers can simply out perform water coolers. And for the most part they are cheaper and sometimes quieter. I too use Noctua products in all my builds. They know what they are doing. Thanks for the article I feel vindicated to all the people that disagreed with me.
Pfft, don’t listen to Linus. Go out and spend a thousand dollars on a huge peristaltic pump. Set this in your backyard. Then have part of the discharge set to go through a smaller line that leads into the intake line through a venturi. Now you have a jet, peristaltic pump for maximum water flow. Make sure your radiator is in a custom made shed that is powered by a lithium bromide absorption chiller. This will keep your ambient temps at around 4-6 degrees celsius. Make sure to drill the appropriate holes in your home wall, and in the custom shed. Make sure your custom shed has very good insulation. Next step is to buy 1000 gallons of deionized water. Once this is done, you’re almost definitely going to need some reducing fittings to get your pipes down to the right size to fit on your block- which by the way, if you haven’t figured out already, is going to need to be pretty damned strong. Once this is complete, your computer should never ever overheat, and for the low cost of $ 50, 000 this all can be yours.
built a custom watercooling with flexible tubes. Installation was kindof easy, the tricky part was to buy every necessary part and not forgetting anything… the big advantage is, that you can maintain the system many AIO’s are not refillable or extendable and you have to throw it away after some time with quick-lock connectors I can add more things I want to cool, my GPU for example or other PC Systems in a big cooling loop and add more pumps if I want to eliminate the single point of failure and get more water flow
Why do all water coolers advertise “water transfers heat better that air” Yes, it does. But they are both cooled by an air radiator. It is what gets the heat from the CPU pad to the radiator that matters. Water coolers uses water while air coolers use copper. And copper transfers heat better than water. BOOM
I would love to see them do this test, with the AIO’s set up as push pool air flow. The reason why the non aio’s are performing so well in this test compared to the aio’s, is because of the amount of air being pushed through them is so much more per inch of cooling surface. That may sound strange, but that is the case here. In the air coolers you have two fans, one is pushing air in, and the other is pulling air out. the hot surface has more air per inch hitting it, than what you have in these AIO’s. Plus the fans are different as well, so the Noctua fans perform generally better than all others, and because of this we see a huge difference in the amount of cooling per inch of hot surface. So if they used Noctua fans on the Aio’s, and set them up to be push pull as well, you might see the difference between these coolers change compared to what this article finds. With all that said, this article does do a amazing job of showing the out of the box differences between these coolers, as most AIO’s do not come with enough fans too set them up as push pull airflow. The only reason why I bring this up is because it is the big difference between out of the box aios and a lot of air coolers. In the end, even Aio’s are air cooling at the Radiator, which makes even a AIO dependent on the same heat transfer rates as a normal air cooler. I hope this does not sound to confused, as I am about to go to bed. Good luck and good night 🙂
I have an mid tower build using an I7-9700K with a mild Overclock. I used two different Corsair AIO coolers. Neither lasted longer than 18 months before the pump failed and sent my CPU temps skyrocketing (100 degrees C and the CPU throttled back down to 1700 MHZ. Frustrated at the reliability issues, I purchased a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition air cooler. The cooler’s install was easy and fairly quick. Now my CPU runs at 5500 MHZ, idle temps are at 35 degrees C. During gaming with DCS World, a very CPU intensive software program, my temps remain around 55 degrees. The cooler is just as silent as my old Corsair. Best of all, the cooler was only $50 USD on Amazon. I am sticking with a good quality air cooler from now on.
My philosophy has always been to choose the simplest designs that work! My recent purchase of an air cooler for my 5900 was a no-brainer. I am no PC cooling expert, but when you have to concern yourself with Fan Performance + Cooling Fluid Evaporation + Cooling Leakage from RAD and/or tubes + Pump performance, the complexity of AIO cooling solutions led me to stick with the tried, tested and true air cooling method. Fluid and electronics don’t mix! Call me old school, but I can sleep at night without worrying about a defective AIO damaging my PC. The cost of replacing components is one thing, but the cost of lost productivity and stress is another!
Corsair aio’s do really just suck, the control software is a nightmare to just get it working like it should and then when you do you are presented with very loud poor performing fans. Would love to see them tested in a article vs Artic freezer240 or coolermaster aio. Everyone seems so stuck on corsair and they are so far the worst I have ever used.
You know, in all this testing, there hasn’t been any acknowledgement of how good Noctua is. Every Noctua is an air cooler. Not every air cooler (or AIO) is a Noctua. Linus – you once published a article which stated why Noctua hadn’t released a new product in years. You know why? You cannot improve perfection.
I cant say I’m surprised, when I first built my pc it was with a corsair h80, after a couple of years the pump started making noise so I swapped it out for a noctua nh d15 and the performance wasn’t even close. The Noctua was running about 10-15 degrees cooler at idle and at load the gap was even bigger while remaining considerably quieter than the AIO system. Yes water will remove heat better and faster but once that water heats up then it loses performance. Water is only better if you have a constant source of fresh water. When it comes to taking that heat from the cpu and completely removing it from the pc case, air cooling will do it better.
I had a very bad experience with my corsair h80i v2. It lasted me 4 years or less but sometimes i would have to adjust the position or tighten the screws for it to just work…. and then the pumps failed which ruined my day cuz i wanted to get some work done. So the next day i ponied up and got myself a cooler master hyper 212 black edition and installed it. Threw away the aoi like a bad date. I got similar cpu temps, and the pc ran fine as usual. Probably never going back to aoi cuz my pc looks cleaner or less busy. I couldn’t care less about the noise level. I grew up with loud 90s computers, their noise is actually pleasing to hear when booting up. I dunno why i bought aoi in the first place.
But it’s not just about the CPU temps… the additional benefit of exhaust radiator is that it vents the heat out of the case so other components would enjoy a cooler environment. Now, for mobo VRM this is cancelled out due to lack of incidental air flow, but this could be significant for the graphics card. You should also be perusal the graphics card temps and clock speed when both the CPU and GPU are under load.
Special AiOs are the exception. To cool down a 7950X, you actually have to have a solid, big heat transfer mass. Either a very big air cooler – which will surrender in high demand application, a big AiO or an open loop setup. I took the Alphacool Eisbaer Pro Aurora 420. Full copper 420mm radiator and an open-loop tested silent pump with a big reservoir on it. On idle, I usually get 50-51°C. And no game made it reach more than 78,6°C. Funnily though, the installation of “Ubisoft Connect” actually took 2 seconds of 95,1°C – which only Cinebench could do. Not the 3DMark CPU test – which also never exceeded 79°C.
I remember watercooling my AMD K6-III 450 back in the day. used a rubbermaid container for water reservoir, a submersible fountain pump, rubber water lines, and hacksawed off the square part of a threaded PVC cap for the CPU water block (siliconed it to the CPU). If I needed extra cooling I dumped ice cubes in the reservoir! Kept the CPU at room temperature =)
I used to have a Corsair AIO liquid cooler (tried custom liquid cooling back in the days, but it was too much of an hassle). After sending back two to Corsair for failures (on one, the fan got all noisy and the temperatures dropped, the other one, a newer model, had led failing and temperatures also dropping), I had YET ANOTHER failure and they said they wouldn’t repair that one as well because it was already a replacement (great customer service, screw you, Corsair). Therefore, I decided to buy one of those ass huge Noctua fans as a momentary solution until I found another AIO liquid cooler from a different company, and…guess what? The Noctua BLEW OFF MY MIND. I mean, I always saw a big difference between my own temperatures and reviews, and I always thought it was due to room temperature differences (my room is on the warmer side) and other stuff, but nope. The friggin’ Noctua fan dropped something like 15-18C in comparison to the Corsair AIO. While UNDERSPEEDED, on a silent profile. You can barely hear it, except on heavy load during gaming, when it occasionally does a brief burst here and there. I always thought Noctua fanboys were like fanboys of any other hardware product, largely exaggerating it out of enthusiasm, and that the reviews were maybe a bit biased. But nope. They actually UNDERPLAY how good these things are. People at Noctua know their stuff.
even Porsche left the air cooling long time ago…in the car engines there are so much parts that need cooling that the air cooling never makes good job at it…hell even water cooling doesnt desipate the heat equally from the front of the engine and from the back.,..this is why longer 6 inline cylinder engines have this problem to stay much hotter in the back where cylinder 5 and 6 are and in extreme conditions the headgasket can fail there…i have a old BMW and ive seen my friends kill there engines with not perfectly working cooling system and pushing”ém harder then they should…in PC you have just this one small spot to cool and the air is doing the job perfectly.i appreciate this article because i thought all those years that this liquid in the radiator in air coolers was strugling to desipate the heat fast enought…i thought because of the running water in the aio is making the big differernce,but i was wrong..Thanks for proving that wrong and keep up the good work.
This really blew my mind I thought the water cooling would be much better, especially the triple radiator. How much difference can there be between a custom loop and an all in one though, I have custom and personally find it very easy to maintain, once every few years I need to top up the liquid and maybe every second time I do that I will also do a full flush and clear out any gunk that has accumulated. I would love to see a good comparison like this between high end all in ones and custom loops, can a D5 and proper CPU heat block really make that much of a difference, does it all just come down to flow rates?
I like the closed loop AIO coolers I just replaced the AIO cooler on my dads computer because the pump shit out on his (pretty cheap to replace) his computer is an “ibuypower” build and I noticed they sandwiched the radiator with an extra fan to further exhaust the air through it and that seems to actually work excellent! I also stole the fan from the old AIO and mounted to push even a little more airflow and the computer is happier than ever.
There’s two reasons for an AIO: 1) the case (like most cases) has shitty airflow and try as you might it ain’t gonna happen, you need a way to get the hot reliably out of the case, AIOs do that 2) big towers are, well, big. And big well performing air-coolers don’t fit into midi cases or small form factors.
World of Tanks is actually a poopy Pay-to-Win tank game, using made up tank statistics with a massive Russian bias. Although the NA server is a bit nicer to play on than the EU one. That’s also a poopy invite code, there are better ones out there see if this one still works WOTREDDIT2018 Churchill III, 7 Days Premium, 500 gold
I have some knowledge of performance car cooling and intake systems. The best system you could get for a cpu would be fan width sized tube that runs from the front of your pc all the way to the back while passing across and connecting to your cpu. The system would be completely isolated and insulated from the rest of your pc and the air within the pc case. The air passing through the tube wold never interact with the air inside the case box. It would simply pass through the front and directly out the back. There would be fans on both ends creating a jet of air that passes through with the radiator parts on the inside of the tube. This would create the most efficient cooling of any possible design.
Then there’s when the damn pipes leak… and delicate, expensive circuitry has a bath. I still remember the first WC setup I saw at a LAN party in the early 2000s. The guy had a bucket with a submersible pump… and spent the whole time trying to dry his motherboard off and get it working again before the party finished.