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Why you shouldn't water cool your PC

I'd love to see the Cryorig H7 in such videos instead of (almost always) Noctua, since it fares in benchmarks and it is considerably cheaper most of the time

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Mount the radiator as an intake and it cools better than the air cooler. They should have included that in this test.

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20 minutes ago, JB780 said:

Mount the radiator as an intake and it cools better than the air cooler. They should have included that in this test.

As may top mounting it near an intake, and exhausting air out of the case possibly.

 

Dust management, air flow, cooling of other parts in the case may also be a point to consider. In that with mounting a rad instead of a giant air cooler the air flow through the case from other fans may not be obstructed as much. In other words air can possibly be directed much better to certain areas.

 

 

 

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Watercooling is not needed for CPU unless they have a TDP of 250W+ air can cool that no problem and Noctuas stuff is very good.

GPU is a different matter, overclocked high end AMD GPUs are 300W+ ALWAYS (less of an issue with Nvidia, due to larger dies and lower stock TDP). That's pushing it even with the best air cooler. Really high overclocks can be past 400W and with a small surface area Air just can't cut it. Even more so now that GPU dies are getting smaller, Radeon VII with power mods easily pulls 450W-500W and can't function at that power without custom watercooling.

 

I agree with those who say AIO is a waste of time and water is only for overclockers and tinkerers. I have always used air coolers on my CPU and until I have a problem with temps I will continue to do so.

Gaming Rig:CPU: Xeon E3-1230 v2¦RAM: 16GB DDR3 Balistix 1600Mhz¦MB: MSI Z77A-G43¦HDD: 480GB SSD, 3.5TB HDDs¦GPU: AMD Radeon VII¦PSU: FSP 700W¦Case: Carbide 300R

 

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2 hours ago, Madgemade said:

less of an issue with Nvidia, due to larger dies

AMD has the bigger die ever since Nvidia gets the efficiency advantage. I think it's Kepler on low end and mid range cards, Maxwell on all cards.

 

2 hours ago, Madgemade said:

That's pushing it even with the best air cooler. Really high overclocks can be past 400W and with a small surface area Air just can't cut it.

Raijintek Morpheus ii is not impressed

 

15 hours ago, Arika S said:

not unfair at all. all products were "as is" out of the box, you wouldn't buy a 2 fan air cooler and pull one fan off (unless you didn't read the specs and cant fit the other fan because components are in the way)

 

For some reason a lot of people in this thread think it's unfair because of x y z, but like i said, out of the box is what they were testing, you can get drastically different numbers if you change things around, but then that's not the point of the video.

Problem is they called it "why you shouldnt water cool your PC", challenging the concept of using liquid rather than the air for high heat output situations. For LMG's size I would have wanted at least 5 flagship models from both sides before they use names like that, but since they didnt I would expect them to use the best from both sides. But no, it's a mediocre AIO versus one of the most competitve air cooler. You can't just say "women run faster than men" by comparing a fat guy who never does any sport versus a female athelete right?

CPU: i7-2600K 4751MHz 1.44V (software) --> 1.47V at the back of the socket Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (BCLK: 103.3MHz) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 RAM: Adata XPG 2x8GB DDR3 (XMP: 2133MHz 10-11-11-30 CR2, custom: 2203MHz 10-11-10-26 CR1 tRFC:230 tREFI:14000) GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual (Super Jetstream vbios, +70(2025-2088MHz)/+400(8.8Gbps)) SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (main boot drive), Transcend SSD370 128GB PSU: Seasonic X-660 80+ Gold Case: Antec P110 Silent, 5 intakes 1 exhaust Monitor: AOC G2460PF 1080p 144Hz (150Hz max w/ DP, 121Hz max w/ HDMI) TN panel Keyboard: Logitech G610 Orion (Cherry MX Blue) with SteelSeries Apex M260 keycaps Mouse: BenQ Zowie FK1

 

Model: HP Omen 17 17-an110ca CPU: i7-8750H (0.125V core & cache, 50mV SA undervolt) GPU: GTX 1060 6GB Mobile (+80/+450, 1650MHz~1750MHz 0.78V~0.85V) RAM: 8+8GB DDR4-2400 18-17-17-39 2T Storage: HP EX920 1TB PCIe x4 M.2 SSD + Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD, 128GB Toshiba PCIe x2 M.2 SSD (KBG30ZMV128G) gone cooking externally, 1TB Seagate 7200RPM 2.5" HDD (ST1000LM049-2GH172) left outside Monitor: 1080p 126Hz IPS G-sync

 

Desktop benching:

Cinebench R15 Single thread:168 Multi-thread: 833 

SuperPi (v1.5 from Techpowerup, PI value output) 16K: 0.100s 1M: 8.255s 32M: 7m 45.93s

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21 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Problem is they called it "why you shouldnt water cool your PC", challenging the concept of using liquid rather than the air for high heat output situations. For LMG's size I would have wanted at least 5 flagship models from both sides before they use names like that, but since they didnt I would expect them to use the best from both sides. But no, it's a mediocre AIO versus one of the most competitve air cooler. You can't just say "women run faster than men" by comparing a fat guy who never does any sport versus a female athelete right?

Oh yeah the title is complete shit, but the content technically stays true to the intention

🌲🌲🌲

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

AMD has the bigger die ever since Nvidia gets the efficiency advantage. I think it's Kepler on low end and mid range cards, Maxwell on all cards.

Kepler, Maxwell? those are antiques. Modern Nvidia GPUs have much bigger dies than AMD, but they still have the higher efficiency.

RTX 2060 Die Size is 445mm2RX 590 is 232mm2

RTX 2080 is 545mm2 Radeon VII is 3312 (including HBM2 which is not the main source of heat)

Bigger die area makes removing heat easier, helping Nvidia stay cooler.

Some Huge Air coolers are OK for Vega overclocked. But with Radeon VII you will not be able to get the same temps on Air as with a good water loop.

Gaming Rig:CPU: Xeon E3-1230 v2¦RAM: 16GB DDR3 Balistix 1600Mhz¦MB: MSI Z77A-G43¦HDD: 480GB SSD, 3.5TB HDDs¦GPU: AMD Radeon VII¦PSU: FSP 700W¦Case: Carbide 300R

 

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A bit off topic from the thread's current direction, but is there a video explaining the sound deadening LTT applied to the server room? Linus mentioned "as seen in our recent video", but unless he's referencing the 5 seconds of footage from the OC server video I can't seem to find one.

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7 hours ago, Madgemade said:

Radeon VII is 3312 (including HBM2 which is not the main source of heat) 

So are the Tensor cores and RT cores in  RTX Turing GPUs... Turing didnt improve nor worsen in manufacturing comparing to Pascal

CPU: i7-2600K 4751MHz 1.44V (software) --> 1.47V at the back of the socket Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (BCLK: 103.3MHz) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 RAM: Adata XPG 2x8GB DDR3 (XMP: 2133MHz 10-11-11-30 CR2, custom: 2203MHz 10-11-10-26 CR1 tRFC:230 tREFI:14000) GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual (Super Jetstream vbios, +70(2025-2088MHz)/+400(8.8Gbps)) SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (main boot drive), Transcend SSD370 128GB PSU: Seasonic X-660 80+ Gold Case: Antec P110 Silent, 5 intakes 1 exhaust Monitor: AOC G2460PF 1080p 144Hz (150Hz max w/ DP, 121Hz max w/ HDMI) TN panel Keyboard: Logitech G610 Orion (Cherry MX Blue) with SteelSeries Apex M260 keycaps Mouse: BenQ Zowie FK1

 

Model: HP Omen 17 17-an110ca CPU: i7-8750H (0.125V core & cache, 50mV SA undervolt) GPU: GTX 1060 6GB Mobile (+80/+450, 1650MHz~1750MHz 0.78V~0.85V) RAM: 8+8GB DDR4-2400 18-17-17-39 2T Storage: HP EX920 1TB PCIe x4 M.2 SSD + Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD, 128GB Toshiba PCIe x2 M.2 SSD (KBG30ZMV128G) gone cooking externally, 1TB Seagate 7200RPM 2.5" HDD (ST1000LM049-2GH172) left outside Monitor: 1080p 126Hz IPS G-sync

 

Desktop benching:

Cinebench R15 Single thread:168 Multi-thread: 833 

SuperPi (v1.5 from Techpowerup, PI value output) 16K: 0.100s 1M: 8.255s 32M: 7m 45.93s

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6 hours ago, AXELfrieman said:

A bit off topic from the thread's current direction, but is there a video explaining the sound deadening LTT applied to the server room? Linus mentioned "as seen in our recent video", but unless he's referencing the 5 seconds of footage from the OC server video I can't seem to find one.

It's in this video about the server room. 

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In the video it was stated that the AIO wasn't front mounted because of the noise. However this goes past the fact that some cases have sound dampening in the front and use air intakes.

 

Add a tunnel similar to a PSU shroud around the watercooler which guides the hot air out of the case, with sound dampening, and it could be quite neat. Might build a shroud like that to see how it works. One could even look at different tunnel configurations (e.g. length and angles) to have maximum sound dampening while maintaining a decent air flow.

 

@AlexTheGreatish

 

How do you feel about this, and some of the feedback in this thread, as it being too general a statement? Is this something at LTT you see yourselves exploring further? Would love to see some cool content on this.

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1 minute ago, bluesky_dolphin said:

In the video it was stated that the AIO wasn't front mounted because of the noise. However this goes past the fact that some cases have sound dampening in the front and use air intakes.

 

Add a tunnel similar to a PSU shroud around the watercooler which guides the hot air out of the case, with sound dampening, and it could be quite neat. Might build a shroud like that to see how it works. One could even look at different tunnel configurations (e.g. length and angles) to have maximum sound dampening while maintaining a decent air flow.

 

@AlexTheGreatish

 

How do you feel about this, and some of the feedback in this thread, as it being too general a statement? Is this something at LTT you see yourselves exploring further? Would love to see some cool content on this.

Tbh that sounds like a lot of work for what is probably a very small difference in temps and probably would look rather unbecoming.  If it's in a closed case then go for it, but I think I'm just going to stick to using an air cooler haha

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Tbh, and I don't mean to come off too harsh, but find that a shame to hear. I would hope making such a bold statement about water cooling vs. air cooling there would have been more evidence based research.

 

I don't know if it would be unbecoming, it could be done rather nicely concerning a special duct for a radiator. Nonetheless, looking at alternate solutions like proposed in this thread will be left up to others.

 

It may be a lot of work to research that stuff, but that is better than the sloppy work delivered by LTT on this video.

 

 

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Hmmm, so I was doing some research on water cooling vs. air cooling,one of the first things that popped up was a video by LTT on this subject years ago in 2017, which covers several of the points brought up by forum members in this thread:

 

 

"It should then be noted that you can get slightly better performance out of these AIO's by adding more fans in a push pull configuration, the same could be said for the tower coolers"

 

The test was taken in a temperature controlled environment.

 

The results in the video are too close too call, depending on the setup.

 

It is interesting that once again only Corsair vs. Noctua were tested.

 

It appears that the "The Final Answer" is 'it depends'

 

And that wasn't even that much work to find... ? LOL

 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Kinda regret buying water cooling for my new rig now.

 

Linus talked about it being hard to detect a faulty water pump.

How would I be able to detect it? Linus mentioned monitoring software.
So just keep an eye on the temperature and if it gets higher than usual it could be a faulty water pump?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey,

 

I noticed a slight error in the video, in the comparing the AIO(360) to a Noctua (that Linus is holding)(7min 45sec) it shows the NH-U12S at 78C 34dB
chrome_2019-08-08_00-30-23.png

 

Yet in the charts and the recommendation it shows the figures for the NH-U12with the NH-U12S getting 81C/43dB (8min 15sec)\

chrome_2019-08-08_00-30-41.png

 

 

Just wanted to confirm it was the more expensive A that was the best performance.

 

 

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4 hours ago, jonnyw2k said:

Just wanted to confirm it was the more expensive A that was the best performance.

Yeah it's the U12A

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  • 1 month later...
On 8/8/2019 at 5:59 AM, AlexTheGreatish said:

Yeah it's the U12A

 

I feel like a lot of your projects are baseless without actual wattage information, given air coolers dissipate heat a lot more efficiently until they can't dissipate the heat fast enough anymore which leads to a loop of increasing temperature.

 

Like.... what was the CPU used... at which wattage did it run...

 

I am really not trying to be offensive but the quality of your reviews has become very mediocre.

 

But you're not the only ones, considering many other "professional" outlets testing these coolers with their 4 year old CPU instead of picking something like an LGA2066 7980x or 9900K.

 

I guess this makes a lot more sense to me

 

That's a 7600k, not drawing much power and dissipating a moderate amount of heat. The 12A has more heat-pipes and therefore dissipates the heat better than it's bigger brother but you probably hadn't reached it's cooling potential.

index.png.a617fc51fe0ba9f566064d2349900e02.png

 

7980x...

 

index2.png.af6ce4b9d6801c2daa00c6effcef2665.png

 

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  • 5 months later...

what's the case you use in the video and did you like it?

 

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Now stand your best air cooler up against my gaming rig with 2 360mm + 1 480mm rad at 54mm thick on all 3.

 

My fans have a range of 600-1850 and are pretty much inaudible ar even 1850 rpm.

 

The cpu , gpu, and mobo vrms are in the loop. So my case temp is maybe 1-3 degrees above ambient and my water temp under full load is in the 3-5c above ambient range.

 

The only place where an air cooler would out perform this setup is in price/performance since this setup would cost 800-1000 new from scratch.

 

All that aside upgrades in the future only consist of a new block (if needed) and maybe a new pump if it dies, but I haven't had that happen yet (knock on wood)

 

Now I did replace an h240x with a dh15 in an older machine of mine and the temps only went up a few C. This was on a 2600k clocked at 4.7ghz (I think).  Now the one thing adding the d15 changed things was it increases the internal case temp which made cpu and gpu temps go up a few C. Now the case being used isn't the best, but also not the worst for air flow.

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On 3/2/2020 at 11:11 AM, AngryBeaver said:

Now stand your best air cooler up against my gaming rig with 2 360mm + 1 480mm rad at 54mm thick on all 3.

 

My fans have a range of 600-1850 and are pretty much inaudible ar even 1850 rpm.

 

The cpu , gpu, and mobo vrms are in the loop. So my case temp is maybe 1-3 degrees above ambient and my water temp under full load is in the 3-5c above ambient range.

 

The only place where an air cooler would out perform this setup is in price/performance since this setup would cost 800-1000 new from scratch.

 

All that aside upgrades in the future only consist of a new block (if needed) and maybe a new pump if it dies, but I haven't had that happen yet (knock on wood)

 

Now I did replace an h240x with a dh15 in an older machine of mine and the temps only went up a few C. This was on a 2600k clocked at 4.7ghz (I think).  Now the one thing adding the d15 changed things was it increases the internal case temp which made cpu and gpu temps go up a few C. Now the case being used isn't the best, but also not the worst for air flow.

The area where it annihilates your build is in cost, price/performance, maintenance, and hassle.  Custom loops are awesome, but they are in a completely different world in terms of what this video was looking at.  It's like comparing 2 high spec'd stock cars (air vs AIO) you can buy and drive off the lot today with a hot rod you custom built in your garage.

 

A PC built with a good air cooler (D15/DRP4) and quality 2.5+ slot GPU heatsink runs silent, can overclock well, and installs in <5 minutes with almost 0 maintenance or fuss.  At a price of <10% what you pay for a custom loop you are talking about.  

 

Where yours crushes it is in looking f'n awesome and being able to truly run silent.  But the cost and effort to get there is something that 99% of people would never want to do.  Its just not a consumer solution

El Zoido:  9900k + RTX 4090 / 32 gb 3600mHz RAM / z390 Aorus Master 

 

The Box:  3900x + RTX 3080 /  32 gb 3000mHz RAM / B550 MSI mortar 

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1 hour ago, Zberg said:

The area where it annihilates your build is in cost, price/performance, maintenance, and hassle.  Custom loops are awesome, but they are in a completely different world in terms of what this video was looking at.  It's like comparing 2 high spec'd stock cars (air vs AIO) you can buy and drive off the lot today with a hot rod you custom built in your garage.

 

A PC built with a good air cooler (D15/DRP4) and quality 2.5+ slot GPU heatsink runs silent, can overclock well, and installs in <5 minutes with almost 0 maintenance or fuss.  At a price of <10% what you pay for a custom loop you are talking about.  

 

Where yours crushes it is in looking f'n awesome and being able to truly run silent.  But the cost and effort to get there is something that 99% of people would never want to do.  Its just not a consumer solution

So if we look at something like an expandable AIO where you pay 150-170 for a 360mm. Then you toss on say a sheepish 240mm for 45-50. Now you are sitting about 200-220. Grab up a gpu block for let's say 130 it you go the nee hydro stuff. Now you are at 330-350. Tubing and 4 fittings for another 50-60.... so total you are at 380-410. That is half the cost of a full custom loop and about 100 bucks more than purchasing two quality aios.

 

Now the above would give you performance very similar to a full custom loop. It would be louder initially, but you can push pull or add better fans down the road.

 

So the above or even dual aios would be overall better options and can be just as silent as big air. I think the real advantage comes when both gpu and cpu are seeing the benefit

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10 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

So if we look at something like an expandable AIO where you pay 150-170 for a 360mm. Then you toss on say a sheepish 240mm for 45-50. Now you are sitting about 200-220. Grab up a gpu block for let's say 130 it you go the nee hydro stuff. Now you are at 330-350. Tubing and 4 fittings for another 50-60.... so total you are at 380-410. That is half the cost of a full custom loop and about 100 bucks more than purchasing two quality aios.

 

Now the above would give you performance very similar to a full custom loop. It would be louder initially, but you can push pull or add better fans down the road.

 

So the above or even dual aios would be overall better options and can be just as silent as big air. I think the real advantage comes when both gpu and cpu are seeing the benefit

I hear ya and I dont mean to knock the custom loop;  I may make one in the future, I think they are really awesome...but I love to tinker and mess around, and have lots of extra money to waste.

 

However, at the price premium you are talking about, you are looking at someone being able to go for a custom loop with a 2070S or build a system with standard factory cooling and a cheaper 2080ti.  Or go from a 3700x to a 3950x.  You are far into diminishing returns is my point, just to go from kind of audible to completely silent.

 

My 9900k and 2080ti air cooled are extremely quiet, not audible idle, and a light hum under load.  If my home central air or the fan in the room are on, they are louder than the PC gaming running hard, I cant even notice the PC.  If I have my headphones on, forget about it, wouldnt even know the PC is on.  The point is air cooling has gotten so good that you pretty much get to go from not that audible to completely silent with extreme cooling solutions (at a very hefty price).  I mean Jay (loves him some water cooling) compared the D15 to his full custom loop and once temps reached equilibrium under stress they were barely different...a 90 dollar solution compared to however much his loop costs.

 

 

El Zoido:  9900k + RTX 4090 / 32 gb 3600mHz RAM / z390 Aorus Master 

 

The Box:  3900x + RTX 3080 /  32 gb 3000mHz RAM / B550 MSI mortar 

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9 minutes ago, Zberg said:

I hear ya and I dont mean to knock the custom loop;  I may make one in the future, I think they are really awesome...but I love to tinker and mess around, and have lots of extra money to waste.

 

However, at the price premium you are talking about, you are looking at someone being able to go for a custom loop with a 2070S or build a system with standard factory cooling and a cheaper 2080ti.  Or go from a 3700x to a 3950x.  You are far into diminishing returns is my point, just to go from kind of audible to completely silent.

 

My 9900k and 2080ti air cooled are extremely quiet, not audible idle, and a light hum under load.  If my home central air or the fan in the room are on, they are louder than the PC gaming running hard, I cant even notice the PC.  If I have my headphones on, forget about it, wouldnt even know the PC is on.  The point is air cooling has gotten so good that you pretty much get to go from not that audible to completely silent with extreme cooling solutions (at a very hefty price).  I mean Jay (loves him some water cooling) compared the D15 to his full custom loop and once temps reached equilibrium under stress they were barely different...a 90 dollar solution compared to however much his loop costs.

 

 

Ok, I do agree when working with a fixed budget it doesn't make sense, but depending on if you reuse the WC items the price on subsequent uograde/builds is drastically reduced.

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