WaterCooler Vs Air Cooler

[FireFox]

I have created this thread in order to share our opinions and knowledge about Water Cooler and Air Cooler, the decision to use one or the other, which are the best CPU air coolers able to achieve equal or better results as a water cooling, the downsides of both, what were your first issues when building the first Water-Cooling setup,.

So, which is better?
Air Cooling or Water Cooling?
Of course the answers depends on our particular usage needs.

Please do not be shy and share your opinions, thoughts and knowledge,

I hope you guys enjoy this Thread.

Knoxx29

 

[Durvelle27]

Water for me


Edit: Meant me

 

[peche]

I've voted water, why?

lower temps are always well received for our hardware, with a custom water Loop you can always get to fresher levels easily, and AIO's let keep good levels,

I don’t have any issue using air coolers, I didn't used plenty of them, my experience its limited to couple of thermaltake's coolermaster and noctua air solutions for 775 and 1155 sockets, I'm pretty happy with the switch to water cooling, because my processor it's pretty more colder compared to my Intel stock cooler or my Cooler Master Evo 212,

of course I understand that there are other air solutions like CoolerMaster's V8 and some of Noctua's air coolers and many more that also may perform better in comparison with some entry levels AIO's Closed loops,

Current Water Cooler: Thermaltake's Water 3.0 Pro Stock Fans,


Regards,

 

[Kursah]

Air cooling in my mind is better for the fact of simplicity, serviceability and accessibility. Water is amazing for temps, but air cooling technology has been pretty damn good...albeit limited.

Water cooling has its place, I have been more disappointed than impressed with the little AIO units, and those vs. Air, I would choose Air every time. It's much easier and cheaper to clean dust out than replace the whole unit because of a bad hose or pump after the warranty expiration.

For me, the best choice is air cooling, for many others...water will be the clear choice.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Air. Simply put on modern, mainstream sockets aka 1150 1156 1155 etc something like Cryorig R1 Universal offers quiet performance while rivaling most 240mm AIOs and has perfect memory clearance on said sockets. aka it offers what AIOs do while also being cheaper and quieter with more performance to bad with a third fan which still has it cheaper.

Having test AIOs and AIR coolers along with my own custom loop I lean toward high end air coolers should space not be an issue.

 

[doyll]

Just saying air cooling and water cooling is over simplifying the water side of things. I think we have two, possibly three distinctly different water cooling systems in use today. Real custom loop water cooling, the H2O kits and AIO like Swiftech, and the wannabee water Asetek and company .. which are selling on hype to ill-informed wannabees' who thing they are getting real water cooling .. and are definitely not.

 

[EarthDog]

I didn't vote. They both have have a place inside the pc it just depends on your wants and needs. So one is not better than the other overall as the question was framed (it was brutally open ended).

The best air cooler (what nhd14?) barely loses out to the better 2x120/140mm aios (kraken x60/61, Neptune, swiftech kit, bigwater 3.0). Aios are no maintenance and cater to a different market than the custom crowd. Custom loops can of course cool better because they can have more rad and are expandable. They also cost a lot more.

 

[FireFox]

Since I switched from air cooler to water cooler i said that i would never go back, of course air coolers are easy to clean, are inexpensive, easy to install an so on, water coolers are expensive there is more work to do when building one, sometimes things go wrong and you damage your whole machine just because a leak, it's nice to have one but a lot work to do and sometimes could be damnation.


If one day I decide to go for Air Cooler I will get one of this Best...

Cooler Master RR-V8VC-16PR-R1 Wentylator V8 GTS Tower-Kühler

 

[vega22]

water is better for heat transfer reasons.

air is better for stupid people reasons.

 

[m4gicfour]

As has been said, there's pros and cons to each, and each has its place.

For example, running my 1100T and both 290Xes at 45C under 100% load wouldn't have been possible under air without massive custom coolers...

Air is definitely easier to deal with, and depending on how much "stuff" (watercooled componets i.e. how many blocks, reservoir, pumps, rads, lines, and the water itself) you have in your system, a water cooled computer can be a lot heavier as well, which might matter if you take your PC to LAN events, or move it around much at all. That said, some of the higher-end air coolers can get quite heavy as well.

Really, it depends on what you mean to do with it, what hardware you're using, and how much work and money you want to put into it.

 

[FireFox]

water is better for heat transfer reasons.

air is better for stupid people reasons.

Sometimes I think That people go for Air just for the simple reason that they don't have the patience to clean every so often a Watercooler System and of course price, If one component of your Air cooler is broken with a few $ you're back in the game, even if your Air cooler system die Just a few dollars and problem solved.

 

[vega22]

no, what i mean is some people i do not trust to use a door correctly, installing a water cooler into an electrical device would be a quick death for it.

as said it is a horses for courses topic and not a simple question to really answer.

best air coolers, again not a cut and dry topic. d15, silver arrow sbe, ph14, d14 are all as good as air gets, but not if you can not fit them in your case. they are shit then as the stock cooler is better....

people are quick to dismiss the asetek aio when they give much more cooling power in limited spaces than you will ever get from air so then they are best.

but this is what is great about pc today, we have so much choice on how to do everything compared to only a few years back when it was so limited.

just fyi, i have 1 pc water cooled, 2 with all custom air, 1 with stock air and another bolted to a phase cooler. i wouldn,t want my pc under the tv to have the sound of the pumps all teh time any more than i would want to hear the compressor of the phase on my gaming pc all the time.

horses for courses.

edit

sidenote, i lose more blood cleaning out the aircoolers than i ever have draining my loops

 

[FireFox]

Custom loops can of course cool better because they can have more rad and are expandable. They also cost a lot more.

They can cool better and they do, Of course they cost a lot more, but in the other hand you can also cool many components at once.

 

[FireFox]

Really, it depends on what you mean to do with it, what hardware you're using, and how much work and money you want to put into it.

Right it depends on what we mean to do with it, as we now would be waste money and time if we build a custom watercooling loop just to say I have one, the main reasons to build one is in order to have the components of our machines as cooler as we can and get the best lowest temperatures, why this?
Everything is relatively connected to the overclock fact where no Air cooler could keeps decents temperatures

 

[doyll]

water is better for heat transfer reasons.

air is better for stupid people reasons.

Does that mean water is for people with more money than sense?

 

[FireFox]

I didn't vote. They both have have a place inside the pc it just depends on your wants and needs. So one is not better than the other overall as the question was framed (it was brutally open ended).

The best air cooler (what nhd14?) barely loses out to the better 2x120/140mm aios (kraken x60/61, Neptune, swiftech kit, bigwater 3.0). Aios are no maintenance and cater to a different market than the custom crowd. Custom loops can of course cool better because they can have more rad and are expandable. They also cost a lot more.

I testet a few Air coolers on the i7 3770k stock clock speeds/ 4.5GHz/4.7GHz overclocked but none of them impressed me at all, the only 2 Air Coolers that did a great job keeping good temperatures even when full loaded was the one that you mentioned ( NH-D14 ) and the Cooler Master RR-V8VC-16PR-R1 Wentylator V8 GTS Tower-Kühler.

 

[FireFox]

but this is what is great about pc today, we have so much choice on how to do everything compared to only a few years back when it was so limited.

That is right, we have many choice, but my guess is that although the amount of new PC water cooling products is growing i have the impression that there is not really much going on in the water cooling world, computers are not selling as they once did, years ago the water cooling community was in full take-off and reviews were numerous, But over the years and thanks to the newest cooling technology that has come so far and CPUs are putting out less heat per core, in a few years there won't be the needed of a Water cooling to Cool the next processors/Gpu's generation, and when that day comes a Water Cooling System will only be a sad reminder of something that once existed and never will return to exist

 

[vega22]

tell you the truth knoxx i think it is quiet the opposite. we are now at the point where fab shrinks are making the chips create so much heat in such a small area that water is the only way to really get the best from the hardware.

but i think i know what you mean about how the market has stagnated, a few years ago leaps and bounds where made in the performance of blocks and rads. these days they are all much of a muchness and the only reason to buy x or y is styling taste.

 

[Fourstaff]

I say it depends on objective. For day to day operation, air is much better (this is coming from a person using H100i in a 30+C climate). If you are targeting a heavy overclock (which most people don't need), water is the way to go.

Simply put: if you ask the question, go air.

 

[Devon68]

Definitely air, because on a air cooler the only thing that will ever need replacing is the fan, and it's cheaper than water cooling.

 

[FireFox]

Definitely air, because on a air cooler the only thing that will ever need replacing is the fan, and it's cheaper than water cooling.

That is the big point that almost everyone mention (Air Cooler is cheaper) We can't pretend that there are not many people out there that would love to have a custom watercooling loop but due to the price they don't have one, ultimately no everyone is spending that much in custom watercooling loops, or maybe they are not spending at all, but the desire to have one is always running through their heads, How many users comes in this forum asking for help To build a Rig but they have a 800$/900$ limited budget? that is the Same amount of money that I spent building my custom watercooling loop, with that said, What I meant is that many people would even buy cheaper components in order to save some bucks and build a decent watercooling loop...