Why you shouldn't water cool your PC!

[martin-w 3,234]

Noctua NH-U12S wins. Quieter than the AIO's too!

240 AIO outperforms the 360 AIO!

 

Really interesting  how when the 120 Asetek cooler first arrived, reviews were overwhelmingly negative, but when Corsair released exactly the same cooler, suddenly the reviews became positive. 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2019 by martin-w

[vc10man 732]

Thanks for that fantastic heads-up, Martin. I am more or less aware that you are a Noctua----( who are my preferred manufacturers)--- aficionado, but was bidding my time to get the cooling, air or  water, for my i7-8086k based rig until I was more than 100% convinced a good Air Cooler would beat an AIO. This video is certainly an eye-opener.

[Jude Bradley 659]

When I was a kid,water and electricity didn't mix. I'm not going to start now either! I'm a happy Noctua cooler user myself.

 

[Jethro 65]

Hi Martin,

I watched that vid a couple of days ago, and agree once everything is ambient the AIO's make little sense. More expensive, noisier, prone to early pump failure, hefty radiators and they still need fans. Benefits of AIO's are at the stable end where they can better deal with temperature fluctuations.
But if you don't mind the Tower air coolers (NOCTUA) swinging from your MOBO they are able to match AIO's at high Overclocks, and readily dissipate heat where an AIO radiator may hold heat in the liquid for longer. Not too expensive either, & reliable.

Forgot to mention,  I don't mind the Brown and Tan fans, and these days you can buy prty colour coded tower covers, I think they have even made different coloured fans. (Black ones with grey anti vibration corner cushions)

I have been using a Noctua tower NH-D15 push/pull 2xNF-A15 150mm fans for five years mid 50deg peak temps @4.6Ghz i7 4770k. Even flat out 1530rpm the fan noise is barely audible.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Jethro

[ckyliu 1,749]

This is interesting given seemingly every PC build/spec enquiry on Avsim includes several people vocally going "you MUST watercool".

I've never fully trusted water myself and find a Hyper212 is plenty sufficient for most builds giving good cooling quietly, cheaply and reliably. If a build is extreme enough to significantly benefit from bespoke water cooling, those builders aren't going to be asking on Avsim if the CPU and GPU selected is suitable!

Edited May 2, 2019 by ckyliu

[vortex681 806]

Now the other side of the argument - I'm an AIO user (Corsair H110i GT). If you're talking about general use and mild overclocks, then there's hardly anything between the big Noctuas and a good AIO cooler. However, you can find plenty of review sites which show that the Noctuas become less effective than a good AIO when you really push the overclock: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/noctua_nh_d15s_cpu_cooler_review,8.html - 9 degrees difference in this example. Plus, in the video above he says that they mounted the radiator in the top and drew warm air from the case and exhausted it out through the radiator. He did this to get the quietest result but it's not the most efficient way to run the AIO.

7 minutes ago, Jethro said:

More expensive, noisier, prone to early pump failure, hefty radiators and they still need fans.

More expensive? - yes. Noisier? - yes, but just by a few decibells in the case of my H110i (but under load, the same or less than the NH-D15 with dual fans) and still comfortably under 40dB: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/noctua_nh_d15s_cpu_cooler_review,9.html. Prone to early pump failure? - yes it's obviously possible, but now VERY rare with modern, high-end AIOs. Hefty radiators? - really? compared to the physical size of an NH-D15? The argument for the big Noctuas disappears completely when you're talking about building a small form factor gaming PC as they simply don't fit and the smaller alternatives are significantly out-performed by good AIOs.

Both types of cooler have their pros and cons and both have dedicated followers who are adamant that their solution is the best. I say fit what you're happiest with (as long as it's an AIO - only joking!).

[vc10man 732]

Have used a Noctua cooler on a i5-4690k o/cd to 4.3Ghz  for the last 7 years in an Antec 900/2 case forages without any issues. This vid just reinforced my predilection towards them

[lownslo 592]

Air cooling only for me... like Jude above I learned as a kid that water and electricity don't mix.  Much about water cooling is a false economy, just like the RGB lights craze going on now... at least water cooling has more purpose and usefulness.  Having said that...

30 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Now the other side of the argument - I'm an AIO user (Corsair H110i GT). If you're talking about general use and mild overclocks, then there's hardly anything between the big Noctuas and a good AIO cooler. However, you can find plenty of review sites which show that the Noctuas become less effective than a good AIO when you really push the overclock: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/noctua_nh_d15s_cpu_cooler_review,8.html - 9 degrees difference in this example. Plus, in the video above he says that they mounted the radiator in the top and drew warm air from the case and exhausted it out through the radiator. He did this to get the quietest result but it's not the most efficient way to run the AIO.

More expensive? - yes. Noisier? - yes, but just by a few decibells in the case of my H110i (but under load, the same or less than the NH-D15 with dual fans) and still comfortably under 40dB: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/noctua_nh_d15s_cpu_cooler_review,9.html. Prone to early pump failure? - yes it's obviously possible, but now VERY rare with modern, high-end AIOs. Hefty radiators? - really? compared to the physical size of an NH-D15? The argument for the big Noctuas disappears completely when you're talking about building a small form factor gaming PC as they simply don't fit and the smaller alternatives are significantly out-performed by good AIOs.

Both types of cooler have their pros and cons and both have dedicated followers who are adamant that their solution is the best. I say fit what you're happiest with (as long as it's an AIO - only joking!).

...some good points here.  Especially the part about "fit(ting) what you're happiest with".

Greg

[lzamm 143]

One thing about water coolers is that they pump the heat right outside the case.  My SSD's run several degrees cooler since I switched from an air cooler to a Corsair h50 on my 4790k, some 4 years ago (no leaks yet either).

[dgilfillan 0]

I recently rebuilt my computer with new processor, motherboard and graphic card and my choice for cooling my processor is Noctua NH-D15 with dual fans and in all my years is the best cooler ever. I have been building systems for the past 30 years and the Noctua is very quiet in fact I do not hear any fans at all and they are all running. The cooler is huge and is expensive but worth it. As you can gather I am a big fan (excuse the pun).

David

 



[westman 257]

This was little confusing, nothing about how they set up the cpu fancurves etc. and raw performance? 

The noctua is very very good, i did a test with different coolers with mild and agresive OC. used a 4770k. my finding was when you OC with high vcore ( load on CPU the custom water was very good and the AIO 280 ) i used the same noctua fans with same rpm on NDH15 and the NZXT 280.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9qqb4pzy8vm5m1/4770k-test3-1280.png?dl=0

I stop the test if cpu passed 90C , you see how bad the evo performed compared to the Noctua

Did even a test with the same 4770K type max stable OC with Air, AIO, custom water and Chiller ( RobA and Pete Dowson use that today.)  both test was done 2016.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/guewnrmgvewymyb/utdrag-till-martin.png?dl=0

Edited May 2, 2019 by westman

[Bob Scott 7,716]

First, the title of this thread is a bit disingenuous..."Why you shouldn't water cool your PC with an AIO cooler"  would be a more accurate description of the video's subject matter (though I don't agree with that characterization of the video).

My daily use PC is an overclocked 7700K that was my last-generation simming box.  While it was in simming use, the CPU was cooled by a custom loop with a Swiftek water block, two 360mm radiators (overkill, but the water cooling tower was originally configured for the CPU and two water-cooled GPUs), a D5 pump, and plumbed with 0.5 inch ID hose.  When I moved it over to replace it with my current simming build, I replaced that custom loop with an AIO--the Corsair H100i. 

I have a Noctua NH-D15 sitting in my spares box that I intended to use, but it wouldn't fit--the heat sinks on my performance memory DIMMs are too tall, and the footprint of the ginormous Noctua cooler puts it over one of the DIMM slots.  So point one...AIOs are much more flexible w/r/t component fit on the motherboard and in the case.  If you're building using mail-order parts, assuring that components will fit on that happy day when the big Newegg box arrives can be a real hassle...an AIO will give you a much better chance of success if you can't put hands on and see for yourself or rely on someone else who's already done it.

How you program the fans can make a huge difference in how effective an AIO will be.  I program mine to ramp up aggressively as soon as the coolant temp starts to rise much above idle steady-state temp (~25 deg C), so that heat is not allowed to build up, with the coolant acting as an unwanted heat reservoir. I also program the fan curve to reach max speed at a relatively low coolant temp (30 deg C).  The default Corsair profile appeared to be focused on minimum noise rather than maximum cooling, and it let the coolant get way too warm before the fans started to ramp up, at which point they're on the wrong side of the power curve as we pilots say.  I strongly suspect that if those AIOs had been programmed differently, the results would be much more favorable.

I still had to lower the overclock on the machine when I made the switch, because temps using the AIO under load were 20-30 deg C higher than the custom loop.  And w/r/t noise, the six fans on my water cooling tower run at idle regardless of load, so with my 8086K running all-out at 5.3GHz the noise from the cooling stack is still a barely-perceptible whir.  So from a best-performance and low noise perspective (my highest priorities) neither the AIO nor the air cooler measure-up.  Yup, it cost more...but OTOH, I've been using this same cooling stack for ten years now--on my last four builds, so the up-front cost for high quality components has been completely justified.

The "right" solution is going to depend on how you view the trade-offs between cost, complexity, noise, performance, need for maintenance, component longevity and risk to system components.  What's most important to me may not be what's most important to you...although if you admit you are making decisions based on the "cool factor" highlighted in this video I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm snickering at you...  😛

Regards

[Mace 1,902]

Bah humbug.  My water cooling setups are always very quiet, I can't even hear the pumps over the psu.  And the nice whine of some GE90's in my sim.

[RichieFly 728]

I'm in the AIO group. I've used the huge and effective aircoolers and they're very good, but very big. Mr. Scott summed it up very well. 

I very much like the clean look of the AIO coolers and appreciate having access to all my motherboard's surfaces without having to remove the aircooler. After I adjusted the fan and pump profiles, I can't really hear the cooler apparatus at all.

[hs118 707]

5 years on one computer with AIO and 3 years on the other with AIO. Do it again in a heartbeat.