Going from water to air

neo-omega · 3 Mar 2021 at 22:21

Hey all, I'm going back and forth with PC thoughts in my head and am hoping to have a sense check, if that's okay.

The TL;DR is, Am I mad for thinking of going from custom water cooling to air cooling.

I currently have the spec below (Suuuper old now I know) and it's all under custom water. My problem is that it's disappointingly loud, thus I don't have the main benefit of custom water cooling. This is party down to my motherboard not letting me slow the fans down below 40% and also from the noise of the pump running at around that rate as well.

My current thinking is that when I upgrade I drop the investment I've made into water cooling and go back to air (actual metal heatsink air cooler, not an AIO) for both CPU and GFX. For information I currently have a quad rad in a Phanteks 719 and a nice new DDC pump and res combo. That's a lot of money to walk away from, but on the reverse side getting a new water block adds a large expense each time and if I am not pursuing extreme OC I just don't know if it's worth it any more.

I'm rather stuck in indecision at the moment and I would appreciate some advice/hearing of other's experience.

Ta muchly!

kevbiss1 · 4 Mar 2021 at 02:36

Thats the trouble, buying new blocks etc, to go with new cpu and gpu etc would get expensive,
i just finished my 1st custom loop about 2 months ago and was well chuffed, everything was quiet
all temps were well good even after hours of gaming, and 3 days ago my 5700 died and unless i can get
another (not paying 500 quid for a used one at the moment)
so decided to go and buy a 3060 but now ive lost half my loop, and i wonder if its all worth it now,
its an expensive game, some air coolers do a real good quiet job, and are cheap compared to water cooling,
as my loop is new i will keep it for now, but i might go back to air in the future,
also, overclocks aint what they used to be !!

Grim5 · 5 Mar 2021 at 19:26

Second hand water cooling parts sell for absolute peanuts so walking away is expensive

Mcthommo · 6 Mar 2021 at 09:27

I know exactly how you feel. I had a very nice custom setup, nice hardline loops, custom rgb fans etc but just one night I decided that I couldn’t deal with water anymore and went to a Noctua cooler.
Been more than happy with it- noise and temps more than good and adding a 3090 still happy
I have kept all my water cooling goodness as I’ve been through this before and likely go back sometime

Drumroll · 6 Mar 2021 at 15:34

For CPU, any decent AIO or one of the "big boys" coolers can offer performance at low level noise.
The issue is GPU. Under load, always going to be quite noisy. If you use headphones, not an issue, at least for many users.
Regarding temperature and noise, some AIO would allow very similar performance to the custom loop, unless under very specific scenarios.
Keeping the GPU on air is the main difference/issue. Would be noisier most of the time, temperature about 20+ C over what many gets when watercooling.
ATM, I couldn't be happier using the Arctic Freezer II 360. The GPU cooler does its job, but as I do use headphones when playing, and can't crank up the sound late night, the noise is an issue for me. Nothing absurd, I must admit, but much more intrusive than 9 X 120mm BeQuiet Pure Wings at 1000ish rpm.

The remark about second hand market can work in your favour. Personally I wouldn't buy few things second hand, like pumps or more complex hardware, but how surprised I was to be able to bag an EK PE 360 for £52 and one EK XE £56, listed here as B-Grade. They were only open box. Even the paper wrapper was intact. Nice saving.

To control your fans, they have ATM an aquacomputer OCTO for £29, B-Grade.
Plenty of waterblocks much cheaper than RRP.