Heatsink Vs. Water Cooling

[RogueDurr]

I been looking at a lot of the sample build posts provided and I was curious why water cooling is not mentioned? Is there something bad about water cooling I do not know about? I am gonna be upgrading my CPU and intend on overclooking so it was something that was peaking my interest. Thanks for the help ahead of time.

[Muya]

It depends on what kind of water cooling you want. Closed loop water cooling solutions are decent but can be kept up with by the higher end air cooling solutions.

Custom loop watercooling is extremely expensive from what I hear, as well as time consuming. It is almost all DIY, but the payoff seems to show that custom loops often outperform most anything else.

[Deleted]

Watercooling has 2 uses :

Silence : No sound builds , passive cooling systems , big radiators , it's an expensive setup + to have a pump that makes little noise. Ofc this wont be very good for ocing , you pay a LOT of money just for it to be silent.

Extremeocing: Big radiators + fans , usual noise from fans , but it's expensive.

Now there is a third watercooling choice : The premade builds. These are somewhat cheap builds ( still more expensive than air cooling ) that have fans , make noise , and are worse than an air cooler of the same price.

If you choose 1 of the first , you pay up a lot , that if you invested in your machine it would be better. So basically a new machine with an expensive wc , even heavily oced would get worse performance than a guy that just gave the same money for a better system with an air cooler.

The thing is , if you check for coolers ( both air and water ) and put them side by side from price ranges , Air allways wins ( more cooling power for less money ). And to make a custom wc rig takes time/money only advised for the people that really love it

TL;DR : Air cooler have a better performance/cash ratio, and to have a wc with better performance ( read custom ) means giving a LOT of money that would be better to be invested on the setup itself.

[Cyanotical]

Watercooling has 2 uses :

Silence : No sound builds , passive cooling systems , big radiators , it's an expensive setup + to have a pump that makes little noise. Ofc this wont be very good for ocing , you pay a LOT of money just for it to be silent.

Extremeocing: Big radiators + fans , usual noise from fans , but it's expensive.

Now there is a third watercooling choice : The premade builds. These are somewhat cheap builds ( still more expensive than air cooling ) that have fans , make noise , and are worse than an air cooler of the same price.

If you choose 1 of the first , you pay up a lot , that if you invested in your machine it would be better. So basically a new machine with an expensive wc , even heavily oced would get worse performance than a guy that just gave the same money for a better system with an air cooler.

The thing is , if you check for coolers ( both air and water ) and put them side by side from price ranges , Air allways wins ( more cooling power for less money ). And to make a custom wc rig takes time/money only advised for the people that really love it

TL;DR : Air cooler have a better performance/cash ratio, and to have a wc with better performance ( read custom ) means giving a LOT of money that would be better to be invested on the setup itself.

except that those of us with big expensive water loops really dont care about price vs performance, in the end, water is better, and always will be

[RogueDurr]

Like, i was looking at something like this. Take in mind, I plan on getting a i7 Sandy Bridge and over-clock it to 4.0.

[Xuvial]

Watercooling has 2 uses :

Silence : No sound builds ,passive cooling systems, big radiators , it's an expensive setup + to have a pump that makes little noise. Ofc this wont be very good for ocing , you pay a LOT of money just for it to be silent.

From what I've seen WC builds tend to employ just as many fans as air cooling builds, especially when you get to the enthusiast-level ones that employ anywhere from 4-8 fans on the rads alone. Sticking 3-4 120mm's on 360/480mm rads is pretty common. It would hardly amount to silence.

Closed-loop WC solutions really need to get better for me to consider them over air. I'm less than impressed with Corsair's H80 and H100 reviews, at high speeds that thing is far louder than e.g. a D14 or Silver Arrow while providing exactly the same cooling. So it really only leaves people who like using RAM cooling and don't like huge towers in the way.

[Cilraaz]

Like, i was looking at something like this. Take in mind, I plan on getting a i7 Sandy Bridge and over-clock it to 4.0.

An i7 Sandy Bridge is stock at 3.7GHz (full turbo). Going to 4.0GHz is nothing. Even on a mid-range air cooler, you can easily hit 4.4-4.7GHz.

[kvakvs]

Problems with watercooling:
- malfunction of water/cooling liquid pump will halt your system to stop - meaning it probably won't slowly degrade like with air cooler, and you can't keep it running by attaching a room fan to the case.
- dismounting the cooling system may be time-consuming, so this basically means you are unable to turn on/play on it while its broken.
- leak may damage your system unless you are using some liquid safe for electrical circuits
- for factory sets - the price may be high, and for cheap custom made - reliability is a problem. Chance you won't have replacements available in local store = longer down time.

My suggestion would be - go with a good air cooling, and don't OC to the maximum. This way you get top performance/dollar ratio, and will still have stable system at decent price.

[Deleted]

I prefure air cooling but its only a personal prefence,

I'm actualy quite adicted to the dull sound of a low spinning fan when it comes to computers.. to much silence would freak me out.

[aisatsana]

Top air coolers are good enough for great overclocks, if you're not going to do crazy overclocking on your CPU or won't use a GPU block, water cooling isn't really worth the price unless you're buying a kit such as the XSPC rasa kit or if you absolutely want to try water cooling and like the looks of it in that case go for it.