The one case where watercooling might not be able to beat air.

Niels_at_home · May 9, 2020

To 99% of people this won't apply.

I am really intolerant of system idle noise. I'm also happy to admit this is borderline delusional and obsessive. I just don't want to be able to hear anything at all until I'm rendering or gaming. My system (video link below the post) now has soft mounted 120 and 140mm Noctua fans currently running at speeds below 360RPM. No mechanical hard drives and no coil whine... until I'm gaming.

When Gamers Nexus did their comprehensive new cooler tests, I was surprised to see that even noise normalized, some AIO's came out on top. My gut feeling told me the pump, which always has to run, would have to be more audible than my slow fans. So I got a NZXT X62 and hooked it up just to hear the pump. And indeed, it is completely and totally unacceptable for my, admittedly, delusional low noise requirements. There is slight 'sluurrp' noise from the water, perhaps that goes away if it means some air is inside. But the pump itself, even at the lowest speed the CAM software allows, is just completely audible. Worse, it has a little bit of vibration that is extremely amplified when hard mounting the block/pump to a system. This is exactly what I expected and again, for normal people who tolerate slightly audible things, this is not really an issue. It is not loud, it is just not completely silent.

So, if you are really insane regarding ultra low, effectively inaudible computing, well below the 35dB normalized benchmarks by Steve from Gamers Nexus, then you get to a point where the pump just becomes the weak link in watercooling systems it seems. I had a new case design planned for a 280mm AIO but I'm not going to go that route now.

Disclaimers:

1) Of course, N=1, but NZXT is a good company and you wouldn't expect them to have shipped me a terrible pump. I believe it is working just fine, just not up to the standard I hold silent computing to.

2) In a custom loop you could probably soft mount the pump if it is not integrated into your cpu block which should help considerably, but even when I soft mount the NZXT, there is still very slight whirring that would be ever so slightly audible.

Bombastinator · May 9, 2020

My issue with AIOs is bubbles. If you’ve got bubbles an AIO is going to frequently be louder than an air cooler. At least I found it to be that way. I also never got an AIO that didn’t have bubbles in it. An AIO is going to have the same number of fans on its radiator as an air cooler so it can’t be quieter as long as the fans are running at the same speed. These days any air cooler with heat pipes is sort of a watercooler anyway, it’s just that the water movement is done without a motor and is therefore silent.

35dba also strikes me as high.

Niels_at_home · May 9, 2020

Yes I don't doubt Steve's data is correct, but probably 35dBa is just still 'loud' for a small group of users.

Bombastinator · May 9, 2020

1 minute ago, Niels_at_home said:

Yes I don't doubt Steve's data is correct, but probably 35dBa is just still 'loud' for a small group of users.

There used to be this thing called “quiet computing” it got really hardcore. I’m not sure how popular it is. Much less so than it was at one point. There’s a site called “silent pc” that specializes is low noise products.

The problem with it as a movement was that CPUs got lower power and easier to keep quiet while GPUs got higher power and became impossible to keep quiet. You mention being willing to put up with noise while rendering or gaming. I don’t even really like that. Screaming fans bug me no matter what. Even 120w of TDP in an atx PC Card dual slot is enough that there is no choice but lots of noise.

I suspect the number is larger than 1% of users. I don’t know how big it is though. I think the focus has shifted from finding ways to quiet CPUs to finding ways to quiet GPUs. A powerful gaming class cpu can run well under 90w these days which is below the advertised TDP of a NoFan cpu cooler so it’s noise can be reduced to zero. It’s the GPUs that are off the chain.