How is water cooling superior to air?

[Paint Stick]

I have been into PC gaming for over 15 years, and always ran on air.

 

After watching several videos on YT regarding water cooling, I dont see how it is superior to air.  

 

While it takes awhile for water to warm up, it takes awhile for water to cool down.  So the temps stay higher longer, vs air, where you have a spike in temps but it also cools way faster when no longer in use.

 

So how is water cooling better?  

 

Also requires fans to cool the radiators which pretty much eliminates the whole 'silent' aspect of the cooling system...

[Enderman]

Unless you're talking about custom loops, AIOs have so little water in them that it doesn't take any longer to heat up or cool down.

How long it takes to heat up or cool down is irrelevant, nobody cares about that. The performance is determined by the maximum temperature reached.

 

The benefits are

- looks better

- easier to install

- higher performance aka lower temps (assuming you get a 280mm or larger)

- expandable (for custom loops or expandable AIOs)

- customization 

[Fasauceome]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

higher performance aka lower temps (assuming you get a 280mm or larger)

The original question is how

 

The reason it's better is because watercooling radiators have very large surface areas, and when you pump water through the radiator and blow air over it, it cools it faster than just a big tower over a CPU. This is also the reason a small watercooler doesn't cool better than a good air cooler, but it still has the benefit of a small footprint on your motherboard.

[manikyath]

the main benefit of water is how much heat you can move, and how far you can move it.

 

in a sense, a large tower cooler (like i'm using) has a HUGE temperature delta just between the lower fins of the stack, and the upper fins. a watercooler uses a very optimized heatsink arrangement on the cpu itself to get extremely efficient cpu-to-water heat transfer, then pumping the water all the way up and down a rad to make for very efficient water-to-finstack heat transfer for *ALL* fins, letting multiple lower-rpm fans take care of the finstack-to-air heat transfer.

 

so in a sense.. you trade simplicity, a bit of safety (leaks!), and noisefloor for a setup that can move more heat more efficiently, and has a higher power limit.

[monjessenstein]

Plus, as an added bonus watercoolers are very efficient in carrying the heat way from your motherboard, letting them dump that heat straight out of the case.

[Alexalmighty502]

the radiator (with fans) easily remove the hot heat from the loop

 

also think about it pouring cool water on a really hot pan will quickly cool off the pan and heat up that water this is basically what happens in a water cooler except the water is reused after the water solution is cooled down from the radiator

 

also the radiator fans dont need to move as fast (with big radiators) because the radiator has a large surface area allowing the water to cool quickly

[Jurrunio]

Radiators also have larger surface area than any air cooler heatsink can provide without being too bug for any reasonably sized case

[DrMacintosh]

What has a very high specific heat (aka heat carrying capacity) and radiators give a lot of surface area to dissipate that heat. 

[DJ46]

I am a BIG fan of aircooling, but water cooling has its benefits. First, the cons (from my point of view):

- harder to install (not a block or something, but the tubes, bleeding the loop and stuff like that)

- gets very expensive

- requires maintenance

 

pros:

- with a good pump (like a D5) you don't add any pump noise

- you can move the heat further away from your components to dissipate it

- you can easily add more surface area than could even be possible - you can't match something crazy like two 480 rads with aircooling

-> this allows you to use more fans at a slower RPM even under load which leads to a quieter system

 

I used to be against water cooling but the only thing keeping me from using it these days is the cost.

My PC has to be as quiet as possible, so I'd use a D5 pump, which is more expensive than my whole current cooling setup just by itself. Then you add blocks, rads and fans and you realise that even a pack of fittings and some tubing is not exactly cheap.

[emosun]

18 minutes ago, Enderman said:

- easier to install

what 

[For Science!]

20 minutes ago, Paint Stick said:

-

Water is merely a convenient means to move the heat from one location to another, replacing it for ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, gallistan, mercury is not the important bit. The important aspect is that you can expand the heat dissipation surface radiator by installing a undetermined number of radiators in the system, that allows for more efficient dissipiation of the heat into the atmosphere. Yes, liquid cooling is still air cooling.

 

More surface area means less airflow to keep the same temperature, and therefore less rpm on a fan and less  noise. Counter-intuitively, more fans = less noise. With enough surface area, you can even omit the fans and rely on passive dissipation. This is also why 120 mm AIOs make no sense if a similar sized air cooler can be installed, the principle advantage of watercooling is to increase the surface area for heat dissipation.

 

[emosun]

23 minutes ago, Paint Stick said:

So how is water cooling better?  

Unless you actually need it , then it's not better.

If you can get by without it then water cooling is a massive waste of time and expense

there have been very few times where someone who lives in the desert with 100+ degree days needed a solution and I recommended water cooling. Because blowing hot air over a heat sink does nothing and they just need the machine to run. 

 

Short of "the environment literally forces the use of water cooling" I cannot think of a good reason people need it other than they chose to overclock a slow cpu rather than buying a better one that do the same thing via air cooling

[Enderman]

21 minutes ago, emosun said:

what 

Have you ever installed a large CPU heatsink where you can barely tighten the mounting screws?

An AIO is far easier because you can reach the mounting screws and put it on in seconds.

[Enderman]

35 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

The original question is how

There are more reasons how than just performance.

He asked how it is better, not how it performs better.

Those are two different questions.

[emosun]

8 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Have you ever installed a large CPU heatsink where you can barely tighten the mounting screws?

i dont buy those

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, emosun said:

i dont buy those

Well now you know.

Large CPU heatsinks are not as easy to install.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Large CPU heatsinks are not as easy to install.

how bout small ones

[Enderman]

12 minutes ago, emosun said:

how bout small ones

Those can be the same or easier since you don't have to mount a radiator, but you can't compare a tiny heatsink to an AIO because they perform differently.

The stuff that perform similar to a 240mm AIO is a NH-D15 or DRP3 or stuff like that.

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

you can't compare a tiny heatsink to an AIO because they perform differently

 

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

easier to install

maybe say that then

[Mira Yurizaki]

32 minutes ago, Paint Stick said:

So how is water cooling better?  

 

Also requires fans to cool the radiators which pretty much eliminates the whole 'silent' aspect of the cooling system...

So do the water pumps.

 

But it's not really about silence, it's about performance.But there are several factors why liquid cooling is better:

• There's more mass to move the heat away.
• The heat exchanger can be placed in more convenient locations for air flow.
• It's easier to mount a heavier cooling system when it's not hanging off the motherboard

However do note if you're looking at AIO tests, that they've left their test run on for a significant amount of time. Water has higher heat capacity, meaning it takes more energy to raise its temperature (and conversely, it takes a lot of heat to dissipate before the temperature drops). So for short runs, water looks significantly better, but over time it may creep closer to the performance of some higher end air coolers.

[Enderman]

14 minutes ago, emosun said:

 

maybe say that then

Maybe you should understand that we're not talking about tiny low performance heatsinks in comparison to high performance AIOs.

Then I wouldn't need to state the obvious.

[SolarNova]

Its a simple answer really.

 

A custom water loop is superior due to the ability of having a much larger surface area for heat disipation via mulitple large radiators. So thats the 'how'.

 

AIO's are not really that much better than top end air cooler to be honest, and i will never advise som1 to get a AIO over a top of the line air cooleru nless they have serious height restrictions for heatsinks.

 

As for noise. Thats primarily down to fan choice, however a large water loop can run fans at a lower speed to match or even beat the performance of a air cooler running the same fans at a higher speed, so a water loop can be quieter, but so long as you have the same good quality quiet fans on both an air cooler and water loop, they should both be equaly quiet.

[Tristerin]

From a gamers/average users perspective who switched last year to all AIO's (240 and 120s) - quiet AF.  Convenient AF.  Exhausts CPU heat directly out of case AF (had to put that there) (temps are a huge deal to me...lower the better, that is optimal).  Same difficulty to mount as any normal air cooler. 

 

Ill never go back to air cooling until an AIO borks and destroys one of my rigs.  Until that day - I will only AIO. 

 

Black Friday deals are coming, Ill probably pick up the ML 120 if it hits $25 again this year shipped just to have for future builds.  And yes a 120 does well on my Ryzen 7.

[Benjeh]

3 hours ago, Paint Stick said:

I have been into PC gaming for over 15 years, and always ran on air.

 

After watching several videos on YT regarding water cooling, I dont see how it is superior to air.  

 

While it takes awhile for water to warm up, it takes awhile for water to cool down.  So the temps stay higher longer, vs air, where you have a spike in temps but it also cools way faster when no longer in use.

 

So how is water cooling better?  

 

Also requires fans to cool the radiators which pretty much eliminates the whole 'silent' aspect of the cooling system...

Water takes longer to cool down but not when you apply a cooling solution to it, heat travels to the area of least resistance which is the fins on your air cooler heat sink or the fins on the radiator. Just to illustrate how good a pc radiator is, if you fill it with boiling water then shake it up and down you will literally cool it right back down to the point where you can handle the radiator again.

 

You don't need a lot of air to go through the radiator to keep it cool and the more radiator space you have the better the ability your pc has to dissipate heat. so the more rad space the slower the fans meaning less noise. I've had air coolers in the past but I will never go back to air cooling, its far to noisy for me.

 

If you overclock like myself you need a good way to get rid of heat, and I do that with a custom waterloop, air can't even come close without causing hearing loss.

 

[Neo-revo]

5 hours ago, DJ46 said:

which is more expensive than my whole current cooling setup just by itself.

done right it basically gaurentees lif of components

 

how much are you talking cause the d5, if you dont buy a rebranded one sells for 80-90$ cad,  less if you can find a score. If you look at EK and other pumps, you may think this, But even PWM pumps are useless IMO.   pumps dont need to vary, just choose a speed that works and leave it,  As stated the science of water doesn't care how fast the pump is going as  much as RAD surface(meters squared+fans/rpm/airflow) and TDP input.     having your system control the pump speed seems to be a novelty useless feature to me that exists cause they 'needed' to improve something that didn't need improving in order to make people think they needed it.

 

Air coolers also vasty vary in size/cost and respective performance, more money doesn't always mean it will work better, but its a safe hedge bet if you do research.

2 hours ago, Tristerin said:

-snip- quiet AF.  Convenient AF.  Exhausts CPU heat directly out of case AF (had to put that there) (temps are a huge deal to me...lower the better, that is optimal).  Same difficulty to mount as any normal air cooler.  

 

-snip-Ryzen 7. 

 (joys of lower TDP new hardware) nice that a 120 can do something, i would feel better with a 140.

 

and yea basically thats It for W/C its a huge upfront investment, but so was  the other 2 'sections' i can invest on my system (peripherals/hardware)