Why buy a all-in-one cpu cooler?

[durangod]

I am a firm believer in air cooling but out of curiosity i did some research on all-in-one coolers. I assumed that because there are no reservior's on these that they should be pretty safe to use and that manufacturer's could accomplish a good sealed unit. And if so i might give it a try seeing as some high end units on sale are not much more than my air cooler.

But thats not my findings at all. It seems that even the most expensive units still have 10-15% leakage issues and pump failures which is costing people alot of money to replace their other expensive equipment.

Looking at the reviews as well on different sites also confirms that 10-15% of reviews are very bad because of leaking issues and pump failures within the first year.

These pumps are mostly rated for about 120,000 hours which is about 13 years. So why are they failing inside of 6months to a year? Some of them have even failed inside of 3 months.

It seems to me that these companies should focus more on these issues right now than the eye candy that everyone brags about. Eye candy does not cool your CPU.

Why not have a backup pump, or a "tube within a tube" design so that if one tube leaks the outer tube will protect your equipment until you can get the leak fixed?

There are flexible tube designs used in the home improvement plumbing industry that are "guaranteed" to "never" leak. Why cant this industry learn from that and use some of the same technology to come up with a "guaranteed leak proof" solution to this problem.

And why do pumps fail, the oil and seacraft industry have pump designs that last for many many years "guaranteed". So again the design is out there but to me it seems the manufacturers choose to try to recreate the wheel rather than learn from what works.

My thought as to why is not a nice one. I am thinking the industry saw a great way to make alot of money in style and color options for custom builds and didnt really pay that much attention to fail percentage or leak proof design, they just wanted a fast buck. And thats also why they dont worry about improving design, they want a resale from you in a few years. Just like the automotive industry does to us know.

My final determination (at this point) is that this is still an early era in the all-in-one sealed unit cooling business. So far no one that i have found has come up with anything to overcome the problems of leakage and pump failures. The most successfull company and top dog in this industry will be the one that overcomes these two main issues and patents that design.

After thought: I would be interesting to find out what their product quality testing process is like and if they preasure test the units and what pressure they test them at. There cant be that much pressure in these little units.

Thanks
Dave

 

[durangod]

Well i found alittle bit of info (google is my friend) seems they test them down to -25 deg celsius up to 150 degrees Celsius (-13 F to 302 F)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfyTDI4Fm_o

But figures they are not made in the USA, is anything anymore..

Actually yes... Corsair is made and tested in California... so to be fair here is a tour video as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybfSqpv2_Pk

CORRECTION: i just got my corsair fans, they are made in china and support cases are filed in taiwan. So i guess the office in california is just that, an office.

I hope trump gets some of these companies back to the USA..

 

[synphul]

To start off with, nothing is 100% perfect. It might be guaranteed which means they'll replace it or repair it but nothing is 100% successful regardless of advertising. That's just the nature of things, everything breaks. Things like pumps fail because they're using budget equipment to keep the price down. If it cost the same as component water cooling with a custom loop, why bother. There's no advantage.

Consider a pump like an ek vario d5 just the motor/pump runs around $80, a 100 revo d5 res/pump combo is $150. We haven't even factored in tubing, barbs, radiator or fans yet. It's not surprising a $100-120 complete kit may use lower cost parts to still turn a profit. Home plumbing doesn't usually deal with the sort of confined spaces that a pc case consists of and tubing bends are often less severe than soft flex hoses to offer versatility in mounting. Even standard 'flex hoses' used for under sink applications, the hoses are far more stiff and have a wider bend radius than aio coolers.

All coolers air and aio's tend to offer varying levels of eye candy, it's down to user preference and many people like to show off their components. For the same reason gpu's aren't just a square black shroud and motherboards aren't plain old brown or green the way they used to be.

Many 'designs' are out there but with designs comes licensing to use the design. Would you expect a $15 portable battery powered vacuum cleaner to be running on the same multibillion dollar tech that sends spacecraft into orbit? It won't happen, there's no way. Oil and seacraft industries do however have millions or billions to afford the type of mission critical tech that exists out there. You're just not likely to find it in a $20 coffee maker. Maybe on an oil rig or a cargo ship.

Most of the aio's out there are very similar. Even though you're seeing corsair, cooler master, nzxt, swiftech, lepa etc they're not actually making all their own equipment. Most of them are asetek or modified asetek hardware when it comes to the pump/block. Swiftech I think does make their own but they've been in the business awhile. Corsair, nzxt, antec, thermaltake and a few others use a combination of either coolit or asetek in their products. Coolermaster may make theirs but there was some squabble about them copying asetek and it got them in hot water over it.

If it were possible to make a better water cooling widget without copying existing designs and still remain within the current pricing bracket I'm sure there are companies out there that would be very interested. In terms of the speculation about the pumps being good for 120,000 hours all I can say is gm also touts their dexcool coolant for 100,000mi or 5yrs. That worked out great for the auto repair industry, it's kept them in plenty of business fixing failed cooling systems and other related components when issues arise much sooner. Tens of thousands of gm vehicle owners have been paid settlements due to the dexcool class action suit for that very reason, it didn't last 100k mi or 5yrs.

All you can do is read the fine print, know for sure what your warranty does and doesn't cover on aio's and go from there. While many aio's have failed, pumps have died early etc they're also replaced if still under warranty and there are many people who have gotten several years out of their water cooler with few to no issues. We tend to hear all the bad stories and many who are satisfied never come around to say so. If it were a case where some huge number like 30%+ of aio's were failing or failing catastrophically I'm pretty certain there would be a class action suit.

 

[durangod]

I still think people will pay a bit more (i would) for better quality pumps and better quality connections. Especially when alot of custom builds are for gaming and alot of those rigs carry very very expensive equipment.

In plumbing now they use alot of pex which has a special tool and its pretty close to leak proof. And then the rehau system is pretty much guarenteed leak proof. However i dont know how much pressure is typically in a hot or cold water line to compare to a aio.

Also the new thing in home heating is instant heaters (no tank) and some of those have small flexible lines as well, i believe pex or better. And that area gets very hot so i think maybe as time goes by the developement options may go down in prices as new hose technology gets cheaper to do.

here is a video showing some options including the pex method that does not leak and the rehau system that def does not leak. Now i know this is not for aio and its not flex tubing but its an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8J1yHRuFWs

Now regarding pumps - i think many of them fail because of the type of pump values. I prefer pumps with mechanical valves rather than some sort of flexible valve. I think a water cooled mechanical valve might solve most of the problem there.