Is water cooling worth it?

[Mike3k24]

Is purchasing a water cooling kit worth the prices they're usually at? Anyways I've never worked with water cooling before so I need to know a bit more about it. I've heard bad things about it but also heard good things. Will your CPU last longer with water cooling?

 

[PC-4LIFE]

Depends on the quality of the cooler you buy. Some will perform identically to air coolers, some will perform better.
You can achieve better overclocks (if your CPU supports it) by raising voltage higher since temperature isn't a limiting factor.

Unless you have a k series CPU or an overclockable AMD CPU, it's not worth getting a water coole

 

[rubix_1011]

You would have to define 'worth it' in terms that make sense to you. For me, it is worth it because I enjoy doing it. Good watercooling is fairly expensive and the cost could otherwise be used to upgrade other components in your system.

Just having liquid cooling, like an all in one cooler, doesn't mean it's good liquid cooling or it performs at the same level as a full watercooling loop. Please see the sticky linked below.

 

[dark_lord69]

Eh.. I think it's over-rated. I use big air cooling because it's cheaper.

Also, sometimes big air cooling can be better than small liquid cooling.

 

[atljsf]

watercooling is required for overclocking a cpu like a 7700k or the highest ryzen cpus

if you don't have one of those or you don't plan on overclock, the solution is expensive, complicated to install and possibly will not offer what you want

on a good amount of situation a heatsink and a fan are enough

the watercooling solution, some sya it is noisy, others say it is silent

most heatsinks with fan,like a evo 212, are described as silent, or silent enough

it is a situation where you must decide if you need the watercooling and you can afford to justify the purchase

i personally wouldn't buy a unit like that, just for the price and the complication of install it on my case and make it work properly

 

[rubix_1011]

Watercooling is not a requirement for any CPU.

Also, please understand there is a massive difference between an all in one cooler (like Corsair, etc) vs. that of a watercooling loop. The cost, performance and overall user experience is far different between them. So again, liquid cooling does not mean it is good liquid cooling.

 

[geofelt]

In a case large enough to support a standard 160mm tall air cooler, I find it hard to justify liquid cooling.

My canned rant on liquid cooling:
------------------------start of rant-------------------
You buy a liquid cooler to be able to extract an extra multiplier or two out of your OC.
How much do you really need?
I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler like a Noctua or phanteks can do the job just as well.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"
I would support an AIO cooler only in a space restricted case.
-----------------------end of rant--------------------------

Your pc will be quieter, more reliable, and will be cooled equally well with a decent air cooler.

 

[atljsf]

when you overclock, you want to push more and more, way over the air cooler can do, so the watercooloer solution ends up being a requirement, untill you reach the speed you want or kill mainboard and cpu in the process

 

[Mike3k24]

Okay, so I'll stick to regular air cooling. Thanks for the answers guys.

 

[rubix_1011]

when you overclock, you want to push more and more, way over the air cooler can do, so the watercooloer solution ends up being a requirement, untill you reach the speed you want or kill mainboard and cpu in the process

Not necessarily. You're far more likely to reach voltage limitation of your CPU than thermal limitation, but one is a definite result of the other. Stability is usually the first crutch that overclockers encounter, which is usually countered by adding more votlage, which results in more heat, usually unnecessary heat.

Also, 6700 and 7700 series CPUs typically run cooler than previous generations. There have been plenty of people that have overclocked i7's successfully with good air cooling. The limitations of overclocking typically fall on the user, not the CPU.