is water cooling really that much better?

[Rocko]

I'm going to be getting a i5-4690k an how much more can i overclock it with this then this and is the advantages worth the extra money?  Thanks.

[tbroadwater2010]

I'm going to be getting a i5-4690k an how much more can i overclock it with this then this and is the advantages worth the extra money? Thanks.

Well between the silicon lottery and heat you may not get much at all. Then again you could get a lot more because the heat of a water cooled system is a lot lower than that of an air cooled system. That being said, you should be able to gain a significantly higher OC with the water than air, assuming your CPU can handle it.

[pagani123]

it really depends if you want to overclock with air cooling though i would suggest noctua heat sink 

[Hunched]

It's not unless you go custom

http://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/noctua/nh-d15-versus-closed-loop-liquid-coolers/2

Air cooling is also quieter with the right fans

 

There's a lot of misinformation about water cooling being superior, AIO's simply really aren't.

[Lethal Seraph]

Overclocking results, yes. But not without drawbacks.

[mikat]

Well between the silicon lottery and heat you may not get much at all. Then again you could get a lot more because the heat of a water cooled system is a lot lower than that of an air cooled system. That being said, you should be able to gain a significantly higher OC with the water than air, assuming your CPU can handle it.

just saying: the cpu will get cooler but your room will heat up faster.

[ThinkWithPortals]

There's a lot of misinformation about water cooling being superior, AIO's simply really aren't.

I agree. I have an AIO and I wish I didn't. It's loud and it was expensive. However, my case doesn't fit big air coolers and it looks badass, so I guess it's a compromise.

But, generally, half-decent air cooler > liquid cooler (unless it's a custom loop)

[Sam Z Man]

More people kill there rigs from leaking tubes of having there pumps die, when you are on air even if your fans fail(they rarely do) you still have a large heatsink displaycing heat.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

IMO custom water cooling is just an enthusiast thing. You can  get amazing over clocks with a D14 or similar air cooler or an aio like a x61 Kraken,h100i

[HollyBoni]

" is water cooling really that much better?"

Yes. 

[KemoKa]

Water coolers are mainly for looks and e-peen, and for squeezing the extra 10% out of your system. But they do have their advantages. I got my 2600K to 5GHz and didn't hit 70°C. Can't do that on air.

 

Honestly, I feel like working in my machine is easier because of the space you save. That's certainly one perk I'd shell out for. I love tinkering with my rig.

 

If you want silence, though, sure, a tower cooler is the best.

[shibbs]

The main thing I like about water cooling is that the heat from the CPU is OUT of the case, and I don't need a load of fans to do it. 3. Two front intake, and one exhaust through the radiator.

[HollyBoni]

Water coolers are mainly for looks and e-peen, and for squeezing the extra 10% out of your system. But they do have their advantages. I got my 2600K to 5GHz and didn't hit 70°C. Can't do that on air.

 

Honestly, I feel like working in my machine is easier because of the space you save. That's certainly one perk I'd shell out for. I love tinkering with my rig.

 

If you want silence, though, sure, a tower cooler is the best.

 

I have two Watercool Mo-ra 2 huge external radiators. It can handle basically any system without fans, and you still get insane temps. Yes it's expensive, yes it's not the most practical thing, but it's freaking awesome. Couldn't do that with air. 

 

Air cooling is great and practical, I would never buy a small AIO or something like that. But if you want absolute silence and great performance in my opinion a custom water cooling setup is a must. 

[BrightCandle]

The whole point of a waterloop is to allow the moving of the heat to somewhere else so that it can be exchanged with the air more efficiently over a larger surface area. The area around a CPU socket is quite constrained, has warm air and is thus generally a bad area for trying to achieve optimal cooling. The trade off however is that the water has its own temperature over and above ambient and so its ambient cooling temperature to your CPU is lower, in effect it means watercooling only really starts to become beneficial once you go past a certain amount of thermal output which is hard for air to cool, that trade off point seems to be around 150-200W.

 

Once you have the heat moved you can spread it out across a nice big radiator that has slow fans and use cool air to remove the heat from the water. Thus watercooling systems can be quiet and dissipate large amounts of heat from a system. A well speced custom water loop can potentially allow you to get +200Mhz out of a CPU so long as you are willing to accept a potentially dangerous voltage, because it will give you a bit more space to the thermal limit than high end air cooling. But quite often what happens is people hit their voltage limit before the thermal one no water and choose not to push harder because there is a decent chance of damaging the CPU.

 

AIOs aren't speced well, they don't tend to perform much better than high end air for the most part although some of them do pretty well.

[KemoKa]

The whole point of a waterloop is to allow the moving of the heat to somewhere else so that it can be exchanged with the air more efficiently over a larger surface area. The area around a CPU socket is quite constrained, has warm air and is thus generally a bad area for trying to achieve optimal cooling. The trade off however is that the water has its own temperature over and above ambient and so its ambient cooling temperature to your CPU is lower, in effect it means watercooling only really starts to become beneficial once you go past a certain amount of thermal output which is hard for air to cool, that trade off point seems to be around 150-200W.

 

Once you have the heat moved you can spread it out across a nice big radiator that has slow fans and use cool air to remove the heat from the water. Thus watercooling systems can be quiet and dissipate large amounts of heat from a system. A well speced custom water loop can potentially allow you to get +200Mhz out of a CPU so long as you are willing to accept a potentially dangerous voltage, because it will give you a bit more space to the thermal limit than high end air cooling. But quite often what happens is people hit their voltage limit before the thermal one no water and choose not to push harder because there is a decent chance of damaging the CPU.

 

AIOs aren't speced well, they don't tend to perform much better than high end air for the most part although some of them do pretty well.

I dunno, I can run mine at stock speeds with no fans at all, just the pump, and it doesn't overheat.

[0ld_Chicken]

Brightcandle nailed it, at least as far as I'm concerned. Since building my custom loop (d5, 280mm rad space per component) i can't really oc my cpu(4790k) any higher since i don't like pushing the voltage over 1.35 for full time use.

It does allow me to feel more comfortable running a higher OC on my gpu since my reference cooler ran pretty hot and loud but aftermarket cooled cards do much better.

I'm kinda regretting getting a custom loop to be honest. I like to tinker with my pc and that does not mix well with watercooling. I'm currently having mobo problems (maybe more, testing my 980 tonight) and I'm afraid i mightve leaked without knowing it since I've seen no water at all ever. Now I'm not even clocked much less overclocked.

@iamdarkyoshi I miss my nh-d14 haha