I always found AIOs to be the worst of both worlds. You're not getting the performance, silence or flexibility of custom water cooling, and you're not getting the reliability and longevity of air cooling. All you're getting is really the looks.
Ditching water and going back to air
- Thread starter JJimmyJ
- Start date
I always found AIOs to be the worst of both worlds. You're not getting the performance, silence or flexibility of custom water cooling, and you're not getting the reliability and longevity of air cooling. All you're getting is really the looks.
I have an AIO and the PC runs silently all the time, the only fan noise is the GPU whilst gaming which is good enough for me. Temps are also well within the range they should be so I'm happy with that.
I'd assume with custom loops the performance is better than AIO, but by how much ?
. Thing is not everyone is confident going the route of custom loops
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Soldato
MY AIO, 420mm AF II, has been great. Very silent and most able to keep cool my overclocked 12700k....
the above shows how it looked when I first fitted my RTX 4080, apart from removing the blob of blutack it still looks the same.
the above shows how it looked when I first fitted my RTX 4080, apart from removing the blob of blutack it still looks the same.
The AIO is not going to be quieter than a high-end air cooler if you use similar fans at similar speeds (and is not going to perform noticeably better either). In fact since it has more moving parts (including liquids and a pump) there are more sources of noise.
I'm one of those guys who went from custom liquid cooling to AIOs, and later to air cooling. Performance differences across the three have been negligible, and my air cooling setup is the quietest I've ever had. It's also the ugliest I've ever had!
The biggest benefit of going custom is GPU cooling, where air cooling is quite often insufficient due to size and location limitations, that's where the flexibility of custom liquid cooling will allow much quieter operations.
The entire point is that performance difference is more or less negligible unless you go absurdly large with custom liquid. With air cooler you have fewer moving parts, therefore fewer noise and fewer points of failure, are cheaper and they last forever. With AIOs you don't get any benefit of custom that air cooling doesn't already have, and you get most of the drawbacks. But they look nice.
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Good points. 
Surely AIO is much more quiet in that if I was to run a stress test with an air cooler ( I've only ever owned a standard AMD one and an Noctua NHU12s ) and the CPU reaches 70c, the fans will ramp up like mad to keep the CPU cool, with an AIO cooler however -- the liquid takes a long time to reach a high temp, and therefore stays much quieter and keeps as cool as an aircooler would ( This is on a Ryzen 5 3600 so I Cannot comment for others )
I can run a stress test with my AIO and it be completely silent at 70c. IF I ran a stresstest with an air cooler, it would be 70c but the fans would be loud
In regard to the GPU, I fully agree that a water cooled setup would be ideal for noise and temps
I also like having a fancy screen on the pump so I can see GPU/CPU/Liquid temps at a glance
Surely AIO is much more quiet in that if I was to run a stress test with an air cooler ( I've only ever owned a standard AMD one and an Noctua NHU12s ) and the CPU reaches 70c, the fans will ramp up like mad to keep the CPU cool, with an AIO cooler however -- the liquid takes a long time to reach a high temp, and therefore stays much quieter and keeps as cool as an aircooler would ( This is on a Ryzen 5 3600 so I Cannot comment for others )
I can run a stress test with my AIO and it be completely silent at 70c. IF I ran a stresstest with an air cooler, it would be 70c but the fans would be loud
In regard to the GPU, I fully agree that a water cooled setup would be ideal for noise and temps
I also like having a fancy screen on the pump so I can see GPU/CPU/Liquid temps at a glance
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Good points.
Surely AIO is much more quiet in that if I was to run a stress test with an air cooler ( I've only ever owned a standard AMD one and an Noctua NHU12s ) and the CPU reaches 70c, the fans will ramp up like mad to keep the CPU cool, with an AIO cooler however -- the liquid takes a long time to reach a high temp, and therefore stays much quieter and keeps as cool as an aircooler would ( This is on a Ryzen 5 3600 so I Cannot comment for others )
I can run a stress test with my AIO and it be completely silent at 70c. IF I ran a stresstest with an air cooler, it would be 70c but the fans would be loud
Of course, but you're using a high-end AIO and compare it to a small air cooler and single fan. If you use a comparable AIO (simple 120mm rad) you'll see there is a lot less water in there so thermal capacity will be a lot lower and the fan will ramp up too. Same thing with noise under sustained loads.
I've got the NH-D15 with 2 Noctua 140mm fans. I set them at a constant ~450rpm which are inaudible. Idle or stress test (I've stress tested it for 12h continuously), temps don't go above 75c (5800X). A high-end AIO would achieve the same, but this is as good as it realistically can get.
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Went from air to custom water cooling. Then new build itx where I went down the 240mm AIO route for the first time. For me, AIO was not a good noise to performance option. Pump and fans were too noisy. Have since gone back to custom water again as I missed the quietness.
Saying that I've never bothered using rigid tubing, always flexible tubing for ease and speed of build, and to be able to move the tubes for component swaps.
Saying that I've never bothered using rigid tubing, always flexible tubing for ease and speed of build, and to be able to move the tubes for component swaps.
Custom water cooling is definitely returning to a niche hobby. I think it's down to the increased cost and complexity while not returning the massive gains over air cooling that it once did. Plus air or AIO is just far easier to plan and install.
However, I still like a custom water cooled build as it's usually quieter and better looking, if those are important to you.
However, I still like a custom water cooled build as it's usually quieter and better looking, if those are important to you.
