How come current gen. consoles aren't watercooled?

[Man]

Given the kind of hardware of modern consoles with thousands of stream processors and multi-core CPUs, it sounds rather strange that they are air-cooled with solo fans screaming to high heavens to keep things cool, or at least trying to! Now sure, the fans are specifically optimized for the heatsink and consoles tend to run games with a locked frame-rate which really makes a difference in terms of thermals but still... what about the future? Dust accumulation combined with tight packaging and ever demanding titles and the ensuing strain on the hardware means you're looking at a time bomb, basically! There's only so much heat a silicon chip can tolerate. 

 

And that's where water-cooling come into play. 

 

With waterpipes, you can make the console as airtight as possible without worrying about dust accumulation so that's one problem solved. Plus, water-cooling is generally far more efficient than air-cooling. There's a reason auto industry pretty much ditched air-cooled engines in the 70s and 80s. Plus, I think plastic pipes are a lot cheaper to produce than chunky heatsinks on a mass scale! 

 

A good AIO can easily last 6-8 years, as per Google at least, which is about the average lifespan of a console anyway. And even if it's an issue, it can be countered by making the water pump and radiator fan user replaceable. As for pipes, I doubt they're going to leak or perhaps burst open on their own; as long as you don't move them around like PC tinkerers.

 

Kind of a win/win scenario, as far as I can tell. 

 

 

[Totallycasual]

Water cooling is extra expense+complexity without much of a gain so far as thermals are concerned, picking up an extra few degrees may matter to a PC enthusiast but the average console gamer wouldn't give a fuck. 

[Alexsheff93]

imagine this the PS10 is release you have a 4 year old kid and he decides to drop kick it as kids like to reck things we know this, next minute you got a pretty green liquid on that beautiful cream carpet. and i guess this is why consoles wont have water cooling.

[AndreiArgeanu]

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[Chris Pratt]

A major reason is that air cooling actually outperforms water cooling in compact builds. You need a 280mm+ rad to outstrip what air cooling and clever heatsink design can accomplish.

[AndreiArgeanu]

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