Cooling Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Air v Water

[AusWolf]

I'm sure that no water cooling would beat it in terms of noise, since even a simple loop needs a pump and a fan, two sources of noise. And I never had something more high end and I don't want something very high end either. For my needs, air cooling is all I need.

I wouldn't count on that. Like I said in the "What's your latest tech purchase" thread, my H100i's pump is completely inaudible at its lowest speed which I use basically all the time with the USB disconnected (I'm not a fan of software control). The only things I hear in my system are the case fans that you can't escape anyway, regardless of what cooling method you prefer.

If you prefer air for your own reasons, or just don't need anything better than a 92 mm tower, that's completely fine. All I'm saying is, an AIO pump isn't necessarily a source of noise, depending on your model choice and RPM setting.

Graphics cards are another matter completely and most of their cooling sucks and you aren't supposed to mess with it. Aftermarket is almost dead. Accelero and Morpheus were the last hurrahs of custom graphics card cooling.

If you're talking about the most basic ones like the ASUS Dual, MSI Ventus and stuff, then I guess you're right. Other than that, I think graphics card makers are putting a lot more effort into their cooling designs than they did 10-15 years ago, that's why we don't need aftermarket solutions anymore. Heck, even my extremely basic dual fan EVGA 2070 manages around 72 C at stock settings. If you buy an ASUS TUF or Strix, EVGA FTW3, MSI Gaming X, or Sapphire Nitro card, you're basically good to go. The other thing is real-time GPU clock adjustment from both AMD and nvidia, which basically didn't exist back in the heydays of aftermarket cooling.

I will change my mind, when I will see a graphics card with RPM range of 400-1200 rpm and when during load it only needs 1000 or less rpm. And that card must also have vRAM, VRM cooling too. And it doesn't cover more than two PCIe slots, that's important, because I actually use them. Until that happens, I'm not particularly impressed.

RPM doesn't equal noise. My aforementioned EVGA card has its fans spinning around 2000 RPM under load, but it's not loud at all. And again, this is quite a basic model from EVGA. I imagine their FTW3 model performs even better.

 

[freeagent]

I prefer big air to AIO, and haven’t had the balls to try a custom single loop. I have a big CPU and can be fairly competitive in the summer against the “other” guys

Winter is my time to shine lol..

Custom guys do a lot better all the time.

 

[thesmokingman]

Winter is my time to shine lol..

Winter is coming...!!

 

[phanbuey]

Pumps are very quiet in general - even most AIO can be turned down to basically silent with negligible performance loss.

But nothing really beats a tuned (undervolted / optimized) system with a gigantic air cooler for silence. (Noctua, thermalright le grand macho etc.) If I had to build a quiet workstation that would be my route.

That being said there isn't an air cooler on this planet that would keep my setup from throttling at 5.1Ghz, so water it is for me, and it's quiet to boot.

I don't like watercooling on GPUs because it's a pain in the A$$ and voids warranty. The state of GPUs these days the less you touch it the better. Plus they all power throttle anyways (at least on nvidia side) so cooling gains mostly acoustic unless the cooler is awful.

 

[freeagent]

FC140 is better than LGMRT and TS140P

 

[FireFox]

@The red spirit
Check what i am ordering/buying




I want a second pump to reinforce my loop

 

[The red spirit]

I wouldn't count on that. Like I said in the "What's your latest tech purchase" thread, my H100i's pump is completely inaudible at its lowest speed which I use basically all the time with the USB disconnected (I'm not a fan of software control). The only things I hear in my system are the case fans that you can't escape anyway, regardless of what cooling method you prefer.

You can, by having more slower fans. My case fans run at 800-1000 rpm fixed. That's audible, really quiet, but I would appreciate something quieter.

If you prefer air for your own reasons, or just don't need anything better than a 92 mm tower, that's completely fine. All I'm saying is, an AIO pump isn't necessarily a source of noise, depending on your model choice and RPM setting.

It is up to certain wattage. You have two sources of noise instead of one and air coolers, depending on their size can be very powerful. They basically match or beat AIOs for almost all uses, except for high end rigs. But then you reach very high end computers and AIO becomes really loud too, so you need big custom loop. So for most computers, air cooling will be decently more quiet if done right, meanwhile AIO done right just can't match that.

If you're talking about the most basic ones like the ASUS Dual, MSI Ventus and stuff, then I guess you're right. Other than that, I think graphics card makers are putting a lot more effort into their cooling designs than they did 10-15 years ago, that's why we don't need aftermarket solutions anymore. Heck, even my extremely basic dual fan EVGA 2070 manages around 72 C at stock settings. If you buy an ASUS TUF or Strix, EVGA FTW3, MSI Gaming X, or Sapphire Nitro card, you're basically good to go. The other thing is real-time GPU clock adjustment from both AMD and nvidia, which basically didn't exist back in the heydays of aftermarket cooling.

In pre C19 times, price alone made or broke the card. People expect to pay close to announced price for their card, particularly at cards where minor price variations matter. That's 200 EUR or less market. Where 30 EUR buys you a better GPU or maybe more memory or maybe faster memory. And those cards still get hot and loud. You can only justify premium coolers, if you buy whatever people call mid-range, that's 300-400 EUR tier. And you have a full freedom of choice in anything more expensive. If you decide to buy RX 580 at close to MSRP, then you can end up with PowerColor Red Dragon V2 model, which gets to nearly 80C and at whopping 3000 rpm. And yet the card physically looks very similar to other brands, so you really can't predict what you will get. Cheaper cards are also often are ignored by reviewers, despite being overwhelmingly popular. And also as far as I remember, Asus Dual are their mid range cards, low end poop is their Phoenix, Turbo lines. And despite TUF generally being premium brand, I saw some 1660s with sunflower cooler and two 80mm fans on top. That's even more garbage than low end models. At certain budgets models like Gaming X, FTW3, Strix, Nitro make no sense to buy. 1660 wouldn't sell that way, since better cooler costs the same as upgrade to 1660 Ti. More fps or better cooler? Most people more fps. OEMs also like to inflate prices of those premium cards for ne good reason too. Asus and MSI were notorious for that, charging a way more than others, despite much cheaper Gigas beating them.

RPM doesn't equal noise. My aforementioned EVGA card has its fans spinning around 2000 RPM under load, but it's not loud at all. And again, this is quite a basic model from EVGA. I imagine their FTW3 model performs even better.

It more or less does, if it doesn't, then you likely have less airflow. I have made a big excel sheet of airflow and noise and most fans are nearly identical. Sure at different rpms, but not by much. That's often +-200 rpm and in unusual cases 300-400+- rpm. RPM still pretty much equals to airflow, unless you use some really unusual blades and more or less end up with fan that doesn't function like fan.

@The red spirit
Check what i am ordering/buying

View attachment 215256
View attachment 215257

I want a second pump to reinforce my loop

lol how much do they charge for that?

 

[Deleted member 24505]

This is what I'm using

 

[FireFox]

lol how much do they charge for that?

€145 for both, they used to sell it as pump/reservoir combo but i don't find it anymore.

I own one already

 

[Vayra86]

Riiight... *cracks knuckles* Let's get started.

Pros of air cooling:
+ Simpler and easier to build
+ More maintenance-free, as the fan(s) is the only moving part
+ Easier to control through BIOS with usually one (or two) PWM fan connected to the motherboard
+ Cheaper

Cons of air cooling:
- Decent performance usually comes with large size and weight that puts pressure on the CPU socket and/or PCI-e slot / graphics card PCB
- Dimensions must be considered before choosing a CPU cooler / graphics card / chassis
- Can be noisy when under-designed for the required cooling capacity
- Highly dependent on case airflow

Pros of AIO liquid cooling:
+ Nearly as maintenance-free as air, but with added cooling capacity
+ The volume of liquid inside the cooler has a much larger heat capacity than the metal in air coolers, leading to a much more relaxed temperature curve before reaching peak
+ The right AIO for your system gives you similar cooling with decreased heat (compared to air), or better cooling with similar noise
+ Much less weight on your motherboard around your CPU socket
+ Less heat inside your chassis when your radiator and fans are positioned as exhaust
+ More configurable through software (if that's your thing)

Cons of AIO liquid cooling:
- Usually more complicated wiring and software control (if it's not your thing)
- More expensive than air
- More moving parts means higher chance of failure
- No AIO lasts forever due to the permeation of the tubes - though they still last a long time, and some of them are serviceable
- Lower end AIOs don't perform better than average air coolers - 120 mm ones should be avoided unless for SFF builds with lower wattage CPUs (been there, done that, it's quite fun)
- Tube length and flexibility should be considered when choosing your AIO and/or chassis
- Older and lesser quality models are famous for noisy pumps/fans - can be avoided by reading reviews before buying

Pros of custom loop liquid cooling:
+ Unmatched cooling performance with the highest possibility for a silent system
+ Rigid tubing can serve as a supportive structure for your PC components (I think)
+ Highly configurable cooling suited for the entire system
+ With the right configuration, there's an even temperature in all parts of your chassis with no hot spots
+ Quite fun to build (if that's your thing)

Cons of custom loop liquid cooling:
- Quite annoying to build (if it's not your thing)
- Chance of leakage and/or component damage
- Requires experience to build and maintain
- Requires lots of maintenance with regular draining and cleaning
- A pain in the backside to upgrade the system
- Expensive

With all this in mind, my personal choice is always AIO for the cooling capacity, the silence, for being maintenance-free, and for peace of mind that my CPU temp won't affect internal chassis temp in any way.

I agree on this. /thread.


Do carry on
On a more personal note... I'll always be partial to air simply because I'm a lazy ...... and I like my PC care free and low maintenance. I also like it to be as silent as possible, and I've found water vs air don't really make a difference in that regard. So... air it is. Simple, cheap, effective, and you keep your warranty to boot.

Matter of fact... I might actually clean this GTX 1080 for the first time by now seeing as I've already lost a good 100mhz due to temps. Yeah. Now you try running that loop for 3,5 years non stop without looking at it

AIO's I would never touch. Limited lifespan, and too many variables you can't control properly, with a super minor advantage over air, in the best case, and then the price being 3-6x higher than comparable air cooling. Yikes.

 

[mtcn77]

Hi, sorry to be the sour lemon, but if anybody thinks they can run AIO's at the same temperature as air coolers, you will be sorely disappointed. The lifetime is just not there when AIO's are run at high heat. This creates a conundrum whether they should be operated at low temperature delta with performance to spare, or high temperature delta at reduced lifetime due to biocide/rust protection fouling which leads to flow restriction and untimely failure.

Radiators are more restrictive than fin arrays eventhough water has a higher heat capacity and that can somewhat postpone the advised operating temperature issue. If you want to achieve full performance of your air cooler - get a flow duct and make an even comparison between them since all water coolers have directed air flow and is unfair, although convenient.

One advantage AIO's have is vented exhaust whereas air coolers don't come with an outlet duct and that leads to intake air temperature fouling by exhaust.

 

[The red spirit]

€145 for both, they used to sell it as pump/reservoir combo but i don't find it anymore.

As suspected, they cost too much. I remember, that when I had an aquarium, I had to buy water filter, it's water pump with sponge. I paid 20 EUR, maybe less and it was good to move water in 12 liter aquarium through that sponge. If that aquarium pump can move 12 liters just fine, it should be enough for water cooler too. Paying more than 40 EUR for that is daylight robbery. For that much money, I can buy 3 Scythe Mugen 4s or i5 10400F or 4TB HDD or E-ATX tower case or enough Mountain Dew to puke rainbow for one month straight or 72 tickets to pretty much any museum in my city. For that same money, you can buy a big external JBL water filter, which moves 1400 liters per hour. And you don't need reservoir, if you take out sponge, you have over 20 liters of capacity. And instead Alpha charges you same money for that tiny winy lil pump. That looks like a massive rip-off to me. And with that JBL filter, you also get some tubes and other things to set it up.

 

[skizzo]

A couple cons I've experienced....

The draining part is more difficult, or I should say, annoying, than filling in my opinion. Even though I have a logical point for the drain in the loop (the bottom most point) there are several areas where the liquid cannot drain without tilting the case all over like one of those kiddie games with marbles in them you tilt around to try and get them into their holes (had to look it up lol....its called "Labyrinth"). I find that to be one of the most annoying parts of maintenance. Otherwise I've been changing the liquid once a year or less.

One other con that someone else has likely experienced here! SPACE CONSTRAINTS! Really bad when using hard tubes because you cannot easily move shit outta the way. I dropped the little screw for one of my NVMe slots heatsinks BEHIND my GPU which is orientated vertically in the case. If I remember right I could see it, but couldn't reach it and get it out. I had to drain the loop and take out the GPU just to get that little prick! Nothing more like a gut punch when you're about to put the last thing in my system, the NVMe disk, I think I removed it, along with other disks, to do a fresh Windows install (I always remove everything but the disk I want to install to, just in case) to end up making a mistake like that which means great now I gotta spend another hour draining it disconnecting, to pick up a screw and then reconnect and refill. I've since invested in magnetized tools !!!


Pros, my system is silent practically. Noise started to really distract me from enjoyment in recent years and wanted something better, quieter. I can leave my fans in the 700 RPM range all the time for intake and I go a little less on the exhaust, like upper 500s and 600 RPM range. Last time I was gaming on a PC was the mid/late 90s and particularly the Windows 98 era....GPUs didn't need to have 3 fans on them at 2700 RPM lol. Case fans took care of the passive cooling and I don't remember hearing them as a kid. Fast forward to 2018 or so whenever I got a RX 580 to abandon playing an ageing and loud Xbox 360 I go...wtf this GPU is just as loud if not louder than the Xbox 360, even with aggressive underclock + undervolt. I became obsessed with wanting a quiet system and eventually started researching this seemingly weird practice of water cooling. My pump I think I have set to about 1400 or so RPMs, out of like 4700 RPMs for topping it out. I think it is more noticeable to hear it only when it changes speeds, and I keep it static, rather when it is full blast. I can hear a snail fart in my computer room it's that quiet

It's deff a hobby. The initial cost is a good estimate of 1/3 of your systems cost. But it is an investment. A pump, fittings, radiators, fans, tubes, other related accessories are not a one time use item. You will be able to continue using them as you upgrade individual components or build whole new systems. The actual water blocks depend if they will fit another component, typically no for GPUs, and it's plausible for a CPU but the blocks are one thing you likely cannot retain from upgrade to upgrade or to a new system

OCing is at it's best with water cooling I think. Now I'd say the highs are a marginal improvement at best in real world applications, but reducing dips and give more stable boost clocks allow for more consistent performance rather than it pinging up and down.

 

[thesmokingman]

Too lazy to take a current pic, here's the loop finishing bleeding.

 

[AusWolf]

You can, by having more slower fans. My case fans run at 800-1000 rpm fixed. That's audible, really quiet, but I would appreciate something quieter.

Same here. Fixed 800 rpm case fans (including the ones on the radiator), whisper quiet system. They're still loud enough to overpower any noise from the pump.

I'm dying for two things when it comes to computers: small form factor, and silence. If running an AIO was loud, I wouldn't be doing it, believe me.

It is up to certain wattage. You have two sources of noise instead of one and air coolers, depending on their size can be very powerful. They basically match or beat AIOs for almost all uses, except for high end rigs. But then you reach very high end computers and AIO becomes really loud too, so you need big custom loop. So for most computers, air cooling will be decently more quiet if done right, meanwhile AIO done right just can't match that.

Like I said, all I hear coming from my computer at idle is my 4 case fans humming away at a lazy 800 rpm (the pump is dead silent). How does this not match the noise of air cooling?

In pre C19 times, price alone made or broke the card. People expect to pay close to announced price for their card, particularly at cards where minor price variations matter. That's 200 EUR or less market. Where 30 EUR buys you a better GPU or maybe more memory or maybe faster memory. And those cards still get hot and loud. You can only justify premium coolers, if you buy whatever people call mid-range, that's 300-400 EUR tier. And you have a full freedom of choice in anything more expensive. If you decide to buy RX 580 at close to MSRP, then you can end up with PowerColor Red Dragon V2 model, which gets to nearly 80C and at whopping 3000 rpm. And yet the card physically looks very similar to other brands, so you really can't predict what you will get. Cheaper cards are also often are ignored by reviewers, despite being overwhelmingly popular. And also as far as I remember, Asus Dual are their mid range cards, low end poop is their Phoenix, Turbo lines. And despite TUF generally being premium brand, I saw some 1660s with sunflower cooler and two 80mm fans on top. That's even more garbage than low end models. At certain budgets models like Gaming X, FTW3, Strix, Nitro make no sense to buy. 1660 wouldn't sell that way, since better cooler costs the same as upgrade to 1660 Ti. More fps or better cooler? Most people more fps. OEMs also like to inflate prices of those premium cards for ne good reason too. Asus and MSI were notorious for that, charging a way more than others, despite much cheaper Gigas beating them.

Let's just agree that there's no substitute for reading reviews to form an educated decision about any particular item before buying.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Not sure what's the point of such thread. We all have our preferences. That's it. There's really nothing else to discuss here. This thread can only end up in "my preference is better, so STFU" and I'm pretty sure that nobody wants that.

Well, You are involved.

Op neither, they're both balls compared to using a polar bears balls to cool your non PC.

As for me air ,water who cares ,I have water on the 24/7 (100%) rig but not on others.

 

[AusWolf]

AIO's I would never touch. Limited lifespan, and too many variables you can't control properly, with a super minor advantage over air, in the best case, and then the price being 3-6x higher than comparable air cooling. Yikes.

AIOs are for people like me - who want the advantages of water, but are too lazy to build a custom loop. Their maintenance cycle / failure rate isn't as bad as advocates of air tend to believe, imo. There's a reason why some of them come with 5 or so years of warranty.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

My fans on rads are at about 700rpm idle, set to ramp up with temp though. Temps don't go high enough for them to go high enough to be noisy though. Also. Could i remove the two front fans? On the pic, air goes in through the thin radiator, then out through the thick one. No rear fan as it would not fit. I don't know if the front fans are doing anything as the air is going out through the thick rans fans.

 

[FireFox]

Well it does benefit both. my temps
View attachment 215239

You have a fan running at 3500Rpm?

 

[The red spirit]

Like I said, all I hear coming from my computer at idle is my 4 case fans humming away at a lazy 800 rpm (the pump is dead silent). How does this not match the noise of air cooling?

By having two noise sources? Let's say pump is working at 600 rpm and fan is at 800 rpm. Fan has an obvious noise, but pump's noise doesn't disappear either. I don't know how dBs add up, but noise indeed should add up. Unless you are really lucky and you match frequencies of sound right, then you can potentially achieve no perceptible noise state, but that's very unlikely.

Let's just agree that there's no substitute for reading reviews to form an educated decision about any particular item before buying.

I don't disagree with that, but reviews for cheap products are scarce. It's crazy how hard it is to find a review of say Pentium G6400 or Celeron G5900, compared to i9. It's also hard to find thermal tests done on cheap cards like 1650 from say Asus Phoenix. And yet pretty much every RTX 3070 and up are tested in depth. Same with motherboards and SSDs. If you want to build a cheap machine, then finding reviews for components is next to impossible. Even worse if you want to learn something about regional brands like Alpenfohn, SilentiumPC or Chieftec.

 

[AusWolf]

My fans on rads are at about 700rpm idle, set to ramp up with temp though. Temps don't go high enough for them to go high enough to be noisy though. Also. Could i remove the two front fans? On the pic, air goes in through the thin radiator, then out through the thick one. No rear fan as it would not fit. I don't know if the front fans are doing anything as the air is going out through the thick rans fans.
View attachment 215271

Interesting. Why the thick rad? Wouldn't a thin one with fans be better?

By having two noise sources? Let's say pump is working at 600 rpm and fan is at 800 rpm. Fan has an obvious noise, but pump's noise doesn't disappear either. I don't know how dBs add up, but noise indeed should add up. Unless you are really lucky and you match frequencies of sound right, then you can potentially achieve no perceptible noise state, but that's very unlikely.

I don't know physics enough to know how dBs add up. All I know is that I can't hear my AIO pump on its lowest rpm setting, because my silent case fans make more noise. What more do I need? You can keep telling me all day how noisy AIO pumps should be, I will still rather believe my own ears.

I don't disagree with that, but reviews for cheap products are scarce. It's crazy how hard it is to find a review of say Pentium G6400 or Celeron G5900, compared to i9. It's also hard to find thermal tests done on cheap cards like 1650 from say Asus Phoenix. And yet pretty much every RTX 3070 and up are tested in depth. Same with motherboards and SSDs. If you want to build a cheap machine, then finding reviews for components is next to impossible. Even worse if you want to learn something about regional brands like Alpenfohn, SilentiumPC or Chieftec.

Well, you can't expect top notch quality if you're buying the cheapest of the cheapest, can you? As for Pentiums and Celerons, if you're looking at such CPUs, I'm guessing that you either don't have money for more, or you just need a basic CPU for basic tasks. Pentiums and Celerons are exactly that. That's all the review you need.

 

[The red spirit]

Well, you can't expect top notch quality if you're buying the cheapest of the cheapest, can you?

Well you can. I was looking at some Chieftec power supplies years ago and they seem to be quite a bit cheaper due to being a local brand and their stuff is seemingly similar to more expensive brands. It's not the cheapest stuff, but for quality that you get it very well could be.

I have also found some FSP power supplies and it turns out that they are a major OEM of PSUs and most of their units are very decent. And there are many brands that most people haven't heard of, mostly due to their lack of advertising, sponsoring and etc or some are just simply too local to be known well. This is where you can get a great deal, if you are smart or you know how to find some less well known information.

As for Pentiums and Celerons, if you're looking at such CPUs, I'm guessing that you either don't have money for more, or you just need a basic CPU for basic tasks. Pentiums and Celerons are exactly that. That's all the review you need.

Perhaps, but I'm still curious how well they fare or what their power use is. And nowadays, Pentium G6400 is actually not too bad CPU even for gaming. By that I mean that most games are playable on it. It makes sense to buy Pentium, if you play older titles and expect to pair it with RX 560 level card.

Anyway, my comment isn't about Pentiums and Celerons, but merely about cheap product reviews. When I bought my current motherboard, I also couldn't find any reviews and it wasn't cheap board, it's a lower mid tier B460 board. For few months it was sold for really low price (just like many Gigabyte products in my country for some reason) and I bought it. Turns out that it's good for i5 non k. And all I paid for it was 86 EUR (78 UK pounds). Similar boards from other brands sold for 20-40 EUR more, so I managed to save some cash by taking a small risk.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Interesting. Why the thick rad? Wouldn't a thin one with fans be better?

The thick rad has fans, 2x140 on thick, 2x120 on thin. so could i remove front fans?

 

[mtcn77]

so could i remove front fans?

Well, which way is front when the case is flowing rear to front? Don't want to stick a finger in the wrong end.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Well, which way is front when the case is flowing rear to front? Don't want to stick a finger in the wrong end.

pic is looking down, front is marked, left is thin rad, thick is right.