Water or Aircooling

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

What would be a better choice for gaming. Air cooling or Water cooling?

[chen57]

depends on a lot of things... but water transfers heat more efficiently.

 

[WoodenMarker]

Specs? Are you planning to oc? What are you looking for in a cooler?

Where are you shopping / located? Budget?

[Tristerin]

Keeping the components under their thermal throttle threshold is best for gaming.  Both are very good at doing it. 

 

I have gone super air cooled (15 fans in one rig at low speed RPM) that was uber quiet and liquid cooling with a ton of radiators and its even more quiet.  The ONLY reason I did a loop on my Ryzen rig is that @ 3.8ghz OC I could tame the temps just barely.  Anything higher however was a NEWP.  So I built a loop and can keep a 4.2ghz OC at mid 50c temps.  But it was far more (actually not really, about the same as a Noctua top end air cooler but I do mixed metals on purpose) expensive than even buying a top end air cooler - which I would prefer to liquid cool anyhow.

 

The difference is that a low/mid range cooling solution (whether it is AIO or air or whatever) just cant handle OCing (and keeping it quiet as well) like a large custom loop can from my experience.

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

 

23 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Keeping the components under their thermal throttle threshold is best for gaming.  Both are very good at doing it. 

 

I have gone super air cooled (15 fans in one rig at low speed RPM) that was uber quiet and liquid cooling with a ton of radiators and its even more quiet.  The ONLY reason I did a loop on my Ryzen rig is that @ 3.8ghz OC I could tame the temps just barely.  Anything higher however was a NEWP.  So I built a loop and can keep a 4.2ghz OC at mid 50c temps.  But it was far more (actually not really, about the same as a Noctua top end air cooler but I do mixed metals on purpose) expensive than even buying a top end air cooler - which I would prefer to liquid cool anyhow.

 

The difference is that a low/mid range cooling solution (whether it is AIO ourselves r air or whatever) just cant handle OCing (and keeping it quiet as well) like a large custom loop can from my experience.

I’m choosing between water cooling and a Noctua NH-D15. I will be over clocking but I’m not going to be a crazy hardcore gamer. I just need it to be not really loud. A little noise is fine as long as it’s not heard on video/ streaming. I need it to be fairly silent when running games at Max settings. 

[Zando_]

By water cooling do you mean an AIO? The NH-D15 matches/beats pretty much all the AIOs, as does the NH-U12A which performs at the same level. It will be beat out by a proper custom loop, but AIOs don't perform as well as those (thus why I always specify AIO/CLC instead of water cooling, that's usually what you call a custom loop). 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

8 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

By water cooling do you mean an AIO? The NH-D15 matches/beats pretty much all the AIOs, as does the NH-U12A which performs at the same level. It will be beat out by a proper custom loop, but AIOs don't perform as well as those (thus why I always specify AIO/CLC instead of water cooling, that's usually what you call a custom loop). 

I don’t really understand nothing about computers lol but I’m choosing between these 

[Zando_]

Just now, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

I don’t really understand nothing about computers lol but I’m choosing between these 

-snip-

 

That's an AIO. They're not filled all the way up, sometimes have noisy pumps, after a couple years the fluid inside dries up, the stock fans included are often loud and they have a lot more moving parts to fail. The NH-D15 has two really really nice and very quiet fans (I have the NH-D15S, same cooler but with a slight offset for better PCIe slot compatibility and only one fan, same fan as the ones on the D15 though), and those are the only moving parts and are easily replaceable. The only reason to get an AIO instead of it is if you think it's ugly, don't have the clearance in your case, or have a very very flimsy motherboard (it's a heavy cooler, but I've had no issues with any of the mobos I've ran it on).  

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

6 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

That's an AIO. They're not filled all the way up, sometimes have noisy pumps, after a couple years the fluid inside dries up, the stock fans included are often loud and they have a lot more moving parts to fail. The NH-D15 has two really really nice and very quiet fans (I have the NH-D15S, same cooler but with a slight offset for better PCIe slot compatibility and only one fan, same fan as the ones on the D15 though), and those are the only moving parts and are easily replaceable. The only reason to get an AIO instead of it is if you think it's ugly, don't have the clearance in your case, or have a very very flimsy motherboard (it's a heavy cooler, but I've had no issues with any of the mobos I've ran it on).  

Will I be able to run games and stream quietly? 

And will it handle overclocking?. I have an rtx 2070, I7, ASUS Rog strix i gaming, 16gb ddr4 ram.

 

[yo_simon]

The Corsair 115i RGB Platinum has 5 years guarantee might be worth a look.

 

The Noctua is REALLY REALLY good as well but ugly af. There are chromax packs tho. Two black fans + cover + NH-D15 will cost around 160 eur (no idea about the prices in us but more or less the same I guess)

 

 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

9 hours ago, yo_simon said:

The Corsair 115i RGB Platinum has 5 years guarantee might be worth a look.

 

The Noctua is REALLY REALLY good as well but ugly af. There are chromax packs tho. Two black fans + cover + NH-D15 will cost around 160 eur (no idea about the prices in us but more or less the same I guess)

 

 

Can it handle overclocking?

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

There’s also one that I’m thinking about getting it’s called be quiet dark rock pro 4. Any reviews on that?

[WoodenMarker]

20 hours ago, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

Will I be able to run games and stream quietly? 

And will it handle overclocking?. I have an rtx 2070, I7, ASUS Rog strix i gaming, 16gb ddr4 ram.

The NH-D15 is excellent but the system is only as quiet as the noisiest component and the NH-D15 is probably going to be one of the quietest. There should be some good headroom with oc'ing. What cpu are you using?

What case and ram are you using?

10 hours ago, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

There’s also one that I’m thinking about getting it’s called be quiet dark rock pro 4. Any reviews on that?

The DRP4 is quieter but performs worse and isn't as easy to install as the NH-D15.

There are plenty of reviews online.

Here's a pretty good comparison of some high end coolers: 

 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

3 minutes ago, WoodenMarker said:

The NH-D15 is excellent but the system is only as quiet as the noisiest component and the NH-D15 is probably going to be one of the quietest. There should be some good headroom with oc'ing. What cpu are you using?

What case and ram are you using?

The DRP4 is quieter but performs worse and isn't as easy to install as the NH-D15.

There are plenty of reviews online.

Here's a pretty good comparison of some high end coolers: 

 

My case is the cooler master master box mb511. My cpu is i79700k 16gb 3200mhz ram

[WoodenMarker]

1 minute ago, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

My case is the cooler master master box mb511. My cpu is i79700k 16gb 3200mhz ram

Either the NH-D15 or DRP4 would be fine and provide plenty of headroom for oc'ing while remaining quiet. 

The NH-D15 performs a bit better and is hard to go wrong with. 

Why the itx board in a mid tower?

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

20 minutes ago, WoodenMarker said:

Either the NH-D15 or DRP4 would be fine and provide plenty of headroom for oc'ing while remaining quiet. 

The NH-D15 performs a bit better and is hard to go wrong with. 

Why the itx board in a mid tower?

I chose this watercooling because it looks good and does pretty much the same as the air cooling. 

[WoodenMarker]

2 minutes ago, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

I chose this watercooling because it looks good and does pretty much the same as the air cooling. 

I don't have personal experience with that cooler but I'd reckon it's probably not nearly as quiet. 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

My motherboard is atx 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

ASUS rog strix f gaming

[yo_simon]

On 8/10/2019 at 10:46 AM, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

Can it handle overclocking?

Yeah of course

[bignaz]

AIO's are fine. Watch out the the people who try to push the crap they use because if I have it then it's the best!

 

That said I always say go water. But real water not an aio.  Aios's are good for your lower power cpu's. You put a 3900x on it or an i9 and it will bring it to it's knees with a slight overclock.  If you got something like a quad core i7. 3600 or something like that an aio is fine.  You put a 240,280 aio on an 3900x your going to be in the lower 90's with pbo. Use a real loop and then your in the 70's. 

 

I can tell you with just pbo. A 3900x will give a 240 50mm thick radiator a good workout. Coolent temps in the 41c range when fully heatsoaked.  Most people buying AIO's overlook heatsoaking.  On that 240 50mm tho rad I was testing it took around an hour of prime before my liquid temp leveled out. Games around 2 hours. 

 

 

AIO's make for a clean layout.  But you need to understand they are limited. After a few years they will stop working. You will need to take the pump apart and clean out the plasticizers from the micro fins and pump impeller. Just did this for a h100i GTX.  They are serviceable but not easy. If you are not experienced I'm watercooling don't try.  And you will need to make sure the vrm still gets proper airflow. Something AIO's do not provide unless you talk about Asus's trash rog aio. But that does nothing for the vrm. But it has a fan. But for the price you can get a real loop.

 

 

Now unless your ready to spend $350+ on a proper loop. And no the EK trash aluminum loops are all for looks. They are junk don't even consider one of them. Then my pick is the 

be quiet dark rock pro 4. If you can't get that then the  Noctua nh-d15 is another good one.  I prefer the dark rock 4 pro over the Noctua. But you can't go wrong either way. 

 

AIO's are fine for cpu's that don't make heat. But you will outgrow it. The limited life span fr the plasticizers make it a bad buy. 

 

 

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

On 8/11/2019 at 10:36 PM, bignaz said:

AIO's are fine. Watch out the the people who try to push the crap they use because if I have it then it's the best!

 

That said I always say go water. But real water not an aio.  Aios's are good for your lower power cpu's. You put a 3900x on it or an i9 and it will bring it to it's knees with a slight overclock.  If you got something like a quad core i7. 3600 or something like that an aio is fine.  You put a 240,280 aio on an 3900x your going to be in the lower 90's with pbo. Use a real loop and then your in the 70's. 

 

I can tell you with just pbo. A 3900x will give a 240 50mm thick radiator a good workout. Coolent temps in the 41c range when fully heatsoaked.  Most people buying AIO's overlook heatsoaking.  On that 240 50mm tho rad I was testing it took around an hour of prime before my liquid temp leveled out. Games around 2 hours. 

 

 

AIO's make for a clean layout.  But you need to understand they are limited. After a few years they will stop working. You will need to take the pump apart and clean out the plasticizers from the micro fins and pump impeller. Just did this for a h100i GTX.  They are serviceable but not easy. If you are not experienced I'm watercooling don't try.  And you will need to make sure the vrm still gets proper airflow. Something AIO's do not provide unless you talk about Asus's trash rog aio. But that does nothing for the vrm. But it has a fan. But for the price you can get a real loop.

 

 

Now unless your ready to spend $350+ on a proper loop. And no the EK trash aluminum loops are all for looks. They are junk don't even consider one of them. Then my pick is the 

be quiet dark rock pro 4. If you can't get that then the  Noctua nh-d15 is another good one.  I prefer the dark rock 4 pro over the Noctua. But you can't go wrong either way. 

 

AIO's are fine for cpu's that don't make heat. But you will outgrow it. The limited life span fr the plasticizers make it a bad buy. 

 

 

So I should go for the air cooling?

[bignaz]

59 minutes ago, JamaicanHighwayPatrol said:

So I should go for the air cooling?

Unless you are looking at a custom loop.if it's aio vs air. I would go with a dark rock pro 4 every time.

[JamaicanHighwayPatrol]

54 minutes ago, bignaz said:

Unless you are looking at a custom loop.if it's aio vs air. I would go with a dark rock pro 4 every time.

It looks kinda ugly it’s at the same level as the aio