went for the below in the end I thought £17 its not such a gamble I was a touch doubtful at first but set the fan on a nice slow curve and fans are silent
30 minute cinebench r23 run ( Ryzen 7 7700 nzxt h510 case so not the best airflow ) max temp 65c average 54c it was the same last night
desktop idle is 48c as I type this , temp in the room is 23c ish
www.thermalright.com
might still change it out for a 240 aio at a later date but atm have no complaints at all
Pretty amazing how low priced a top tier cooler can be.
. 6x 6mm heatpipes even in a small 120x52x102mm fin pack can cool a lot of wattage very well.
I prefer AIOs as they're better at soaking up heat over time, so for bursty CPU loads they take longer to get to their max operating temperature if they ever do meaning your CPU has less chance of thermal throttling. Gamers Nexus did a video a while back demonstrating how a decent air cooler got to max temps at around 90 seconds whereas a decent AIO took 300 seconds under the same workload. Having said that, I have an air cooler on standby if the worst should happen.
I think your key word is "decent air cooler".
Actually "soaking up heat" is only good as long as it cooler is able to release all the heat component generates.
The faster a cooler can dissipate the heat it soaks up from CPU / GPU. the cooler CPU / GPU will be.
That's why it's more important how many watts a cooler can cool than how long it takes to heat soak it.
I didn't see that GN video so don't know what all he said.
What is even more important is how many watts / how much heat an air cooler / AIO can dissipate into air!
That's what keeps things cool.
Short few second to minute duration peak loads can run on AIO many times before fans have to speed up to cool coolant. In some applications even longer. Air cooler fans need to start ramping up after a minute or less.
You said Gamer Nexus video shows both air and AIO peaked at 90c. That's below throttle point so no throttling so both cool as needed.
I'm sure air cooler fan/s spin up sooner than AIO fans, so likely becomes audible sooner than AIO. Much depends on case fan setup.
Reason air cooler peaks in about 90 seconds (often less) is because it's transferring heat from very small amount of coolant into fins, than to air as fast as it comes into cooler! That's how heat pipes work. They boil coolant in heat pipe in base, expanding vapor pushed vapor toward ends of heat pipe, where it cools enough to condense into heat pipe wick radiating heat into fins and away in fan airflow thru fins.
Reason AIO takes so much longer to saturate is because it's much longer for coolant to flow from waterblock to radiator and back, cycling around and around as coolant temp and radiator heats up transferring heat from radiator (fins) into air fan is moving air thru. The very low coolant flowrate of AIOs also increases time it takes to heat up. A typical AIO holds 100-200ml of coolant. The exact amount can vary depending on the radiator size & thickness and AIO model. Slim 360mm AIO rad holds about 150ml, so 360mm rad AIO might hold 300ml. Just 360mm custom loop rads hold 300ml, and complete loop are like 1 liter (1000ml). Pumps in AIOs max flow rate is 0.2-0.3 gallons per minute /45-68L/h. Most commonly used custom loop pump (D5) flows about 396 gallons per hour (1500L/h).
Reason I as "AIO pumps flow similar to healthy adult male" is because the average urine output for average 70kg healthy adult is 35-70 ml/hour.
Healthy adult ****** at a rate of 36 - 75.6 l/hour
AIO pumps have a flow rate of 24 - 70 l/h with a very few reaching 100 l/h.
So, I say AIO pumps flow like you do after drinking a few pints. I say 'you are' because I'm old and slow.
So air cooler fans spin up in 1 1/2 minutes and AIO fans spin up in 6 minutes.
Best case is both will keep things cool for long sessions.
Worst case is CPU throttles sooner under air cooler than under AIO.
There are many air cooler out there that can cool 200-300w. Obviously more wattage means more noise
Thermalright TRUE Spirit 140 Power, Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme & Silver Arrow IB-E Extreme are rated 360w
While some AIOs can cool more, most AIOs can't.
240mm rads are good up to about 240w .. with lots of noise
360mm up to about 350w .. but noisy
420mm top out at about 400w.
Gamer Nexus also said:
"AIOs generally excel at cooling the VRMs (Voltage Regulator Modules) on the motherboard, which are responsible for providing power to the CPU. However, some AIOs may struggle with VRM cooling, especially when noise levels are reduced, as seen in Gamers Nexus's testing of the EVGA CLC 360."
In my 20-30+ years of computer use and cooling experience, VRM cooling is mostly dependent on
good case airflow .. and most stock cases don't come with enough case fans .. and or they are installed in wrong locations so don't give good case airflow. Exception was 1366 VRM Mosfet heat issue. Even with good case airflow they got hot!
Most of the time running AIOs simply means user ends up using way more fans(more case fans) .. simply because most AIOs have fans mounted on radiator which is mounted on case vents, and user uses stock case fans to other vents, so like twice as many case fans moving air thru case.
Adding 2 or 3 more case fans at least doubles case fans! Seems like simple common sense cases using AIOs will generally have more case airflow than a stock case.
But the key to good, quiet cooling
requires setting up case airflow! That way all components needing cooling have cool air (air @ or very near room ambient) cooling them.
I'll say it again, more often than not case fan placement out of the box is does not give case good airflow!!
