SHOULD I PUT WATER COOLING ON MY PC

[saba17]

so as i said  should i put water cooling on my pc.how different is air cooling and water cooling and how does water cooling even work.be safe!

[jaslion]

Specs first. Why do you want watercooling? Your current cooler not good enough?

 

Essentially a watercooler and air cooler do the same thing and the only difference is that a watercooler uses water and a pump to transfer heat to a radiator that then dissipates it compared to a air cooler which uses heatpipes that guide the heat to the heatsink. Same thing just different methods of accomplishing heat transfer.

 

Neither is better than the other really just comes down to personal preference, looks, budget and best choice for the project. In general it's always air part from some very weird cases where a watercooler is about the only option. I always recommend air cooling as it's gonna work till well past the time your system is no longer usable whilst most aio's have about 3 years of life if used correctly since the pumps just simply are a mechanical moving part and die.

[DJ46]

Oops, wrote my answer without even considering AIOs, I thought you wanted to make a custom loop.

Original reply bellow.

Spoiler

I hope this won't sound rude, but if you plan to build the loop by yourself, you have to be able to do enough research and watch enough content about this to make this decision.

 

Watercooling, unless you get it from a company with a warranty on any possible issues that might pop up, is a lot more involved than air cooling.

You need to pick the right parts, plan and assemble your loop correctly and expect routine maintenance.

 

For all this time and money you spend, you get a cool looking system that allows you to add more surface area to dissipate heat and get lower temperatures with well designed blocks and the thermal properties of water compared to air.

You can achieve better temperatures with aircooling if you want to, without having to worry about leaks or coolant contamination.

 

[saba17]

10 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Specs first. Why do you want watercooling? Your current cooler not good enough?

 

Essentially a watercooler and air cooler do the same thing and the only difference is that a watercooler uses water and a pump to transfer heat to a radiator that then dissipates it compared to a air cooler which uses heatpipes that guide the heat to the heatsink. Same thing just different methods of accomplishing heat transfer.

 

Neither is better than the other really just comes down to personal preference, looks, budget and best choice for the project. In general it's always air part from some very weird cases where a watercooler is about the only option. I always recommend air cooling as it's gonna work till well past the time your system is no longer usable whilst most aio's have about 3 years of life if used correctly since the pumps just simply are a mechanical moving part and die.

ok thank you i just asked i was thinking about putting watercooling in my PC but i will not buy it then :DD

[AngryBeaver]

27 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Specs first. Why do you want watercooling? Your current cooler not good enough?

 

Essentially a watercooler and air cooler do the same thing and the only difference is that a watercooler uses water and a pump to transfer heat to a radiator that then dissipates it compared to a air cooler which uses heatpipes that guide the heat to the heatsink. Same thing just different methods of accomplishing heat transfer.

 

Neither is better than the other really just comes down to personal preference, looks, budget and best choice for the project. In general it's always air part from some very weird cases where a watercooler is about the only option. I always recommend air cooling as it's gonna work till well past the time your system is no longer usable whilst most aio's have about 3 years of life if used correctly since the pumps just simply are a mechanical moving part and die.

I am not sure I would say one isn't better than another. I mean if we speak generally yes they both do the same thing, but when you look at application ups/downs there are some major advantages to either.

Air
+ Cheaper
+ Lesser points of failure
- Big Air is huge and space constrained

Water 
+ More control over access to cool air or directing hot air straight from the system
+ Less space limited as you can put multiple rads in a single system

+ Has the potential to be much more quiet than Air cooling

- Expensive

- Multiple points of failure

The truth is while AIR is fine and does a great job, when you get down to it any properly setup loop is going to out perform it in both thermals and noise levels. If looking at an AIO then this changes a little. At the minimum you would need to go with a 280mm system to basically beat a DH15 by a few C, which for the cost isn't worth it. Now once you start looking at 360mm systems the thermals do start to improve even more so.

Most people just don't need water cooling. I do it, because I am an enthusiast and like to overclock my components while maintaining great temps. I could still overclock well on big air, but noise and temps would become a bigger problem.

[jaslion]

Just now, AngryBeaver said:

+ Has the potential to be much more quiet than Air cooling

This I will forever object. Take a sycthe ninja 5 heatsink. 18db of noise on average which is quieter than any pump on the market.

[AngryBeaver]

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

This I will forever object. Take a sycthe ninja 5 heatsink. 18db of noise on average which is quieter than any pump on the market.

The only time I can hear my d5 pump is at 100% speed with the case open. The moment I close the glass side even that becomes inaudible. I can also cool a GPU and CPU with fan speeds set low enough to not be heard. 

The loudest thing in any case IMO is a GPU under load since those fans are smaller and do become quite audible.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

The loudest thing in any case IMO is a GPU under load since those fans are smaller and do become quite audible.

Yup fully true. That is where to me liquid cooling shines the most. Cpu's we've got well under control but gpu's are still the noisemachines.

[AngryBeaver]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

Yup fully true. That is where to me liquid cooling shines the most. Cpu's we've got well under control but gpu's are still the noisemachines.

We come back around on the space limit issue of air cooling. So if you lack surface area the only way to improve is to increase airflow which increased sound levels.

I mean if you go custom water it should always be to cool both cpu/gpu. My next project is going to be finding or coming up with a solution to cool the x570 chipset. The mobo I have doesn't spin up the fan unless the chipset is over 50c, but once it does it can be audible from time to time.