...And that is absolutely not a "faff", that is a joy.
Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with every word of that....it DOES have it's moments. I mean, you've read my thread and the moments of anguish, despair and tragedy, right?!
I think, ultimately, it depends what your motivations are. It's entirely possible to run a very standard air-cooled setup...and I'm doing that at the moment and - having been watercooled for the better part of the last two decades - I have to admit, it's a lot less bad than it was in my head. But I'm not pushing things to their limits or demanding unreasonable performance/silence etc currently. If you want the easy life when it comes to maintenance or not to add unnecessary expense to a build - or a reduced potential for disaster - it's hard to argue against air cooling.
So I'm going to stay on air? No, I don't think so - although the effects of laziness cannot be undersold here! When life calms down a little, stops getting in the way so much and I have the time and headspace to work out quite what I want to do, I'll be back on the road to "unnecessary"-ville because I feel the need to push the boundaries of what I can do*. "Because I can" has long been an accepted reasoning....and I think there's a good slice of "Because I NEED to" behind most of those that reason that way.
*So far that's included soft tubing, hard tubing, milling, 3D design, PCB design, crimping, soldering, lathing, glass work, polishing, metal work and probably far more that I can recall currently. You either enjoy that or you don't....and I'm not about to have any sort of go at anyone that finds an off-the-shelf PC is just fine for them. Well, at least not if they're honest about it!
