Air is better than water
Where there is a will, there is a way
Got to love that condensation that will happen in the PC
It’s definitely easier, simpler and cheaper.
Water cooling can be quieter, though. Some big radiators and you can cool a gaming PC with hardly any airflow.
Nothing like a gamer sandwich
I think it depends on the use case. Personally, I simply don’t jive with the idea of conductive liquids swirling inside my expensive PC.
You’re supposed to use distilled water which is not conductive. At least that used to be the case last I saw liquid cooling.
In the end it’s simply not worth it for me. You still need to radiate the heat out, which usually means a big fan, which most air coolers nowadays have anyways.
I think water is rather rare as a coolant these days. Organics (chemical sense not farming sense) like propylene glycol or some kind of glyme aren’t potentially corrosive to metals if spilled, are harder to grow shit in, have lower volatility, and have a higher thermal limit. Maybe also with a little bit of antifouling agent thrown in. My main gripe with them is that if you do spill them, they don’t evaporate and you’re slipping over the floor for the next few days because you missed a spot.
But yeah, air cooling ftw
It’s a fun thing to do. I like my setup (O11 dynamic XL, two 360mm rads, dual pumps, both CPU and GPU blocks), but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone. It’s a lot of effort and expense for a little gain. But it’s a hobby on top of a hobby, and that’s fine if you want to go for it.
Didn’t Linus tech tips do a video on this and find that water cooling doesn’t make much if any difference.
A preferable (1000x) source would be an actual expert, Gamers Nexus. He reviews cooling solutions and thermal pastes probably more than anyone else, and he benchmarks many models.
Not necessarily, but one, it’s a lot cheaper, two, air leaks are not a problem.
Yes, this is the best argument in favor of air cooling. Air cooling has less points of failure.
With water cooling there’s tons of potential problems that “haha wind go brrrr cooling” just doesn’t produce: Water block gummed up with mold? Take a performance hit. Pump dead? Sucks to be you. Leak in the system? Enjoy replacing your motherboard.
Main issue you might encounter in air cooling is just “fan died, replace fan”. (Obviously not counting thermal interface materials since they are required for both cooling solutions)
My GPU had a shitty blower cooler, switching to water-cooling made my system so much more quiet!
Did you consider this earth shattering idea of replacing shitty stock fans with actually good fans? Or mounting atop good fans?
