Sometimes I think yes, but most of the times i'm feeling like it's a no. I have a blu-ray drive in my laptop and I think I can count on 1 hand how often I've actually placed discs in it. I'll end up booting into windows 10 from USB initially for the install and then end up downloading everything else online most likely.
I only asked because of the case, I was going to suggest the Fractal Design - Define S instead for the better airflow. But then I realized you already bought the case.
Alright due to availability and such here is what i'm looking at now. After a lot of reading i'm feeling pretty OK about water cooling now. Assuming everything is good i'll pick up these last parts tomorrow evening.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 5
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S36 AIO Liquid Coolers 360MM
GPU: GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
OS: Windows 10 Home OEM
I'd be very careful with Gigabyte parts. Gigabyte has some of the worst customer service right now. There are several threads of people where they sent in a failed part and Gigabyte refused to honor the warranty because they claimed the part was physically damaged. And when my GTX970's fan failed, it took them almost 3 months to get me a working card. The first time they sent me my original card back claiming there was no problem. Then they just tried to send me the fan to replace it myself, and they sent me the wrong fan. Then they made me ship the card to them again, at my cost again, and then just kept the card for 2 months. Lying to me several times along the way, and finally admitting they were out of stock of my card and have been waiting for a month for more to come in from Asia. The lied again and said once they received the shipment they would immediately over-night me a replacement. And then shipped it UPS ground...
There's a lot of "the sky is falling" in this thread lol.
Agreed. Yes, AIO coolers
can have issues. But the fact is most of them came in the early days when they first became popular. And, remember, this is a technology that was adapted from the server environment. That is where AseTek started their business. The fact is that the number of issues is an extremely minor number compared to the number of units in service. And in the early days, a lot of the issues were caused by companies either doing a poor job of copying AseTek or using AseTek's design and making it too cheap.
If you worry about a pump failure, it won't kill the system. The days of overheating processors killing systems is long gone. They build so many thermal protections into the CPU, motherboard, graphics card, PSU that overheats just don't kill systems anymore.
In the case of leaks, if you buy a AseTek unit from a reputable manufacturer like Corsair, the likely hood is extremely minor. Part of the early issues was people taking AseTek's design and making it too cheap, part of that cheapness was switching to rubber O rings, which were failing too often. AFAIK, every reputable manufacturer has switched back to using silicone O rings which don't dry out and don't fail like the rubber ones did.
That said, for a long term build, I'd still be on the fence about an AIO. Personally, I have 3 in 3 of my builds. I've have an H100i, an H80i, and an H110i GTX. The H100i was bought 4 years ago, and has run 24/7 ever since. But I'm not likely to put an AIO in a customers computer unless they request it. If the 1% risk is too much for you, then go with air cooling and the 0.1% risk of failure. There are plenty of capable air coolers out there. And if you are worried about RAM slots, get a single tower design, they almost never block RAM slots. The NH-U12S that I mentioned before performs within 2-5° of an H100. That isn't a temperature difference that is really going to affect you. Unless you are really pushing the edge of overclocks and voltages, the temp difference isn't going to hinder you. And you shouldn't be if you want the CPU to last, Intel CPUs do degrade.