Liquid Cooler Lifespan or Water Going Bad

[Wolfgang_Rush]

I am planning to buy

Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L [RGB 1.0] CPU

liquid cooler 

for my gaming PC

but I don't know anything about the durability or the lifespan compared to 

Air Cooler which is of a big ass in size.

 

So my Questions are 

1. What is the lifespan of any AIO liquid cooler??
2. Is it high maintenance ???

3. Is it safe ??? {probability of leakage and ruining the whole pc} 

4. I will be playing 5 hours daily so when do I change it ???

5. Compared to Air cooler which is safer ???

6. Is Air cooler as good as liquid ??? Is there a very big margin between both that here where I live the temperature in summer can go as high as 52 Degrees Celsius...

 

I need your help here guys 

 

 

[Levent]

1-no idea

2-not really, unless it breaks or you gotta clean it up.

3-probably it wont, but there is a slightest chance it might.

4-change what?

5-air

6-not really, noctua makes some beefy coolers that match some of the AIO coolers we got in the market, air cooling is usually less of an hassle.

 

[Skiiwee29]

1. Lifespan for an AIO is typically 3-5 years with some shorter and some longer, but this should be the expected service life at a minimum of an AIO.

 

2. Zero maintenance with an AIO beyond blasting air through them every few months to clear out the dust build up on the fans and radiator. You could go a step further and change the Thermal Paste Every year or so, but its not really required.

 

3. AIO's in general are safe. its rare they leak. If you're afraid, just keep an eye on things internally and see if you can see any pools forming. Most coolant used in AIO's is a green color so you should be able to spot it fairly easily. If you're really worried, dont get an AIO and stick to air cooling.

 

4. Not sure what your asking here? 

 

5. Air cooling is always safer as it has only 2 points of failure. A) Fans dying, or B) Mounting brackets breaking which can happen on cheap, plastic mounting solutions. 

 

6. A top end air cooler such as the Dark Rock Pro 4, Noctua NH-D15 etc.. perform just as well as most 240mm AIO's on the market. With your ambient temps, you will be very limited with both forms of cooling to performance until you get some sort of air conditioner to keep the space cool. 

[RejZoR]

Liquid in it won't go bad. What is more likely to happen is evaporation of it. I've had two AiO's and both had evaporation issues. Mostly because I ran my AiO's quiet which means higher temperatures of the liquid. But after refilling my CM Nepton XL cooler, it's back to its original performance. This was after around 2-3 years of 24/7 running.

 

As for failure, regular tower heatsink has a lower probability of failure. AiO can fail on pump, leak, fan, evaporation of liquid, clogging etc. Air coolers can only really fail if they get so clogged with dust or fan failing. Theoretically heatpipes can leak but that's very rare. And even if everything else fails, it'll provide some passive cooling.

 

Personally, I don't think I'll ever go back to air coolers. AiO is just more practical because you can displace the heat to where you want, where tower coolers are always on top of CPU. It's just more flexible and higher performance despite possible higher failure rate.

 

It also greatly depends on hardware you have. If it's a Ryzen 3 or 5, just slap a medium sized tower on it and cal it a day. Hell, for most even the stock Wraith will be enough.

[Wolfgang_Rush]

1 hour ago, Levent said:

1-no idea

2-not really, unless it breaks or you gotta clean it up.

3-probably it wont, but there is a slightest chance it might.

4-change what?

5-air

6-not really, noctua makes some beefy coolers that match some of the AIO coolers we got in the market, air cooling is usually less of an hassle.

 

4 Change Liquid cooler