Does water cooling (custom loop/AIO) feel cooler than air cooling (premium ones such as NH-D15)?

[LinYu]

Does water cooling (custom loop or AIO) feel cooler than air cooling (premium ones such as NH-D15)

Me and my friend had a long debate about this tonight, and none of us convinced the other.
For clarification, the sense of cool we are debate is whether you feel cool or vice versa sitting next to it, not the component temperature. 
Also we both know that water has higher heat capacity than air, thus we are talking about the feeling when water cooling had reached equilibrium.

[RollinLower]

the heat produced by your components is the same. Under watercooling your machine can arguably even use more power because it clocks higher, producing more waste heat.

[DoctorNick]

8 minutes ago, LinYu said:

Does water cooling (custom loop or AIO) feel cooler than air cooling (premium ones such as NH-D15)

Me and my friend had a long debate about this tonight, and none of us convinced the other.
For clarification, the sense of cool we are debate is whether you feel cool or vice versa sitting next to it, not the component temperature. 
Also we both know that water has higher heat capacity than air, thus we are talking about the feeling when water cooling had reached equilibrium.

I agree with  @RollinLowerPC dumps the same amount of heat to the room with either setup.

[LinYu]

5 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

the heat produced by your components is the same. Under watercooling your machine can arguably even use more power because it clocks higher, producing more waste heat.

The premise of this debate is that our friend just got a new system 12900k and 3080. She’s having trouble with heat, but we are debating whether it would make her more comfortable if we swap the nh-d15 with a 360 aio.

[RollinLower]

Just now, LinYu said:

The premise of this debate is that our friend just got a new system 12900k and 3080. She’s having trouble with heat, but we are debating whether it would make her more comfortable if we swap the nh-d15 with a 360 aio.

the issue is that you are just changing the way the heat gets removed from the chip, and dumped into the room. But the thermal output of the chip stays the same, and thus the heat dumped into the room should also stay pretty much the same.

 

If you make a setup that actually removes the heat from the room you would get a better result. like, maybe custom watercooling but with the radiator hanging outside?

[191x7]

2 minutes ago, LinYu said:

The premise of this debate is that our friend just got a new system 12900k and 3080. She’s having trouble with heat, but we are debating whether it would make her more comfortable if we swap the nh-d15 with a 360 aio.

Room heat or computer parts (CPU) heating up?

 

With room heat, changing the cooler wouldn't help.

With CPU temperatures, a better (stronger) cooler would help.

[LinYu]

2 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

the issue is that you are just changing the way the heat gets removed from the chip, and dumped into the room. But the thermal output of the chip stays the same, and thus the heat dumped into the room should also stay pretty much the same.

 

If you make a setup that actually removes the heat from the room you would get a better result. like, maybe custom watercooling but with the radiator hanging outside?

Not necessarily room temp, just the temperature around her computer, where she puts her pc under her desk. Would she feel cooler, or more or less the same.

[LinYu]

1 minute ago, 191x7 said:

Room heat or computer parts (CPU) heating up?

 

With room heat, changing the cooler wouldn't help.

With CPU temperatures, a better (stronger) cooler would help.

We both realize this, but we are debating for a closer vicinity (the air temp around the pc) instead of the whole room environment. 

[191x7]

7 minutes ago, LinYu said:

We both realize this, but we are debating for a closer vicinity (the air temp around the pc) instead of the whole room environment. 

The same system outputs the same amount of heat. 

 

Maybe adding a fan to change the airflow around the PC?

[Vishera]

26 minutes ago, LinYu said:

Not necessarily room temp, just the temperature around her computer, where she puts her pc under her desk. Would she feel cooler, or more or less the same.

From my experience it depends on the temperature that the components run at.

The cooler the components the less heat will be radiated.

 

I have a few PCs,one of them has over kill cooling and the other is a furnace.

The PC with the overkill cooling exhausts cooler air than ambient - just like how humans use fans in the summer to cool down.

On the other hand the furnace PC has barebones cooling and radiates tons of heat,the air around it feels like 50C~60C so it's quite hot.

 

Cool PC under full load:

CPU 50C

GPU 66C

 

Furnace PC under full load:

CPU 70C

GPU 84C

[For Science!]

 

27 minutes ago, LinYu said:

We both realize this, but we are debating for a closer vicinity (the air temp around the pc) instead of the whole room environment. 

 

That's a more complex question as you have fluid (air) dynamics to take into account. Is the air just shot out the back of the case? In my  custom loop, hot air is exhausted out the front and top of the case, so I can definitely feel the room heat up while I game.

 

[For Science!]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

The PC with the overkill cooling exhausts cooler air than ambient - just like how humans use fans in the summer to cool down.

I'm sorry, exhausting air cooler than ambient is not possible. The only reason why humans can use fans to cool down is because we sweat and thus take advantage of evaporative cooling, unfortunately most PCs cannot sweat.

[Motifator]

43 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

If you make a setup that actually removes the heat from the room you would get a better result. like, maybe custom watercooling but with the radiator hanging outside?

Somebody on TPU actually did something... very interesting. They dug the ground and literally buried the cooling into it. You should see it, lol.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/geothermal-cooled-3080-power-limit.295792/#post-4774022

[KaitouX]

Like already mentioned, the heat dumped in the room is the same regardless of air or watercooling.

Probably the best solution is to just drop the power consumption by undervolting/power limiting both GPU and CPU, you can probably reduce the power consumption by 100W+ with no noticeable performance difference. Other options are to move the PC to the other side of the room/another room and just get extensions/longer cables and Hubs for the necessary cables, or maybe put the PC in front of a window, or duct the PC exhaust out of the room.

[jones177]

To me it is mainly about location.

 

If a computer I have under a table in the living room is put under a table in a bedroom it will run 3c hotter.

If it is put on the table in the living room it will run 3c cooler. 

The difference is the airflow around the computer. 

 

I have computers with D-15s and 360mm AIOs. 

My AIOs are about 3 to 5c cooler than my D-15s but with their 3 120mm fans they are loud compared to the single 140mm fan of the D-15.  So the AIO computers are usually on the floor and the D-15 computers are on tables.  

 

Non of the computers when they are on a table radiate enough heat to effect me even though they mostly use i9s and at a minimum a 3080 ti. 

The computers under tables in bedrooms can effect me since there is less air flow around them. This takes around 2 hours gaming so it is a good sign it is time to quit.

With a bedroom door open I can play indefinitely since the A/C thermostat is in the hall but if I am in the bed room I am there not to annoy others so the door is closed.

 

With 30 series GPUs, the heat put out by my CPUs has become insignificant so the setups are designed to keep the GPU cool and the AIOs or D-15s eat the exhaust air from the GPU.  This has little effect on the CPUs. They idle in the low 30s and game in the 50s and 60s. 

 

As for the feeling they are about the same to me. With the D-15 builds being less annoying since they make less noise.

 

[LinYu]

5 hours ago, KaitouX said:

Like already mentioned, the heat dumped in the room is the same regardless of air or watercooling.

Probably the best solution is to just drop the power consumption by undervolting/power limiting both GPU and CPU, you can probably reduce the power consumption by 100W+ with no noticeable performance difference. Other options are to move the PC to the other side of the room/another room and just get extensions/longer cables and Hubs for the necessary cables, or maybe put the PC in front of a window, or duct the PC exhaust out of the room.

It's less about the room temperature, instead we are debating over the fluid(air) around the case, where the case fans exhausts.

[Bianks84]

7 hours ago, 191x7 said:

The same system outputs the same amount of heat. 

 

Maybe adding a fan to change the airflow around the PC?

Maybe even consider straying from conventional front-to-back airflow.

Depending on how the computer is situated this could help.

I've considered reversing my own front intake rear exhaust setup to redirect some heat towards me during the winter months. That make sense?

 

Though like others have already mentioned, the most effective solution is to get the heat out of the ROOM. Like if you have doors closed to this room and no ventilation then your focus needs to be on fixing that.

[Dogzilla07]

@LinYuIf you do everything opposite of how it should be done (bad airflow, hot pockets, vortices in the case), components going haywire near overheating at high temps, you'll get cold air coming out of the exhaust side (if you've successfully ruined the airflow, the components, and made the exhaust fans directly intake cold air in a separate loop ignoring any and all components in the PC), then it will feel nice for whomever is sitting near.

 

A friend had a setup like this on the floor which was exhaustintg cold air out it's closest to the front top fan up at roughly the right side of the users body.

 

Like @Bianks84mentioned, it's important where you're exhausting:

 

1. If you're cooking your components with hot pockets and have separate non-heat-transfering exhaust loop = exhaust onto the user

2. If you've got a proper airflow setup beneficial to the components = exhaust away from the user

 

In both cases the user can't be located too close to the case, nor touch the case xD

 

It can never be fans on radiators water cooling (they will have some heat regardless), you need pointless fans, doing pointless things in circular ways unconnected to any and all sources of heat. Safe to say having as many fans possible makes this way easier.