Moving away from watercooling!

I remember going down the water cooling route a long time ago, I just didn't have the time for all adjustments when changing a single piece of gear or the effort into fixing a leak. I've been happy with my air and AIO solutions now and I don't think I could ever go back to water.

Kudos to those that still have the patience for it!
 
In the 25 odd years of water-cooling I can't say I've ever had a leak other than a couple of teething errors setting things up with awkward fittings 'back-in-the-day' and the one time an acrylic reservoir cracked due to mishandling.
The biggest issue was with GPU blocks and the cadence of upgrades in the early days....I'd be upgrading GPU's yearly and the waterblocks were/are expensive and have no resell value after.
 
Hah, also went from water to air about a week ago. My custom loop RTX 3080 and Ryzen 7 5800X served me well since COVID times, but the amount of trouble to just do basic things...

Swapped an RTX 5080 in which had a 360mm AIO attached and to fit the new rad in I had to take the entire loop apart. Then managed to snag a 4090 and wanted to test that but just to get it in the machine would have meant taking the entire loop apart again just to disentangle and remove the 5080. And I don't mean just draining, I mean literally taking out the reservoir/pump, undoing several tubes, taking out a 360mm rad, all that before I can take out the RTX 5080.

Switched to a peerless assassin and a monstrously large 5090 air cooled.

Biggest difference is idle noise levels are pure blissful silence. The 5090 turns its fans off, and the peerless assassin doesn't make a peep. With WC I had all the fans on the lowest RPM so that thing was quiet. It's like with WC you get low noise at all times (idle and load). With Air you get quieter idle but louder load. But yeah I'm really enjoying not having that constant WC hum whenever my PC is on.
 
I had been running custom watercooling for 20 years or so and finally moved away from it a month or so ago. Usually having CPU and GPU in the loop. The expense and hassle wasnt worth it.

I've gone with an AIO for the CPU and Air for GPU and am really happy with the results. At idle speed my system is quieter and even when gaming it's not much louder.
 
martos123 said:
I had been running custom watercooling for 20 years or so and finally moved away from it a month or so ago. Usually having CPU and GPU in the loop. The expense and hassle wasnt worth it.

I've gone with an AIO for the CPU and Air for GPU and am really happy with the results. At idle speed my system is quieter and even when gaming it's not much louder.
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you have a low heat system there really is not much need now days only for show.
 
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My reservoir/pump was leaking and it was £150 to replace it. Got an AIO for £70.

GPU blocks are a pain too as the number of blocks available isn't great and only an option if you have a specific card too.

When I put the 9070xt in, it was time to call it a day.
 
I do think my current build will be last custom loop, too much time investment and money in it.
 
Went with AIO for latest build LCD screen etc, would rather game than faffing about taking longer to build.
 
martos123 said:
My reservoir/pump was leaking and it was £150 to replace it. Got an AIO for £70.

GPU blocks are a pain too as the number of blocks available isn't great and only an option if you have a specific card too.

When I put the 9070xt in, it was time to call it a day.
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Had an issue with my alphacool gpu block thermal pads being the incorrect size and alphacool didn't fix the issue that they were aware of so i ditched it to go back to air. Went for an AIO in my sig and original air cooler on my 4080 super. cpu is only 5c warmer at the same clock (75c max core) and gpu is the same temp (65c max) due to bad thermal paste size giving high temps for a custom loop.
jammir said:
I do think my current build will be last custom loop, too much time investment and money in it.
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My entire loop cost me £550 and replaced it all for a £70 aio on the cpu and stock air cooler on gpu. Would have saved in total £480 and temps only a few degrees higher. That money could have been used on a better cpu and motherboard :(
Toasty said:
Went with AIO for latest build LCD screen etc, would rather game than faffing about taking longer to build.
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Got the thermalright frozen warframe and love it. Great price to performance coming from at custom loop.
 
I always fancied having a go at water-cooling - it looks so much cooler than a plain HSF! But I could never convince myself that it was worth the cost, effort and reliability compromises over a good air-cooling setup. It's one of those things that I kinda wished I'd done when I was young, but there's no way I'd bother with it these days! Air "just works"!
 
For high spec setups, after the initial cost its not so expensive. I've had my setup for over 10yrs and feel like ive had my moneys worth. Changed complete cpu block twice, other cpu upgrades i could buy a new bracket to reuse the block. Gpu wise, ive been able to buy one of the cheaper sku's each gen eg palit 5090 and for the price of a new block i get better temp and noise levels than the more expensive models. I've been so happy with wc that im doing a full refresh and starting again with a mo-ra iv build. End game and hope to still have it cooling my blocks for the next 10-20 yrs.
 
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Sc00p007 said:
For high spec setups, after the initial cost its not so expensive. I've had my setup for over 10yrs and feel like ive had my moneys worth. Changed complete cpu block twice, other cpu upgrades i could buy a new bracket to reuse the block. Gpu wise, ive been able to buy one of the cheaper sku's each gen eg palit 5090 and for the price of a new block i get better temp and noise levels than the more expensive models. I've been so happy with wc that im doing a full refresh and starting again with a mo-ra iv build. End game and hope to still have it cooling my blocks for the next 10-20 yrs.
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i nearly went for the mo-ra iv but after my issues with the alphacool block i gave up on WC entirely and don't miss it anywhere near as much as i thought. at this point if i was to go back to WC, it would be for the aesthetics. the only additional cost would be a new gpu block due to the issues mentioned with current block as i still have all my WC setup in a box on the shelf next to me ;)
 
It's kind of nuts as I've built PC with phase change vapochill/mach 2, caselabs wtih 4x 480mm rads, 2 x 1260 MORA with optional QDC to a to a laser chiller but now just using AIO.
 
I done the same, went from full water setups that spent hours making hard tubes up for and spending a fortune on fittings. Got some decent air cooling gear and never looked back. Unless you are really pushing voltages air is perfectly fine. Ultimately i just wanna game
 
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