Any problems with CPU All in One Water Cooler units??

Vlad Drac

Vlad Drac

Vlad Drac

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Hi all

What are the all in one CPU water cooler units like these days (Corsair, Antec)??
Do they have problems with water leaks or pump failures or are there any other known probs? Also are they totally maintenance free or do you have to look after them a little??
 
Like any component they do suffer failures. Leaks dont seem to be a very common issue but pump failure is a known problem. Maintenance wise, all you really need to do is clean the rad and fans once in a while as you would with an air cooler.
 
They perform on par with high end air cooling and is far from the performance of real water cooling. If you can accommodate a large air cooler and have no interest in custom water, i would go for air.
 
I don't believe it's solely worth doing watercooling on the CPU unless you're doing GPU at the same time or want the smaller profile of not having a massive heatsink attached to the socket.
 
New-model AiO watercoolers are not problematic. Pump failure is not common, neither are leaks. You get that idea from google, as they only post the bad results.. you don't often see a thread with "Who has a non-leaking AiO?".

Some old things, like the early Swiftech ones had a typical pump fault. If you buy a new corsair unit, like H100i, H105, H110, etc.. You'll need to be one in 100k to have a problem.

Some of them, like the corsair ones do come with a 5-year warranty as well, and they will replace your components if a leak should occur.

Anyway, proper air coolers are most likely just as good, however AiO water can have its benefits.
 
They cool better than anything else for the size. The smallest custom water loop is still larger and with the range of 120mm standard to 240mm or thick radiators available on AIO it's almost pointless to make a small custom loop for a CPU. Maybe for aesthetic reasons.

Give no grief with clearance for memory modules or case dimensions.

Use a dust filter or hoover the radiator fins every now and again and that's it. No worse and probably easier than removing dust from an air tower heatsink.

I'm using a Corsair H50 from 2009 which is a single 120mm radiator, idles on low 30's, play busy MMO's at 50's, prime @ 60's, IBT @70s. CPU is a i5 750 @ 4GHz 1.4v.

Noise is all relative to circumstances, ability to hear, case location, soundproofing etc but an AIO has the same number of fans as an air cooler. Pump makes no more noise than a low speed fan.
 
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all in one wc kits are preference only. I saw a comment that they are as good as a custom loop, then at this i would beg to differ. One could not expect a all in one system that has a 120 or 240 radiator to perform as well as a custom loop with a 420mm radiator and a more powerful pump and fans.

However all in ones do have their place and they are a GREAT introduction to water cooling, with a view to moving on to a custom kit. MANY years ago i started with the gigabyte 3-d galaxy wc system.

So yup all in ones are very good, but you cannot even begin to compare performance with a decent custom loop.
 
I think the larger ones (eg H100) are a bit pricey.
However, I bought a reconditioned one for less than half price, so for that kind of performance it was very worthwhile.

Little noisy with the pump, especially with the stock fans on full chat at high setting, but the cooling is wicked. I've had no problems whatsoever. My 6350 at 4.5GHz only hits the upper 40ºC level under benchmarking.
 
Still running the H50-1 I bought 4 years ago. Still going strong. It's cooled an i3 530, Phenom II 965, Phenom II 1090T, Phenom II 1100T, i5 2500K, and recently an i7 2600K.

Quality bit of kit :D
 
At the moment I'm using a Corsair H60 with two eLoop 120 fans and my idle temps are around 27-31c ..on BF4 temps go to around 48-50c ...but I would be tempted to go for the H100


whereas using my Phanteks air Cooler my idle temps are around 23-25c and when on BF4 temps go to about 39-41c

But the Phanteks is a big cooler....very good cooler though
 
frostdragon said:
all in one wc kits are preference only. I saw a comment that they are as good as a custom loop, then at this i would beg to differ. One could not expect a all in one system that has a 120 or 240 radiator to perform as well as a custom loop with a 420mm radiator and a more powerful pump and fans.

However all in ones do have their place and they are a GREAT introduction to water cooling, with a view to moving on to a custom kit. MANY years ago i started with the gigabyte 3-d galaxy wc system.

So yup all in ones are very good, but you cannot even begin to compare performance with a decent custom loop.
Click to expand...

I made that comment but I was specifically meaning that AIO's make small custom loops with the same sized radiators virtually redundant. I would not argue that a 120 or 240 radiator loop was equivalent in cooling to a radiator double the size.

It's not common to have cases which can fit more than a 240 radiator which is where AIO's have paused in their market expansion.
 
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