Custom Water Cooling Vs. AIOs

[dedodd139]

Looking at building a 4K system in the future. I am considering doing water cooling but I’ve never done it before. I have looked at a few AIO loops for CPUs and some 1080Ti are paired with AIOs also. This is an area that is out of my expertise so I am wondering Tom’s community what the pros and cons are of custom water cooling and AIOs for significant components?

 

[richiestang_78]

Most AIOs wont give you any better cooling then a quality air cooler but at a higher cost and with more points of failure. High quality custom loops will give you very good cooling and low noise and a lot of companies make coolers for GPUs so the system can be cooled in the same loop.

It's up to you but I would suggest watching youtbe vids on both. Linustechtips or Jayztwocents are excellent computer youtubers with lots of water cooling how tos and explanations.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

AiOs are 95% pointless gimmick or a shinny toy for a christmas tree - Good air coolers do better job at lower noise for much less money without reliability issues. the 5% goes to the small cases that have no space for decent air cooler - kinda rare.
Custom loops are more of a hobby and you should consider it only after all other components are at their best. Depending on how much money you dump into it, you can get the best cooling performance and have your system almost dead quiet. or you can have mini ITX build with overclocked i7 and most powerful GPU in reasonably small case.

 

[Viking2121]

AiOs are 95% pointless gimmick or a shinny toy for a christmas tree - Good air coolers do better job at lower noise for much less money without reliability issues. the 5% goes to the small cases that have no space for decent air cooler - kinda rare.
Custom loops are more of a hobby and you should consider it only after all other components are at their best. Depending on how much money you dump into it, you can get the best cooling performance and have your system almost dead quiet. or you can have mini ITX build with overclocked i7 and most powerful GPU in reasonably small case.

Not entirely true, Any 280mm or better AIO will typically out perform even the highest end air cooling, 240 thin rads then yeah I sorta agree with a few exceptions.

I have a 360 AIO in my computer, I do not want to go custom as I'm always messing around with hardware it would just get in the way its also vary quiet with 6 fans on it on 5v, never have to turn them up, I also do not like the fact of having what seems like a 50lb air cooler hanging off my motherboard.

Custom loops also has the same failure points as a custom loop, actually even more failure points if you add in fittings to the loop, I've seen o-rings fail over time or from vibration over time. I've also seen a few D-15 pumps just out right lock up for no reason.

Its your choice, a 120mm or 140mm AIO such as a H80i are kinda pointless unless you need the room, a cheap Air cooler will sometimes out perform them even. Air cooler's the only fail point is the fan, so they are way more reliable.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's a matter of perspective, regardless of any personal aesthetic inclinations. It's also a matter of degree. As nonsense pointed out, correctly, a 'Good' air cooler will outperform any aio. Upto a certain point. Air coolers are limited in the amount of cooling potential. Even the biggest and best like the Noctua NH-D15 has limits that can be exceeded by high OC on powerful cpus. But those are more extreme cases or mostly the 2013 boards+. For newer lga1151 from skylake and up you are more likely to run into vcore limits than thermal limits, so a good aircooler is all that's required. On Haswell and older cpus, it's possible to exceed an aircoolers limits and this is where the 240/280mm AIO's take up the slack.

For the most part, the only real noise associated with either is the fans. It's entirely possible to have an air cooler that's miserably loud such as a CM hyper212 at 2k rpm, or an AIO that's extremely quiet such as a nzxt Kraken X61 at 800rpm. Some AIO's are very loud for no other reason than crappy fans, Corsair and Enermax are guilty of that.

Same can be said of custom loops, they do have more failure points, inherent with multiple connections, but because of the sheer volume of thermal absorption potential the chances of overheating are slim if planned halfway correctly.

OC is a hobby, not a necessity. So cooling beyond stock ability is also a hobby requirement, custom loops being the ultimate form of that. Also by far the most expensive and most hands on, requiring periodic maintenance. Aircoolers will work forever requiring nothing more than cleaning, AIO's have a undetermined shelf life (some have ability to renew the coolant so become unlimited) but custom loops require redo of liquid totally every so often as the liquid becomes unusable, contaminated, old.

All 3 have definite bonuses and advantages and all 3 have drawbacks. There's no 'best' or 'ideal' solution only personal preference and needs.