Air is better than water
just admitting you dont know how cooling works. thats cool.
Okay but what is there to know that isn’t there to know via basic physics and chemistry?
Any cooling works by allowing heat to gather in a source like say a heat sink combined with a way to conduct the heat to somewhere. Either into the surrounding air or liquids.
Then you need something to move the hot conducting matter away to replace it with cold conducting matter. A fan happens to be convenient for moving the hot air that gathered around and inside the heat sink.
Technically, no, air is a much worse thermal conductor, and most liquids are significantly better. It’s a pretty efficient thermal INSULATOR, however.
The practical applications, however, make the movement of air OUT of your system an efficient cooling method.
Not trying to be contrarian or a smart-ass, but aren’t water cooled systems kinda just air cooled systems with the radiator moved elsewhere?
Every liquid cooling system is pretty much that. Eventually you need to give it to the outside and the outside is usually air. Heck even river cooling for Power plants ends up “air cooling” through the rivers surface.
Yes. The advantage is that you can make the surface area of the air cooling part much, much larger. I had a water cooled system that could do web browsing and other basic tasks with zero fan speed (though it was better to leave it on very low speed to avoid hunting behavior).
Also, there’s some benefits to thermal mass. Short term spikes can be absorbed by the water without increasing fan speed.
I had a water cooled system that could do web browsing and other basic tasks with zero fan speed
Isn’t that the default for (air cooled) notebooks?
Usually copper heatpipes that are found in most air coolers have a drop of liquid in them to boost perfomance.
Didn’t Linus tech tips do a video on this and find that water cooling doesn’t make much if any difference.
I wouldn’t cite LTT for much, but IIRC, that was only true to a point. The NHD-15 is great, but a lot of cases can’t fit one. Same with many other high end air coolers. It might also cool to the same temperature, but is also running the fans harder to get there.
The entire computer is throttled into a power consumption you can sink through air coolers. So, unless you are overclocking something, it should always be enough. That will hold until companies start to design the components specifically for water cooling.
But the people claiming it can be quieter or thinner are quite right.
The problem with Noctua is that you need a lot of space…
Because a water pump, water block on both the CPU and GPU and tons of tubes, don’t take up much space?
Big air coolers don’t fit because there isn’t enough height off the CPU inside the case. An O11 Dynamic (regular size) doesn’t fit an NH-D15, for example, but it fits water cooling with at least one regular thickness 360mm rad on top just fine. (And also one on the bottom, and a thin one on the side).
Imagine having a big Noctua on every component…
EDIT: I wanted a Noctua but with my two big GPUs, there is no space for a Noctua… and depends on which motherboard also includes water cooling tubes already built-in.
Much more space on CPU (at least you see the RAM and other components), yeah, depends on how you built it. The PC can “breath”. When I said “you need a lot of space” I mean on the CPU, if your RAM and 2 GPU is all near there… all the heat gets concentrated.
DIY Perks on YouTube did a beautiful machine with a Noctua cooler on a GPU. All with a nautical theme.
Like i give a fuck what cools best. I want my system to look awesome and the AIO sure looks better imo. At the end of the day: build the PC that makes you happy.
Some suggestions here, the first a good GPU that can run Cyberpunk or the Witcher III at 300 FPS
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/1-7x-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-gpu-scaling/
