Quick cooling question are aio always better?

[MoridinUK]

So I have a build problem.

I want to put this:
My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core 5.20GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-03517) = £479.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance 32GB EXPO (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel (SKU: MEM-CRS-02786) = £89.99
• 1 x MSI MAG B850 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI (AMD AM5) B850 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03993) = £234.99
• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £73.99

In this Lian Li lancool 215 case

I was planning to use my Dark Rock Pro 5 air cooler but it wont fit so I'm looking for alternatives. The case will only take a 240/280 aio on top, but will mount it in front, but the case relies on 2 huge fans to suck air into the case from the front the radiator would block this or push hot air over the board. The rear of the case has just on 120mm fan and so wouldn't make much of an intake. So I can't put a 360 in had thought on something like this one:

[*] 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer III ARGB High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm (SKU: COO-ARC-01992) = £89.99

Someone has suggested I just go with this air cooler below which Tom's hardware highly recommend:

[*] 1 x Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE Black CPU Air Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03291) = £33.95
So I just wanted to check, what do people think? Would a 240/280 aio priced at about £80 max do much better?

I don't intend to try to overclock the cpu, but knowing me I may anyway, but I really will be happy leaving it on stock as well.

Any final advice before I order?

I have one other alternative which would be to switch the mainboard for an matx, then the be quiet cooler will fit in my matx cube case. Though it could bizarrely also take a 360 aio radiator. I'm just so surprised I accidentally got a case with less room.

FYI the GPU (my new bottle neck) is a Saphire Radeon 6800 XT which may help asses how much heat there will be in the case. I went with a gen 4 nvme to reduce heat.

 

[MoridinUK]

No, AIO are not always better.

I had a NZXT 360 CPU cooler with a radiator in my last build. Had a 5950x chip.

One of the ‘pros’ of having an AIO is that you can set the fans to the liquid temperature, which goes up and down slowly which helps manage ‘fans ramping up and down’. But, saying this is a pro is misleading as:

- you need to install / use software to monitor the liquid temps, which just adds ‘faff’ / complexity to your set up.
- more cables in your case.
- by using decent software (e.g. ‘Fan Control’) you can intelligently and quickly set how fast / slow it takes CPU fans to ramp up and down in a way that’s more controllable than typical ‘bloaty’ AIO software.

The 9800x3d is a cool chip, especially if you do an all core negative offset using curve optimiser in the BIOS (which you should) - it may spike into the 80s during shader compilation but most of the time it will hang in the 50s - low 70s during gaming. There is no advantage to cooling it below this.

The biggest negative of the AIO is the additional airflow noise and pump noise.

In my new build, I’ve gone with a Noctua NH-D15 gen 2. It’s reasonably simple to install*, keeps the case looking neater, less cables, easier to run, keeps my 9800x3d nice and cool.

I don’t think I will ever go back to an AIO. It adds nothing but complexity. The exceptions to that is that it might be worth it if you have a really hot, high core count chip and are doing lots of long productivity workloads.

*I did actually mess up installing it myself as I misaligned the thermal paste guard. A quick reinstall and it was fine

Thanks, it's really good to hear real world experiences like this!

Why would I want the negative offset?

 

[MoridinUK]

To save suspense as he isn’t online, this is what he said:

Wow that's cool! Nice to know!