Watercooling vs Fan Cooling

[NateTheGreat1015]

Simple as that. For overclocking, do you prefer fan cooling or watercooling. Please justify your answers. Personal experience is also a plus. Thanks!

 

[enemy1g]

Personally, I've never been a fan of having water in or near my PC. And for the most part, a high quality CPU cooler will cost ~$75, and will cool just as well as $100+ watercooling counterparts. The only advantage with watercooling is that it is quieter. Watercooling will cool better than air coolers when you invest (heavily) into a custom loop setup.

 

[NateTheGreat1015]

How loud would a high quality CPU cooler be? Right now I'm using one of those "laptops meant for the whole family" meaning it has no high-end features, in this case, quiet fans. How loud would it be compared to this?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Back in the day, heat was the limiting factor on overclocks and WC gave you significant advantages in this regard. Today the ROI or return on investment is much smaller in that voltage more often than not limits the ultimate OC's a system is capable of. That doesn't mean to say I'd be comfortable running my system 24/7 at those highest overclocks nor be willing to put up with the fan roar.

With a single GPU and CPU, both overclocked ..... you can do very well with air. Of course aesthetically and noise wise, I much prefer water cooling

As far as AIO (All In One) or CLC (Closed Loop Coolers) I see no value to them whatsoever. The reasons to go away from air are to get better thermals and lower noise...... I have yet to see a CLC that does as well as the better air coolers without being so loud that I can't sit in the room with them.

Any of the three air coolers will better serve you than any CLC (in order of preference).

Phanteks PH-TC14-PE
Thermalright Silver Arrow
Noctua DH-14.

As for custom WC loops, you can spend anywhere from $400 to $2500 without really going crazy so it depends on what you want to accomplish.....

Might wanna peek here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1785226/water-cooling-101-bother.html

The top three coolers above at full load in my systems here are inaudible..... wanna heat CLC, look here

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2013/03/12/swiftech-h220-vs-corsair-h100i-noise-testing/

Wanna see how they do thermally ?

 

[NateTheGreat1015]

Is water cooling in general a good idea? I would definitely be nervous about keeping running water next to a device I spent upwards of $1000 for. Is it safe?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Depends on your design. I don't think I'd bother with a $1,000 system tho. Money could be better spend elsewhere. For one, any decent water cooling case would be in the $175 category. And you'd be much better off with an air cooled 780 than say a water cooled 760.

In a Phanteks Enthoo Primo case for example there is no PSU under the water cooling components .... there's a few threads on CLC's exploding but more often then not, any threads I have seen on custom loops, the user walked away with minimal damage as failures are generally drip drip type things which get noticed before any damage is done.