Air cooler vs AIO

[Ganje]

Hi all, need help with deciding which cooler to buy for Ryzen 7 5800x. I'm planning to do a little overclocking in future but nothing too hot. What type of cooler is better in your opinion, air or AIO? For air cooler I would go with Dark Rock Pro 4 or Noctua NH-U12S. For AIO I would probably go with Arctic Liquid Freezer II. My budget is around 100$ and I'm living in Europe so feel free to suggest me other coolers for that price. Now, I have more questions about this topic:

• What are pros and cons of an AIO ? 
• Does AIO have better performance ? 
• Would an AIO cooler get me lower temperature in case because it's taking and exhausting air from outside ?

 

[Shimejii]

Not gonna lie, Just dont waste your time overclocking on ryzen 5000 series, its not worth your time or effort as you dont gain much performance at all anymore.

 

Pros for AIO : Better sustained loads for around 3 minutes, then temps will be about the same. 

AIOS Can have better performance, but they have to be 280 to 360, and with a cpu like the 5800x, i honestly dont expect it to be all that much.

It can be cooler, but overall i doubt youll have much issues cooling the 5800x.

 

In my opinion, 5800x should just be aircooler, 5900x/5950x id recommend to AIO cool, although they too arent NEARLY as bad as intel chips.

[Alex Atkin UK]

14 minutes ago, Ganje said:

Hi all, need help with deciding which cooler to buy for Ryzen 7 5800x. I'm planning to do a little overclocking in future but nothing too hot. What type of cooler is better in your opinion, air or AIO? For air cooler I would go with Dark Rock Pro 4 or Noctua NH-U12S. For AIO I would probably go with Arctic Liquid Freezer II. My budget is around 100$ and I'm living in Europe so feel free to suggest me other coolers for that price. Now, I have more questions about this topic:

• What are pros and cons of an AIO ? 
• Does AIO have better performance ? 
• Would an AIO cooler get me lower temperature in case because it's taking and exhausting air from outside ?

 

AIO Pros (240 or bigger)
Potentially superior quieter cooling, at least when not under full load for long periods.

Subjectively looks better in the case.

Can be placed on intake or exhaust.

 

AIO Negatives:

They age, sometimes really fast.  If you're unlucky months, if you're lucky years.
Cold plates can be small and not optimal for newer CPUs.

 

Air cooler Pros:
Will pretty much last forever as usually only the fans wear out and these days they use standard sizes so are easy and cheap to replace.
Tons of heat pipes so potentially cover the CPU heatspreader better for chiplet CPUs.
Usually easy to get newer mounting mechanisms for newer CPU sockets.

 

Air cooler Negatives:

Potentially louder.
Can't optimally place where its venting the air so it will get heat from the GPU.

Honestly while it might not look like it from the above, I find the potential for an AIO needing replacing every couple of years or more outweighs everything else.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Just go aircooler, they last literally forever just needa swap fan every 10+ years or so and thats it maintenence wise (other than cleaning dust)

 

Mugen 5, fuma 2, peerless assasin, ta140, vetroo v5, etc. They will be enough for a 5800x, anyways just turn on pbo and let it do its thing since pbo auto ocs the cpu, you can undervolt with curve optimizer but thats upto you to decide if its worth it or not

[Hybris5112]

50 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Air cooler Negatives:

Potentially louder.
Can't optimally place where its venting the air so it will get heat from the GPU.

Honestly while it might not look like it from the above, I find the potential for an AIO needing replacing every couple of years or more outweighs everything else.

 

I would like to add that a air cooler needs to have a good flowing case to work at its best. It seem obvious but in the age of solid front cases it needs to be said.

 

Now as to the question of which cooling system is better. For the budget you really can't beat old school air cooling. Even if you have total fan failure of either the fans themselves (easily replaceable) or the motherboard fan headers you still have a base amount of passive cooling to work with.

 

Again however you do need to pay more attention to your cases overall airflow and often times you just need a bigger case.

[Alex Atkin UK]

12 hours ago, Hybris5112 said:

I would like to add that a air cooler needs to have a good flowing case to work at its best. It seem obvious but in the age of solid front cases it needs to be said.

That's a very good point, although the bigger problem you run into if airflow is bad is your GPU is going to run hot.

 

Depending on your use case of course, if you don't need a dGPU then just keeping the CPU cooler can work, although you still could run into issues with the CPU VRMs getting toasty.

I forgot to miss that one actually, advantage to air cooler is it also cools the motherboard VRMs.

[Hybris5112]

59 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

That's a very good point, although the bigger problem you run into if airflow is bad is your GPU is going to run hot.

 

Depending on your use case of course, if you don't need a dGPU then just keeping the CPU cooler can work, although you still could run into issues with the CPU VRMs getting toasty.

I forgot to miss that one actually, advantage to air cooler is it also cools the motherboard VRMs.

Agreed. I in fact recently ran into this issue as the case I am using in its current config is choking even my massive D15 cooler. I have to run everything fast and loud to keep my temps reasonable until I can get a better case.

[Queen Chrysalis]

14 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Just go aircooler, they last literally forever just needa swap fan every 10+ years or so and thats it maintenence wise (other than cleaning dust)

 

Mugen 5, fuma 2, peerless assasin, ta140, vetroo v5, etc. They will be enough for a 5800x, anyways just turn on pbo and let it do its thing since pbo auto ocs the cpu, you can undervolt with curve optimizer but thats upto you to decide if its worth it or not

Even then, maybe not even on the fan swap.  The new work computer I got my dad for father's day 2018 has a rear exhaust fan from a dell that originally shipped with an athlon x2.  My mom's 4570 machine is coming up on that decade mark so we'll see lol.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

25 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Even then, maybe not even on the fan swap.  The new work computer I got my dad for father's day 2018 has a rear exhaust fan from a dell that originally shipped with an athlon x2.  My mom's 4570 machine is coming up on that decade mark so we'll see lol.

Guess thats just a matter of luck, usually fans dont die till theyre 10 years old but ive even heard of ppl having fully working cpu coolers that havent experienced fan death for 20+ years, even if you get unlucky and fan dies early atleast theyre easy and cheap to replace unlike aios where pump ded = bye bye the entire aio being completely useless to the average person and only good for salvage, though you can make a custom loop with aio parts

[Queen Chrysalis]

4 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Guess thats just a matter of luck, usually fans dont die till theyre 10 years old but ive even heard of ppl having fully working cpu coolers that havent experienced fan death for 20+ years, even if you get unlucky and fan dies early atleast theyre easy and cheap to replace unlike aios where pump ded = bye bye the entire aio being completely useless to the average person and only good for salvage, though you can make a custom loop with aio parts

Yeah magnets kina last roughly forever, so it seems some kind of event has to cause failure (surge, particle, finger, drop).

[Alex Atkin UK]

31 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Yeah magnets kina last roughly forever, so it seems some kind of event has to cause failure (surge, particle, finger, drop).

Its the bearings that go, the better the bearing (and better your cases dust protection), the longer they will usually last.

 

I have an Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme from around 2008 that has made the transition between a LOT of PCs.  Its has a propitiatory fan design that only fits that cooler so potentially a PITA, but it still works fine.

In fact, the only ones I really had issues with were cheap Akasa coolers back in the early Athlon days, those fans would die if you so much as looked at them funny.  But I believe even their budget coolers are a lot better these days.

[Queen Chrysalis]

Just now, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its the bearings that go, the better the bearing (and better your cases dust protection), the longer they will usually last.

 

I have an Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme from around 2008 that has made the transition between a LOT of PCs.  Its has a propitiatory fan design that only fits that cooler so potentially a PITA, but it still works fine.

What kind of bearing?  Fluid dynamic should last like 100 years+ or something, to the point where it's not even a consideration.  Even basic sleeve bearing usually use a lithium grease that doesn't really wear out.  I would think an event (large dust particle) would have to have caused that.  The part itself doesn't wear.  So yeah I guess accumulation can happen, but if you've ever taken a fan apart, for a particle to get in there it would have to be insanely lucky.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Just now, Queen Chrysalis said:

What kind of bearing?  Fluid dynamic should last like 100 years+ or something, to the point where it's not even a consideration.  Even basic sleeve bearing usually use a lithium grease that doesn't really wear out.  I would think an event (large dust particle) would have to have caused that.  The part itself doesn't wear.  So yeah I guess accumulation can happen, but if you've ever taken a fan apart, for a particle to get in there it would have to be insanely lucky.

They're all susceptible to fine dust getting in there, problem is even a dust filter wont block the really microscopic particles.  But the better the bearing, the more resistant they will be.

Although I'd wager more fans get broken while cleaning in an enthusiast market, I've broken off blades before and spun a fan so fast its trashed the bearing somehow.  Whereas the average consumer with no PC knowledge they will just get choked full of dust, especially in a household with smokers.  I once did a temporary RROD repair on someones Xbox 360, they smoked but supposedly always had the window open so thought everything was fine.  It was impossible to remove the dust in the heatsinks.

As for fans in general, definitely had a fair few generic case fans go bad when a couple of cheap 80mm with sleeve bearings was all you got.

[Queen Chrysalis]

7 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Although I'd wager more fans get broken while cleaning in an enthusiast market, I've broken off blades before and spun a fan so fast its trashed the bearing somehow. 

A power surge did this to a fan on my boyfriends 1070ti.  Gave me an excuse to just remove the shroud and put 2 p12s I had from a 5 pack on it, as parts for GPU fans are expensive or hard to find.  Runs a little faster now anyhow.