Custom Loop Worth It?

[Ephy]

Is a Custom loop worth it? Or should I get a AIO? Or should I just stay with an Air Cooler

 

[8-Bit Ninja]

2 minutes ago, Ephy said:

Is a Custom loop worth it? Or should I get a AIO? Or should I just stay with an Air Cooler

 

pc specs?

[Syntaxvgm]

A custom loop is almost never 'worth it' 

Unless, of course, you want a computer with a custom loop. 

[bgibbz]

6 minutes ago, Ephy said:

Is a Custom loop worth it? Or should I get a AIO? Or should I just stay with an Air Cooler

 

Absolutely not. The value is terrible. If you can afford it, great. If you can't don't worry. To be honest, AIOs arent entirely worth it, cheaper air coolers (high quality ones) can perform just as well as an AIO.

[8-Bit Ninja]

4 minutes ago, bgibbz said:

Absolutely not. The value is terrible. If you can afford it, great. If you can't don't worry. To be honest, AIOs arent entirely worth it, cheaper air coolers (high quality ones) can perform just as well as an AIO.

Its why i asked for specs, if its something like a 6800k, and 2 1080's and you need the performance boost then its worth it, but something like a 1060 and 6600k its pointless 

[Gonio]

Air coolers are best price for performance. Consider the Scythe Fuma. Is high end cooler that trades blows with the top Noctua's and even several AIO's. If you really want a AIO that has similar or better performance you need to look at rad sizes form 240 and up.

[manikyath]

a custom loop isnt about being "worth", they're about going all out.

 

it's like buying a lambo isnt worth, it's just something you buy because you "want" it.

[dizmo]

A custom loop is never worth the investment if you're looking for performance to cost.

It's about liking how it looks.
They're extremely expensive and require a great deal of maintenance and research to get going.

 

[Tucc1]

• Looks cool
• lower fan rpm
• Temps are better
• Very expensive
• maintenance

If cost isn't an issue and you don't mind the maintenance, do it. Personally i would never go back 

 

 

 

[bgibbz]

37 minutes ago, 8-Bit Ninja said:

Its why i asked for specs, if its something like a 6800k, and 2 1080's and you need the performance boost then its worth it, but something like a 1060 and 6600k its pointless 

Specs dont matter either really. While maybe you can squeeze a little more performance out of a machine with a higher overclock, the value will nevertheless be terrible.

[Ephy]

1 hour ago, 8-Bit Ninja said:

Its why i asked for specs, if its something like a 6800k, and 2 1080's and you need the performance boost then its worth it, but something like a 1060 and 6600k its pointless 

1 GTX 1080 and I havent settled if I want a 6800K or a 6700K

[Mick Naughty]

I like being able not to hear my PC. Custom loop offers better temps then anything practical. I also like to overclocking if it helps.  Completely worth it to me. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

A custom loop is almost never 'worth it' 

Unless, of course, you want a computer with a custom loop. 

Almost never. And the second is definately the most important part.

2 hours ago, bgibbz said:

Specs dont matter either really. While maybe you can squeeze a little more performance out of a machine with a higher overclock, the value will nevertheless be terrible.

 

2 hours ago, Gonio said:

Air coolers are best price for performance. Consider the Scythe Fuma. Is high end cooler that trades blows with the top Noctua's and even several AIO's. If you really want a AIO that has similar or better performance you need to look at rad sizes form 240 and up.

Both of these comments kinda miss something.

 

While yes, for most users Air Coolers are the most efficient value wise, the higher total thermal load/system value you put on your system the more and more advantageous AIO's become. Unless ofc you don't care about noise (and are ok with server-style fans) in which realistically speaking the higher thermal load isn't really a big deal.

 

This is especially relevant when looking at multi GPU systems. Suppose you went back to about a year ago. The 980ti is the best perf per dollar card on the ENTIRE market. 2 980ti's are still fairly good at perf per dollar as well (at high resolutions). X99 systems are cheaper to build than Skylake (at similar feature levels). Suppose therefor you build a 5820k 2-980ti extreme gaming pc with similarly extreme other components minus the cooling. Lets call that total system worth 3000 dollars. Now, if you are going to use air coolers (on custom cards, and on the cpu) you can do some light overclocking and maybe if you are lucky your acoustics to hold everything under 80C will be around 35-40 dB.

 

Now suppose you shelled out 400 dollars for AIO type sets (or maybe did this instead at the beginning) for the cpu (280+)/gpu/gpu. Now you can pull out about another 10% gpu perf, about 5-10% cpu perf, about 15% gaming perf (believe it or not, getting that higher cpu clock speed REALLY REALLY helps flagship sli builds). You can also turn down the fans a great deal and your pumps are probably your limiting noise factors (assuming you bought good fans). This should put you around 25-30 dB.

 

So overall, at a system cost increase of 12%, you get about that much gaming perf, a bit less compute, and a pretty darn significant noise reduction (the value of which is hard to say, but for me personally its huge.)

 

Custom loop is much harder to justify, performance gains over aio's are generally going to be small to negligible, but for another 500 dollars or so (over the aio's) you can build a custom loop that drops you down to >20 dB idle, >25 dB load (my system has been measured by calibrated sound meters at 17/23 dBA). Silence and looks are really the only reasons to go beyond AIO, esp if you have a very low local noise floor (again my local noise floor is 19 dBA weekday, 17 dBA weeknight, 13 dBA winter weekend) and are sensitive to computer noise.

 

 

 

THIS SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS A CUSTOM LOOPS ARE WORTH IT. THE QUESTION YOU NEED TO ASK YOURSELF IS DO YOU WANT IT, AND CAN YOU AFFORD IT. THERE IS ALMOST NO POSSIBLE JUSTIFICATION FOR LESS POWER HUNGRY HARDWARE WATERCOOLING (sff builds are a possible fringe exception).