Read more.Quote:
Will you stick with what you know, or could a change be in the offing?
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Read more.Quote:
Will you stick with what you know, or could a change be in the offing?
Air. CPUs are more thermally efficient than ever, air coolers air more reliable (less to go wrong,) generally cheaper and a decent one is quieter than water-cooling with fans on the rad + pump noise.
And theres a more pronounced heat lag in water cooled systems, by this i mean it stays hotter for longer after returning to idle, though this may have changed since i read about it a few years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by spacein_vader
Air, but then I've never understood the attraction of AIO's.
Really lolQuote:
Originally Posted by spacein_vader
Air without a doubt, there will never be water inside my PC.
Air coolers don't leak...
Less to go wrong for air cooling and similar results, so that is my preference.
My current build is my first water cooled machine and I'm very happy as its much quieter than my old build.
Honestly, although I do like the simplicity of air I'll likely be going AIO again when I upgrade.
It's not really for the cooling the cpu, although imo it's no worse than one of the huge air coolers, it's more about heat within the case, case air flow and just managing the weight of a huge air cooler. I stick my AIO's at the top of my case so heat is expelled straight out of the case and the rad is mounted to the case so all the heavy cooling parts are securely mounted.
With some of the heavy air coolers I'm more concerned they'll damage the motherboard due to flex etc and for the sake of a few degrees well I'll stick with AIO (actually I'd go fully watercooled if I could be bothered lol)
Which part of it do you doubt?Quote:
Originally Posted by Namor
Over a decade of liquid cooling and never seen a single leak, or heard a single pump, and NONE of the radiator fans can be heard over the rest of the system, ever. Air cooling of high end processors will NEVER be as quiet as a properly setup liquid cooled machine. I can hear everything ELSE in my system, but my CPU cooling is absolutely as close to silent as a barely spinning fan can be, and this is at 5Ghz and full load across all cores on a 7700K, a known heat monster. Near silence. Beat that air coolers. Literally, when the GPU fans turns off, the ONLY sound coming from my tower is a 80mm case fan spinning at such low RPMs that unless your ear is pressed to the tower, you cannot hear it. Silence is golden.
Oh yeah, radiators don't make noise, in response to the ignorant comment above. Crappy quality pumps CAN make noise, but radiators have no moving parts, it's literally a hollow hunk of metal. Pump noise is non-existent on quality pumps, and radiators make no noise. Fans attached to the radiator spin slower than air cooled heatsinks, so those are quieter as well. And unlike aircoolers can actually run much slower the more of them you add. A 360mm radiator with 3 fans WILL be quieter than a dual fan heatsink on a high end processor. And cool as well or better.
For the past 15 years or so i have only used H2O for cooling, some times just the CPU other times also GFX + RAM - N bridge - PWM.
Never had a build leak after build, or spring a leak later down the road.
Mind you a good heat pipe cooler are also fine, but just too easy and i like to be special, and its still a few that build a PC with H2O cooling.
The case i also have to do something about in regard to cooling performance, maybe not a lot but i always have to put my own twist on that too.
I will be sticking with custom watercooling. With my windowsill mounted radiators air cooling is never going to get anywhere near as low as my CPU and GPU temps. I have been watercooling for over 14 years and in that time have only had two leaks. The first was my very first custom loop and my own fault as I screwed a barb in too tightly to a acrylic res and split it. I noticed the leak straight away as I was filling and replaced the res. The second was a O-ring failure on a 4 month old EK waterblock that they tried blaming me for. It was only the occassional drip and I managed to find the correct O ring sizes and replaced them all myself with no thanks to EK. Needless to say I will never touch a EK product again after their abysmal support, or lack of!!
Air. I'll definitely be spending more money on the CPU cooler in my next build, whatever gives the best "bang for the buck" in regards to cooling and not bad for noise either. My current main PC isn't exactly whisper quiet (but it's not like being next to a Spitfire before takeoff) so I'm likely to have a higher tolerance to noise than some folks. Nothing against the idea of water cooling as such, just for me a good quality air cooler would be a simpler solution.
Air , you can't go wrong with noctua
My recent SFF build is virtually silent, because the case came with a 200 mm fan and I don't overclock anything. Thinking about getting a smaller case next time, hopefully years away, but I hope I'll be able to get a big slow fan in that, too.