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Who's the actual winner? AIO vs Air Cooling

SyedHamed
1 minute ago, Aniallation said:

This topic has been brought up repeatedly for like a decade lol, at the end of the day it always boils down to so many variables such as your case layout and most of all your own preference. 

 

Personally, I just dislike the look of AIOs and prefer an air cooler.

I'm an aio user and hating the price to performance ratio. Was a bad decision to opt for an aio

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2 minutes ago, SyedHamed said:

 

I'm about to build myself a 3700x/3900x workstation slash gaming rig. It's gonna on full load most of the time and also I'm gonna oc it.
Money isn't a fact, my question is how much higher does a good aio run compared to a good air cooler at the highest load scenario?
If a good aio is costly but can beat a good air cooler,i'm going for it and vice versa

Their performance is very similar. It seems in a lot of cases people are turning to high quality air coolers instead of AIOs when it comes to pure performance.

 

Honestly so much of it comes down to preference. I personally like the style of AIOs more, and really like nice custom loops. But some people are die hard for air.

 

A good AIO will run you significantly more than a good air cooler. But I would say their performance is very similar, also, a good quality air cooler will run quieter than an AIO.

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7 minutes ago, SyedHamed said:

I'm an aio user and hating the price to performance ratio. Was a bad decision to opt for an aio

IMO as far as price to performance goes, for light-duty a half decent air cooler will give you better value than one of the small thin 120mm AIOs, but for heavy-duty applications you'll still end up having to spend quite a bit to get a beefy air cooler that can match the performance of a good 240/280mm AIO. 

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1 minute ago, Aniallation said:

IMO as far as price to performance goes, for light-duty a half decent air cooler will give you better value than one of the small thin 120mm AIOs, but for heavy-duty applications you'll still end up having to spend quite a bit to get a beefy air cooler that can match the performance of a good 240/280mm AIO. 

I'm planning on getting a dual tower beefy air cooler and replace the fans with high static push-pull configuration.
If that can't pull a larger lead of at least 2-3C, I'm getting another aio because 0.5-0.9 degrees is the lead that out of the box nh-d15 has over the H100i Platinum.

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11 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

An AIO needs a well ventilated case just as much as an air cooler. All the air that goes through the rad goes through the case as well (setting aside unconventional cases/builds obviously).

This is not accurate. AIOs are mounted directly to where air flow is available. I was able to keep a 9700k and a 2080 super very well cooled in a streacom DA2 with just one 120mm AIO for the cpu and a 140mm AIO for the GPU. The GPU dropped from 84c to 74c and the cpu went from 100c to 78-80c max all while being quieter.

 

15 minutes ago, SyedHamed said:

 

I'm about to build myself a 3700x/3900x workstation slash gaming rig. It's gonna on full load most of the time and also I'm gonna oc it.
Money isn't a fact, my question is how much higher does a good aio run compared to a good air cooler at the highest load scenario?
If a good aio is costly but can beat a good air cooler,i'm going for it and vice versa

They will be about the same as long as you have good airflow. You don’t need much to cool a 3700x. Mine is running just fine with a 140mm AIO on it. If you’re overclocking you should be fine with a 240-280mm aio or a decent air cooler (think dark rock pro). If you’re going to be moving the case around I would go with an AIO to reduce weight on the cpu socket.

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6 minutes ago, SyedHamed said:

So with an even playground, it's a neck and neck between them.
And if cost is a thing, air coolers are always better.

Generally yes, if a push/pull fan config is possible on a intake rad this is favorable, but again it depends on the case and use etc. I mean some 240mm AIOs can be found for less that large air coolers like a Noctua NH-D15, these cheaper options can perform better if setup in a better airflow case with a proper fan setup. But generally only the high end AIO's actually compete with the large premium air coolers.

 

If you are cooling something like a R7 3700x, then a mid-range cooler like a ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO is more than enough, But for example something like a R9 3900x an investment in a large air cooler or 240mm AIO is a good investment, I find NH-D15 (unless it is the puke brown version) to expensive, to close to AIO territory, the Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro4 is generally a better buy, as are options like the Cryorig R1 (when in stock), Deepcool Neptwin, Scythe Mugen + Ninja 5, these are all better options for the money, up to 50% less then some premium AIO's and probably within 10% of thermal performance. 

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1 hour ago, Sorenson said:

This is not accurate. AIOs are mounted directly to where air flow is available. I was able to keep a 9700k and a 2080 super very well cooled in a streacom DA2 with just one 120mm AIO for the cpu and a 140mm AIO for the GPU. The GPU dropped from 84c to 74c and the cpu went from 100c to 78-80c max all while being quieter.

 

They will be about the same as long as you have good airflow. You don’t need much to cool a 3700x. Mine is running just fine with a 140mm AIO on it. If you’re overclocking you should be fine with a 240-280mm aio or a decent air cooler (think dark rock pro). If you’re going to be moving the case around I would go with an AIO to reduce weight on the cpu socket.

It's gonna be sitting in my corner table for the rest of it's life. And if I have to move it, gonna take out the air cooler itself.
Cuase who wants to snap off a 300$ motherboard?

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The guys who love AIOs probably have never had good air cooling performance. AIOs will perform well for a year or so before you notice it’s performance start to taper off. Once that begins it degrades quickly. I just blow out my cooler and fans now and then with my datavac and it’s back in business. I can see both sides of the fence because I’ve been there. Since moving back to air I really have no regrets. I get better performance. I’m not saying a 212 evo is better than an h100 lol, it’s not. But a serious air cooler will take you a long way, as long as you aren’t afraid to move a little air. You can’t have silence and high performance, not going to happen unless you spend some bucks on real water cooling. Those AIOs have like a mouth full of water in it lol.

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5 hours ago, SyedHamed said:

It's gonna be sitting in my corner table for the rest of it's life. And if I have to move it, gonna take out the air cooler itself.
Cuase who wants to snap off a 300$ motherboard?

You’ll be fine with either then. 

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14 hours ago, SyedHamed said:

I'm an aio user and hating the price to performance ratio. Was a bad decision to opt for an aio

Arctic Freezer II 280 is cheaper than the hyped over-priced Noctua coolers and beat thems in performance. The difference is although so small that I would go for 40-50€ air-cooler instead as there are pretty much no cpus that hit thermal walls in a sane way. Zen2 is stupid for oc as you get something crazy like 20-40% extra wattage for that last 100mhz.

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On 5/8/2020 at 7:01 PM, SyedHamed said:

AIO uses water inside the loop that can harness much more heat than air before changing temps. If this thermal conductivity is considered, aio should dissipate much more heat than Air coolers with a single degree of temperature change.

Correct me please if i'm wrong, AIOs are gonna run much more hotter than air coolers, but gonna take out much more heat out of the cpu.

Depends aios are good for looks and you can usually overclock a bit on your cpu with them by are more expensive than air coolers but some air coolers can be either better or equivalent to aios and are usually cheaper but take up more room in your pc case and can give you ram clearance issues if you choose ram that isn’t low profile and air coolers usually last longer because water won’t evaporate and you won’t have to check the pump every so often for pump failure and don’t have the chance of leaking like aios do and if you care more about aesthetics and want to overclock a lot and have a lot of money then go for aios but if you want to save a bit of money and have a cooler that lasts longer and a cooler that you don’t have to check for pump failure then go for air coolers because they usually last longer than aios Both are very good options for the cpu even custom water cooling is good but has a high risk of leaking if you don’t know how to maintain the water cooling or failure if you don’t maintain it properly and also has the chance of stuff getting in the water and blockages can happen in aios and custom water cooling which can be hard to unblock if you don’t know what your doing but if you go air coolers you only have to clean the fans every so often and don’t have to deal with any evaporation issues, or blockages, or Leaks, or pump failure I personally would go for air cooler because they tend to last longer and the risks from aios and custom water cooling aren’t there to worry about 

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3 hours ago, Mitzy said:

Depends aios are good for looks and you can usually overclock a bit on your cpu with them by are more expensive than air coolers but some air coolers can be either better or equivalent to aios and are usually cheaper but take up more room in your pc case and can give you ram clearance issues if you choose ram that isn’t low profile and air coolers usually last longer because water won’t evaporate and you won’t have to check the pump every so often for pump failure and don’t have the chance of leaking like aios do and if you care more about aesthetics and want to overclock a lot and have a lot of money then go for aios but if you want to save a bit of money and have a cooler that lasts longer and a cooler that you don’t have to check for pump failure then go for air coolers because they usually last longer than aios Both are very good options for the cpu even custom water cooling is good but has a high risk of leaking if you don’t know how to maintain the water cooling or failure if you don’t maintain it properly and also has the chance of stuff getting in the water and blockages can happen in aios and custom water cooling which can be hard to unblock if you don’t know what your doing but if you go air coolers you only have to clean the fans every so often and don’t have to deal with any evaporation issues, or blockages, or Leaks, or pump failure I personally would go for air cooler because they tend to last longer and the risks from aios and custom water cooling aren’t there to worry about 

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generally speaking

 

with noise equalised top aios beat top airs without breaking a sweat

 

with noise equilised 240mm &+ aios outperform airs at equavalent price ranges.

 

with noise equilised 120mm aios don't perform meaningfully better than most competent air coolers and can often be worse than the better ones, and are much pricier.

 

aios have more points of failure and harder quality control and failing of one can have catastrophic outcome. Even with high quality aios you still need to worry about liquid permiating the tubes the degree of which can't be reliably observed unless you open up the tubes, meaning at rather arbitrary time intervals (usually the warranty period) you need to replace tubes & liquids or even the entire AIO the former of which can degrade the reliability of the existing aio resulting in higher likelihood of failure.

 

meanwhile, if the fan on an aircooler fails, you can see it and easily replace it.

 

aios provide superior ram clearance, and in this time and age you can expect aios overall to have better compatibility than airs overall.

 

aesthetics are a personal thing: LED pumps look absolutely sick; some air cooler designs can only be described as badass.

 

 

 

 

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