Refillable AIO liquid coolers?

[Shadowrun]

Hi.

Are there any decent refillable aios coolers? I've been trying to find some and so far it's only Alphacool Eisbaer but surely there's gotta be something else...preferably not brands with blown-out brandname taxes to them such as  NZXT or Corsair.

I need it for i7 8700k non-delidded(yet)

[karsnoordhuis]

ek has a modular kit and swiftech has their h series coolers

[SolarNova]

Unless your running a smal form factor build with no room for a large air cooler, i would sugest avoiding AIO's, they are expensive, usualy noisier, dont perform much better than a top of the line aircooler, and add in points of failure.

A NH-D15 for example can compete with most 240mm AIO's.

 

If you want one just "becouse water!" ..then well .....ok.

But if you want better performance then a custom loop is the way forward after top end air cooling.

[Barnack]

3 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

dont perform much better than a top of the line aircooler

that's true as long as you put the radiator in your case making it utterly pointless. But if your build places the radiator outside, you will not push warm air on other components (gpu, ram, psu, mobo) from your cpu radiator, nor push warm air to the cpu radiator in case you put it in the "air out" side.

In my opinion yes, water cooling is almost pointless or in most cases irrelevant compared to air cooling if you have it inside the case, but if you have it outside, it can make more difference.

[SolarNova]

Im not quite sure what your getting at here.

 

AIO's dont have long enough tubing to have the rad mounted speratly outside the case. In addition regardless of rad and fan orientation on the case, your ether going to be sucking cool air into the rad and pumping wamred air into the case, or sucking warmed air into the rad from within the case. These situation are only going to be a issue in a case with terrible airflow. So long as the case has good airflow , neither should be an issue. Ontop of that, reivews and benchmarks of AIO's do them in best case scenerios, on test benches usualy, same goes for air coolers, those that dont, use the same case in all tests for fairness.

 

So im not qute sure what your getting at in regards to AIO rad mounting outside the case vs a aircooler inside the case.

 

 

[Shadowrun]

22 minutes ago, karsnoordhuis said:

ek has a modular kit and swiftech has their h series coolers

Swiftech's site says out of stock, and can't use amazon(also out of stock)

EK KIT P280 is 400€ so that's definitely nope.avi

 

19 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Unless your running a smal form factor build with no room for a large air cooler, i would sugest avoiding AIO's, they are expensive, usualy noisier, dont perform much better than a top of the line aircooler, and add in points of failure.

A NH-D15 for example can compete with most 240mm AIO's.

 

If you want one just "becouse water!" ..then well .....ok.

But if you want better performance then a custom loop is the way forward after top end air cooling.

It's a midtower with Evo 212 at the moment but idle temps are 39C which is meh even with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut applied as a thin layer. The ambient temp doesn't help much, it's pretty hot in the summer usually and the man cave doesn't have air conditioning. Also 2 fans on top, 1 rear,  1 front. I need some splitters because I'm out of headers.

But yeah, I gues air might be better.

[SolarNova]

Well ambient temp will affect a water cooler the same as an air cooler, the heat is going to the same place. Water loops usualy work better than air cooelrs due to the increased surface area of the radiators, the water just transfers the heat from the GPu to the rad where the rad then just aircooling itself. This is one reason why a large Air cooler like a D15 is just as good as a 240mm AIO, but custom loops that have thicker rads, larger rads, and/or multiple rads do better than any air cooler.

The other difference is water coolers take time to reach thermal equialibrium, so they 'may' perform better initaly, but once the liquid temp equalizes the cooling efficency will drop.

 

The other thing you can do is improve case airflow.