Your cooling setup and why did you choose/go that route?

[Shrek]

I went custom water, because in 40C ambients PC go whirrrrr every summer.

'Only mad dogs and Englishmen' (I'm originally from England, so the comment is more aimed at myself than anyone else).

It can also reach 40°C ambient out here but my concern is more for the capacitors than the chips, so I stuck with air cooling and hardened the power supply by replacing the capacitors.

 

[dgianstefani]

Boutique custom liquid cooling. Nanite suspension XTR coolant, pure copper loop, Optimus fittings. For maximum performance and longevity in a small form factor.

 

[de.das.dude]

240mm AIO.

I had Hyper 212 EVO for years... sadly air coolers are only that good when your room itself is 30C (or even 35C in summers)
Plus they scream like a banshee.

with my work from home workload (VM i.e. no pressure) and gaming (very impulsive bursts), AIO is a great option for me. 240mm is overkill for my 5600 at stock, so it stays quiet most of the time.

I still have plenty of ventiallation in the case for the GPU which is still air driven.

 

[P4-630]

sadly air coolers are only that good when your room itself is 30C (or even 35C in summers)
Plus they scream like a banshee.

Then you never tried the better air coolers, they mostly come with good quiet fans.
Noctua, BeQuiet, Thermalright.

 

[DR4G00N]

I've been running a CPU+GPU loop with 360+240x25mm rads and a D5 pump for a long while. No particular reason behind it, just wanted to do a custom loop because it was interesting.
Plus it cools better than any air cooler could since you can just add more rads for more surface area.

 

[GerKNG]

Air Cooling.
had one dead AIO and one that leaked, their performance is not that great compared to even a 120mm U12A and they always come with bloatware.

My 12700k (5.0/4.0/4.3 1.33V 230W in R23) runs even a 30 minute loop with 30°C Ambient on the NH U12A.

 

[freeagent]

Then you never tried the better air coolers, they mostly come with good quiet fans.
Noctua, BeQuiet, Thermalright.

It’s nice not having to back off of an oc just because the ambient went up a few c. I also have a 212 evo and it is really not good at all.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

360 AIO and 280 AIO I tend to stick with corsair I still have a 110 GT running in a buddies system I bought in 2013 ish going strong..... When I do go air cooling I tend to stick with Noctua U12A/D15. I prefer aio due to the form factor.

I will say Corsair is obnoxious to get a good mount on AM4 the hooks are just stupid and they should come up with a dedicated mount.... Typically takes me 2-3 mounts to get an ideal one. With intel you can do it with your eyes closed and get a perfect mount every time.

 

[Vario]

I have an air cooled system because I just want the machine to run reliably and cool without any further hassle.

 

[freeagent]

Someone really likes TY-143’s

 

[Vario]

Someone really likes TY-143’s

They are okay. I wanted 140mm fan that have a dual ball bearing because I am running them horizontal. These work well horizontally. The newer ones aren't as good as the old ones, they did some kind of redesign, the motor doesn't run as nice of a speed range. I have two older TY143 on the heat sink and the rest are the newer TY143 mounted on the case.

To be honest for dual ball bearing high airflow fans with good low idle speed, I think the Yate Loon D14BH12 power supply fan is a better fan. I had a couple I was running for many years and they worked great, so when I bought this case, I bought a bunch more from China and after waiting quite a number of months, they showed up and didn't even turn on. I didn't want to repeat that so I just bought more TY143.

The TY143 shape works well with the O11 Air Mini's 120mm fan mounts, it seems to really fill the intake space well so it worked out.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I found that your case can make a bigger difference in your overall temps if you're using air cooling regardless of the number of fans you have installed.

I had a CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 - loved the look of the case, but the case had piss poor cooling with air even though it was a full tower. I tried multiple air coolers for the CPU and none of them really made any difference. I eventually went with a Corsair H50 AIO and it dropped the CPU temps by a good 4-5C. Air cooling sucked in this tower.

I moved to a Fractal Design Arc XL - much more open and I even went the route of mounting the HDDs in the spare 5.25" bays and completely removing the HDD cages to improve air flow. Having multiple front and bottom intake fans with multiple top and rear exhaust fans, temps were a bit lower than the Cosmos 1000 case, but still higher than the case I'm using now.

I moved to the CM HAF XB Evo for two reasons. 1 - the MB mounts parallel to the ground so the GPU isn't hanging (had horrible GPU sag in my last case) and 2 - with how the MB sits, everything is just exhausting hot air up and not into other components. GPU temps went down by 4-5 degrees overall and all I was using was a total of 4 fans on the case. 2 exhaust fans (1 - 120mm on the rear and 1 - 200mm on top) and 2 fans for intake (was for the AIO radiator mounted on the front and they were pushing cool air into the radiator).

The HAF XB Evo isn't the prettiest case to look at, but then again, I'm not looking at it. The case, however, has better cooling over the other couple of full towers I used to use.

 

[Vario]

I found that your case can make a bigger difference in your overall temps if you're using air cooling regardless of the number of fans you have installed.

I had a CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 - loved the look of the case, but the case had piss poor cooling with air even though it was a full tower. I tried multiple air coolers for the CPU and none of them really made any difference. I eventually went with a Corsair H50 AIO and it dropped the CPU temps by a good 4-5C. Air cooling sucked in this tower.

I moved to a Fractal Design Arc XL - much more open and I even went the route of mounting the HDDs in the spare 5.25" bays and completely removing the HDD cages to improve air flow. Having multiple front and bottom intake fans with multiple top and rear exhaust fans, temps were a bit lower than the Cosmos 1000 case, but still higher than the case I'm using now.

I moved to the CM HAF XB Evo for two reasons. 1 - the MB mounts parallel to the ground so the GPU isn't hanging (had horrible GPU sag in my last case) and 2 - with how the MB sits, everything is just exhausting hot air up and not into other components. GPU temps went down by 4-5 degrees overall and all I was using was a total of 4 fans on the case. 2 exhaust fans (1 - 120mm on the rear and 1 - 200mm on top) and 2 fans for intake (was for the AIO radiator mounted on the front and they were pushing cool air into the radiator).

The HAF XB Evo isn't the prettiest case to look at, but then again, I'm not looking at it. The case, however, has better cooling over the other couple of full towers I used to use.

I had a Cosmos 1000 as well, the only way I had good temperatures was I bought a 120mm shroud that replaced 3 of the external drive bays and that provided a nice blast of air to the CPU heatsink.

My O11 Air Mini is the best air cooled case I've had, its like a classier HAF, just a lot of mesh. I am glad companies are moving back to mesh designs.

 

[ShiBDiB]

I went AIO on my CPU because it's quieter and to get comparable temps with air I'd have to use some monstrosity like you're running. I think we're nearing the end of air cooled aftermarket coolers imo, they've been at a stage of being obnoxiously large for awhile now and AIO's have come a long way. (With custom loops obviously being the peak option, and stock air coolers being the entry)

GPU is stock, it's quiet enough under load and I don't feel like dealing with a custom loop.

 

[The red spirit]

Downdraft Scythe Choten. It's good enough for me and helps with VRM cooling too. Pretty cool concept. Makes me which that downdraft high performance coolers were more common. I used to have Mugen 4 PCGH in my main machine and I can't fault it for performance or acoustics, but it was so huge that installing it was always a pain and blood. It's not exactly sharp as much as those fins are just really thin and tend to cut. I'm done with it, because it tends to cover RAM, VRMs, EPS connector, some motherboard screws and in my previous case (cooler Master Knight K280) it barely fit. It was literally few millimeters away from not fitting. I think Scythe should just make all copper Choten or some low form factor equivalent cooler.

 

[Tomgang]

It doesn't make your system faster anyway...

I rather have a quiet system without RGB fans than other way around.

It´s not so much a problem as i might let it out to be. As i have many fans in the case, that allows me to run the case fans at lower RPM and stil have a good airflow.

Good to read peoples stories and why the choises of cooling. I think as a side thing of this. This can might even help some people to deside what to go after and be inspired by others setup. So image of systems cooling is more than welcome to.

In fact i will post more of my own system here of my curent system and my old X58 that i dit a few exsperiment with about cooling.

First my old X58 system. The zip ties o nthe CPU cooler are there to lift the cpu cooler bit so it dosent hit the fans on the chipsæt else it would made a nasty noise. Well Ghetto mode, but it worked well.

My current system. There mixed image from now and from when i build it. Hence why there are two different GPU´s, as i dit first manage to get my RTX 3080 later after building my system. But gives a more detailed look of my cooling setup.

So there you have it. More details of my cooling setup.

 

[ThrashZone]

all my blocks are damaged from vinegar, it totally can scuff them up. Sure you can clean them again, but vinegar totally can mess with the finish.

Hi,
You're no stranger to posting images so lets see what you call damaged
Pits could also be thermal grizzly damage

 

[Shrek]

Are people using vinegar as a bactericide?

 

[ThrashZone]

Are people using vinegar as a bactericide?

Hi,
I've never personally used it for anything not even salad

But most I've read have used a little bit mixed with distilled water to clean radiators.

 

[xu^]

Deepcool AS500 + with 6 x ST120 lian li fans

Dont trust water cooling and much less to go wrong with a fan.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Are people using vinegar as a bactericide?

Yes, and it only takes like 3-5 drops for 32floz.

 

[claes]

I used to mess around with car radiators and aquarium pumps, then had a custom loop for awhile, but I’ve settled on air cooling. For awhile I had two AIOs modded on to a 470 SLI setup, and later had a MK-26, but these days it’s just a D15 and the biggest aftermarket heatsinks I can find.

Mostly I’m posting now because I feel like a lot of these airflow builds posted here seem poorly optimized? For example, @Tomgang, couldn’t you get better temps by flipping the side panel exhausts to intake and removing the top-front exhaust? It seems like maybe you’re pulling all the cool air provided by your intakes out before it hits your components.

I only say this because of all of the comments about air being noisy. This is probably true with i9s and the like, but is often more a problem of what @doyll refers to as “air-blow vs air-flow.” Just my two cents, FWIW.

 

[freeagent]

Man.. my cooling setup is pretty weak compared to some of you guys..

That lens flare though

And that rear fan is getting removed.. just gets in the way

 

[Athlonite]

Just Air for me via a Cryorig R1 Universal and Air on the Sapphire Nitro+ RX6800 aswell all supplied by 3 x 180mm AP181 fans in the RV02 case and here if the room temp gets a bit warm in summer I just turn on the AC

 

[jallenlabs]

I went all air cooling for my two latest rigs. For my main workstation, it was for reliability sake. All Noctua cooling in both. Chromax versions. I really like all of it, high quality stuff. I post a couple pics later.