Is a AIO worth it?

[Msx125rippa]

Hey I just built my new pc (ryzen 5 2600, MSI radeon rx570 aorus, 16gb ram) and I looking to make it pretty quiet and am wondering if I should go with a AIO water cooler besides looking cool does anyone know if its actually worth it to go that far and if so what one do you recommend I plan on playing a little vr with friends and some casual shooter 

[Speed Weed]

Water > air 

[corrado33]

16 minutes ago, Msx125rippa said:

Hey I just built my new pc (ryzen 5 2600, MSI radeon rx570 aorus, 16gb ram) and I looking to make it pretty quiet and am wondering if I should go with a AIO water cooler besides looking cool does anyone know if its actually worth it to go that far and if so what one do you recommend I plan on playing a little vr with friends and some casual shooter 

240 mm AIOs will have equal performance to the biggest and best air coolers. (And will be about 1.5x the price, unless you get one on sale.) They will be very... very slightly quieter. However, one disadvantage to water over air is that water takes forever to cool down. So on air your CPU will drop back down to idle temps quickly after a load, but  if you've been loading your CPU for a long time (longer than an hour), it's going to take a decent amount of time to come back down to idle temps after you stop loading it on water cooling. 

 

This is why every single "temp comparison" test with a water cooler is bullshit unless they let it run for more than an hour or two. 

 

Also, water is technically more "dangerous" than air in terms of longevity. If your pump breaks, your CPU fries. If the fans fail on an air cooler, it'll get warm.... but case airflow will keep it from frying, and if nothing else, the air cooler is a giant copper block sitting on top of the cpu. 

[mxk]

I mean, water cooling is great but really beefy air coolers do exist too. The best air cooler is easily the Noctua DH15, but you probably don't need that much BEEF for an r5 2600.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

side question, how often is need to clean waterblock brfore it is clogged

[corrado33]

4 minutes ago, mxk. said:

I mean, water cooling is great but really beefy air coolers do exist too. The best air cooler is easily the Noctua DH15, but you probably don't need that much BEEF for an r5 2600.

Honestly, the DH15 isn't that expensive for how good it is. You can generally buy it for less than $100. Other coolers of similar performance are often more. Plus you get really nice quiet noctua fans. 

 

Personally, I don't see the draw of watercooling. Sure, custom loops LOOK cool, but geeze if it leaks? You fry your GPU or mobo. Not worth it in my opinion. And my DH15s are not loud at all, so the "quieter" argument doesn't really... make sense to me.  

 

And the temp difference isn't significant unless you buy one of the triple rads or do a custom loop with more than 1 double rad. 

[corrado33]

Just now, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

side question, how often is need to clean waterblock brfore it is clogged

You're never supposed to open an AIO. 

[mxk]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

Honestly, the DH15 isn't that expensive for how good it is. You can generally buy it for less than $100. Other coolers of similar performance are often more. Plus you get really nice quiet noctua fans. 

 

Personally, I don't see the draw of watercooling. Sure, custom loops LOOK cool, but geeze if it leaks? You fry your GPU or mobo. Not worth it in my opinion. And my DH15s are not loud at all, so the "quieter" argument doesn't really... make sense to me.  

 

And the temp difference isn't significant unless you buy one of the triple rads or do a custom loop with more than 1 double rad. 

I was on the same boat as you if I interpreted your response right.

 

OP, get air cooling!

[Type 2501]

I can see why peoples buy AIOs, It provides decent performance and flexibility on a built. You can fit a 240mm AIO in nearly any mATX case. Hard to say the same for an NH-14.

 

But for people like me who don't care about the look of the computer (The case I am using don't have a transparent side panel). I will not spend the extra dollar as long as the air cooler does the job just as well.

[Kalm_Traveler]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

If your pump breaks, your CPU fries. If the fans fail on an air cooler, it'll get warm.... but case airflow will keep it from frying

Both false... if the CPU hits T-junction, it will shut down to save itself. This has been the case for decades.

 

If the air cooler fans stop working, the result of overheating-induced shutdown will happen the same as they will if an AIO pump stopped working and the CPU hit t-junction.

 

@Msx125rippa - facts are that the best air coolers (IE something like a Noctua NH-D15) are slightly better than a typical 120mm AIO and put up a strong fight against a 240mm AIO. I would not advise a 120mm AIO unless that is the only option in your build, but moving up to a 240 / 280 / or 360mm AIO the advantage is primarily that they can be much quieter for equal or better cooling (remember this is heavily based on which fans you use and how you set your fan curve).

 

IMO if you want a bit quieter operation, get a decent 240mm AIO and replace its fans with 2 Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM fans. There's not a good way around the lack of water-temp sensor in an AIO so the fans will still ramp up and down too often, but those are the best fans on the market, move a ton of air and are very quiet.

[corrado33]

2 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Both false... if the CPU hits T-junction, it will shut down to save itself. This has been the case for decades.

 

If the air cooler fans stop working, the result of overheating-induced shutdown will happen the same as they will if an AIO pump stopped working and the CPU hit t-junction.

 

Yes obviously it shuts down. As for fans stopping on a DH 15.... eh, the computer would still run unless you started putting a very high load on it. The DH 15 does a decent job as a static cooler. 

 

But I will counter your point by saying that most large air coolers often have 2 fans, so that's redundancy. Not to mention the fan that's often on the back or back/top of the case which also essentially pulls air through the cooler. That's triple or quad redundancy. AIO? Not so much. One pump. 

[corrado33]

6 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

IMO if you want a bit quieter operation, get a decent 240mm AIO and replace its fans with 2 Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM fans. There's not a good way around the lack of water-temp sensor in an AIO so the fans will still ramp up and down too often, but those are the best fans on the market, move a ton of air and are very quiet.

Couldn't you just use a thermocouple and plug it into one of the "external temperature" sensor ports on the board, then stick it onto... say... the output side of the rad? 

[Kalm_Traveler]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

Yes obviously it shuts down. As for fans stopping on a DH 15.... eh, the computer would still run unless you started putting a very high load on it. The DH 15 does a decent job as a static cooler. 

 

But I will counter your point by saying that most large air coolers often have 2 fans, so that's redundancy. Not to mention the fan that's often on the back or back/top of the case which also essentially pulls air through the cooler. That's triple or quad redundancy. AIO? Not so much. One pump. 

I'm not trying to argue with you - just speaking from ~ 25 years of PC building experience. I had an NH-D15 on my old i7 2600k rig. If the fans stopped working while a game was running, the cpu would have hit t-junction and shut down within seconds. I tried my first AIO on that rig, swapping on a 120mm Corsair AIO - even with 2 fans for push-pull it still was not as good as the Noctua.

[Kalm_Traveler]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Couldn't you just use a thermocouple and plug it into one of the "external temperature" sensor ports on the board, then stick it onto... say... the output side of the rad? 

For sure - that is probably the next best option. Since I finally gave in and started doing custom open-loop in my rigs though I realized that being able to run the radiator fans based on water temperature is much smoother.

[corrado33]

10 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

I'm not trying to argue with you - just speaking from ~ 25 years of PC building experience. I had an NH-D15 on my old i7 2600k rig. If the fans stopped working while a game was running, the cpu would have hit t-junction and shut down within seconds. I tried my first AIO on that rig, swapping on a 120mm Corsair AIO - even with 2 fans for push-pull it still was not as good as the Noctua.

Yeah running a game it'd heat up pretty darn quick But not as quick as it would for an AIO simply due to the thermal mass of the DH15.

[ewitte]

Which is funny "only gaming" maxes me out around 40C on a custom loop maybe 45C if it is very heavily multi-core optimized.

Yes it definitely will shut down I went so overboard on the leak testing for 3-4 days and by that point (and doing 4AM computer work before work) didn't even remember to take the paper off of the waterblock!