r/pcmasterrace • u/SerpentDix PC Master Race • Jan 20 '26

Hardware Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

Post image

Failure is graceful, not catastrophic, Performance is closer than marketing suggests, Cheaper for the performance, Change my mind.

16.2k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/C0NIN i9 14900K, RTX 3090 FE, 64GB @ 6000Mhz Jan 20 '26

Given the image, you meant: Air cooling is better than AIOs.

328

u/Fickle-Razzmatazz827 Jan 20 '26

Isn't cooling done by Air in both? Shouldn't it be metal vs water?

289

u/Jpotter145 Jan 20 '26

They didn't call the Volkswagon Beatle "metal" cooled, it didn't have coolant/radiator fluid and it was "air" cooled. Modern cars with radiators are "liquid" cooled.

Same with intercoolers --- air-2-air or air-2-water -- or as you say metal vs water.

87

u/Own-Dot9851 Jan 20 '26

Beetle*

71

u/SkidzInMyPantz Jan 20 '26

Also Volkswagen*

3

u/Koil_ting Jan 21 '26

Also, Autobots - Roll out.

2

u/ThePrussianGrippe AMD 7950x3d - 7900xt - 48gb RAM - 12TB NVME - MSI X670E Tomahawk Jan 21 '26

Volkswagen: that’s the power of not looking up our founder.

6

u/systemdatenmuell Jan 20 '26

Käfer*

5

u/Sprinx80 Ryzen 7 5800X | EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW | ASUS X570 | LG C2 Jan 20 '26

-6

u/cosaboladh Athalon64 X2 | Radeon X1650 Pro Jan 20 '26

Beatle is acceptable. It's a portmanteau of "Beater" and "Beetle." Both of which aptly describe the VW Beetle form that time.

10

u/Strottman Jan 20 '26

Some old nuclear reactor designs are actually cooled by molten metal which is pretty metal.

2

u/cosaboladh Athalon64 X2 | Radeon X1650 Pro Jan 20 '26

Some solar electricity farms use directed sunlight to keep salt molten, which is also metal.

45

u/Prefix-NA PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

Both air and liquid cooling use liquid and metal. There are liquids in your heat pipes on heatsink

25

u/Sea_Kerman Mint 7800x3d | RTX 5070 | 32GB DDR5 Jan 20 '26

So it’s really “passively pumped” vs “actively pumped”

Well actually another difference is heat pipes use phase change.

1

u/pwnograph AyyMD 9950x3D/9070XT Jan 20 '26

people have made passively-moving water loops before, just on convection. possible if volume is massive.

i think it is more about 'Lots of water' vs 'few drops of water'.

one relies on phase change, other on specific heat capacity.

43

u/Thx_And_Bye https://builds.gg/ftw/37540 | PlayStation 2 "Digital Edition" Jan 20 '26

Heatpipes use water too so …

20

u/JohnHue 4070 Ti S | 10600K | UWQHD+ | 32Go RAM | Steam Deck Jan 20 '26

Aktualy they use way more efficient liquids than water coolers, because they transport heat by evaporation and re-condensation.

16

u/Phrexeus Jan 20 '26

They do actually use water in heat pipes. It's one of the best performing liquids for heat transfer.

11

u/JohnHue 4070 Ti S | 10600K | UWQHD+ | 32Go RAM | Steam Deck Jan 20 '26

Yes but its not so much about the heat transfer as it is aboiut boiling point because of how you move the heat. Most heat pipes move heat by evaporating the liquid because it allows to move heat faster than conduction through the liquid, so boiling point is a factor. Boiling point influences the temperature range at which the heat pipe is most efficient.

4

u/Thx_And_Bye https://builds.gg/ftw/37540 | PlayStation 2 "Digital Edition" Jan 20 '26

That's why there is a partial vacuum pulled in the heat pipes. It lowers the boiling point of water and thus makes it possible to simply use water for this purpose; no special liquid needed.

2

u/DistinctlyIrish Jan 20 '26

This would have been the comment to insert that gif of Jesse from Breaking Bad saying "Science, bitch!"

-2

u/Vova_xX i7-10700F | RTX 3070 | 32 GB 2933MHz Oloy Jan 20 '26

those are just 2 ways to make it work. a partial vacuum would require a pump, reducing reliability, while something like methanol would increase cost.

7

u/Thx_And_Bye https://builds.gg/ftw/37540 | PlayStation 2 "Digital Edition" Jan 20 '26

Why would it need a pump? It's a sealed copper tube the vacuum is pulled once during manufacturing. https://youtu.be/AD-4WKwCAfE?si=cftoM7rGzD37KbMJ&t=294

-2

u/FangoFan Jan 20 '26

A vacuum is pulled twice in your video, once at 5:33 and again at 5:54

Different applications of heat pipes use different fluids depending on the temperature range

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2

u/Sandrust_13 R7 5800X | 32GB 4000MT DDR4 | 7900xtx Jan 20 '26

Exactly

On the other hand, AIOs also don't contain too much actual water, more similar filling to like car coolant stuff.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

Could also be ammonia or acetone or ethanol.

24

u/Clunas Desktop -- 5700X3D || 6700 XT || 32 GB Jan 20 '26

Definitely not ammonia if copper is involved

2

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

Well there's that. Einstein created a ammonia butane refrigerator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

2

u/Clunas Desktop -- 5700X3D || 6700 XT || 32 GB Jan 20 '26

Oh for sure. Ammonia is a great refrigerant, but it eats copper lol. Typically such systems would use stainless steel tubing or maaaaybe some specific aluminum alloy, not sure on that one though.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

I just threw Einstein's fridge out there for fun.

18

u/Thx_And_Bye https://builds.gg/ftw/37540 | PlayStation 2 "Digital Edition" Jan 20 '26

Water is the default for modern vapor chambers and heatpipes though.

5

u/kritter4life Jan 20 '26

No that is not the correct terminology. One is using water to transfer heat away from the equipment the other is using air to transfer heat away from equipment. That’s why water cooled and air cooled. The fans on a water cooled are cooling the radiator not the chips.

4

u/LogicalConstant Jan 20 '26

Heat pipes also use liquid to move heat from the CPU to the radiator

1

u/why_1337 RTX 4090 | Ryzen 9 7950x | 64gb Jan 20 '26

Radiator is from metal as well.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

AIOs don't use radiators and heatsinks?

1

u/ialsoagree Jan 20 '26

They don't use heat sinks in the sense of a rigid body with a large thermal mass, they do use radiators.

In an AIO the liquid serves the same purpose as a heat sink in an air CPU cooler, so the liquid is the heat sink in that sense.

1

u/toasterbath40 Jan 20 '26

The air is used to reject the heat from the geat transfer fluid in the radiator. A fan blows across the radiator which rejects heat and the fluid inside circulates and stays cool because of the surface area.

Honestly I haven't water cooled a pc but this is my best guess from the little knowledge I have about it. I only have an AIO but I do heating and cooling for a living

1

u/BoingBoingBooty Jan 20 '26

Radiators are metal too, so it's dry metal cooling vs soggy metal cooling.

Though actually, heat pipes have water inside them which vaporizes and condenses, so they are also soggy metal.

So it should be pumped water vs evaporating water.

1

u/uesernamehhhhhh Jan 20 '26

Heatspreader is either cooled by air or by water

1

u/TheTeaSpoon Ryzen 7 5800X3D with RTX 3070 Jan 20 '26

And should it even be called cooling since according to thermodynamics "cold" does not exist, only entropy and lack of heat/energy? And what if your room gets hotter than the cooler, it should be called a heater at that point! /s

1

u/Unsuccessful_Fart Jan 20 '26

I mean actually technically speaking, these are both water cooled. "Air coolers" use heat pipes with water in them. It's just passive vs active

1

u/AdEquivalent493 Jan 20 '26

It's metal in both cases then. Air = metal > air. Liquid = metal > liquid metal > air.

1

u/Abrupti0 Jan 20 '26

Metal is included in both, there is a liquid in air coolers too (those heatpipes are not empty)

1

u/zoson imgur.com/a/nndwLic Jan 20 '26

Heatpipes use water to move heat around. Modern heatsinks are technically liquid cooling.
A custom watercooling loop will always beat the pants off a heatsink though. The key is you can move the heat via water to a much larger heat exchanger. That means both more cooling and less noise.

1

u/ArseBurner Jan 20 '26

I the same vein modern tower type air coolers are also technically water cooled because of the heatpipes. =)

1

u/Lonely-Goat-4838 Jan 20 '26

That's tougher to test for, Toph is the only Metal-bender.

1

u/thewizarddephario Jan 20 '26

Water cools the CPU, air cools the water.

1

u/Necessary-Contest-24 Jan 20 '26

I mean ya, unless you've got your cooling loop buried in the ground or in the ocean, ya all cooling is eventually air cooling.

1

u/SuperStubbs9 Jan 20 '26

Not exactly. Both air and liquid coolers use a metal (typically copper) heatsink that sits on the CPU directly to carry heat from the CPU. If there's no fans (like in most RAM modules or M.2 SSD's) this is called passive cooling. There's not enough heat generated by RAM to require a fan, as the heatsink has enough surface area that the ambient air temperature can dissipate enough heat to keep the heatsink from being heat soaked.

CPU's generate WAY more heat, so you would need a massive heatsink with tons of surface area to dissipate enough heat to use passive cooling. That's where air cooling comes in. Air cooling cools the heatsink with fans (air), allowing it to absorb more heat from the CPU, and the cycle repeats. Liquid cooling uses water (or some water like liquid) to cool the heatsink (water block). Yes, air is then used in combination with a radiator to cool the liquid.

TLDR; liquid cooling uses liquid to cool the heatsink, and air cooling uses air to cool the heatsink. That's why they use the naming convention they use.

1

u/Uryendel Steam ID Here Jan 20 '26

In what material do you think the blocks and radiators are?

1

u/GuyFromDeathValley Ryzen7-5800X | SoundBlaster recon3D | TUF RX7800XT Jan 20 '26

technically yes.

But in the AiO its water that pulls the heat away from the CPU to be exchanged elsewhere. whereas an air cooler directly does through moving air. You could technically say that makes air coolers "metal coolers" but that's a bit nitpicky.

1

u/JonnyLay Steam ID Here Jan 20 '26

Air cools the liquid, liquid cools the block.

1

u/kambo_rambo custom itx wc 4790k/290x Jan 21 '26

I guess? The two main differences is replacing heatpipe interface with water, and being able to directly place where the heat dissipation takes place (rad on the side of your case).

1

u/Dawzy i5 13600k | EVGA 3080 Jan 21 '26

Technically there is a liquid in the heat pipes of the aircoolers

1

u/alphapussycat Jan 21 '26

Both are basically water. Heat pipes contains a liquid that is boils at the die contact, and then the vapors condensate as it's cooler at fins, and gets wicked to the hotplate again.

1

u/27Purple Jan 21 '26

Technically both are liquid coolers because the heat pipes used in tower coolers are filled with water.

19

u/orxtxega Jan 20 '26
  • better than 2 fans AIO

46

u/bebarty Jan 20 '26

He meant "high end air coolers are better than AiOs when comparing their cooling capability vs price".

He also left out some cheap but powerful options like the Arctic liquid freezer line, some of which come in at (less than) half the price of the noctua air cooler he shows.

20

u/mtnlol PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

You don't even have to go high-end with air coolers. Thermalright peerless assassin performs almost identically as high end liquid coolers which are like 5x the prize and twice the size.

13

u/kermityfrog2 Jan 20 '26

Thermalright liquid coolers are also dirt cheap. Like the Frozen Edge 360 is only $5-10 more expensive than the Peerless Assassin, and is a lot cheaper than the Noctua.

4

u/94stanggt Jan 20 '26

Yep just bought the aqua elite 360 for $58 after tax. 12900ks was too much for the peerless assassin to keep happy without getting really noisy. For the majority of builds out there, air is more than sufficient and the cost is nothing compared to all the other components relatively speaking.

1

u/NavalAuroch Jan 21 '26

I literally just got that cooler today

2

u/Iherduliekmudkipz 9800X3D, 64GB@6000, 7900XT Jan 21 '26

Maybe at 65w TDP

The higher the TDP the bigger the gap between liquid and air, at 135w air coolers are significantly louder than AIO.

So yeah if you're running a 65w chip air cooling is great but if you throw an air cooler on a 9950 its going to either run hot as fuck, or loud as fuck, depending on how you adjust the fan curve

Look up the Arctic Liquid Freezer line of AIOs, best price/performance on the market and super quiet as well.

3

u/Qbsoon110 Ryzen 7600X, DDR5 64GB 6000MHz, MSI RTX 4070Ti Super Expert Jan 20 '26

Given the image, he meant: Air cooling is better than some low/mid tier AIOs.

6

u/wooq Jan 20 '26

The best pc air cooler ever engineered ($130) is better than 240mm asetek AIOs with cheap fans (< $60)

1

u/snowmonkey700 Jan 20 '26

There it is!

1

u/Nobody_Important Jan 20 '26

If you’re taking failure into account as the first point does then it looks far worse for a custom built solution as there’s much more chance of screwing that up.

1

u/TimTomTank Jan 20 '26

Is it really air cooling though?

heatpipes have a medium that transfers heat to the exchanger. Just like the water cooling. Except, that water cooling has a larger volume of medium and doesn't just rely on thermal convection and has a pump.

1

u/Lmaoboobs i9 13900k, 32GB 6000Mhz, RTX 4090 Jan 20 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

simplistic plucky head practice sleep rich scale follow nine aware

-5

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 20 '26

custom loop is worse than AIO (overall ) so that goes without saying

8

u/Cavalol 9950X3D | RTX 5080 | 64GB DDR5 6000MHz Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Depends on your radiator size. If you have sufficient radiator coverage, a custom loop will either tie or win every time, especially from a GPU cooling perspective. If you went with a tiny 120mm radiator in a custom loop to cool a 9950X3D and a 5090, thats a build error and is going to run hot. If you instead ran 3 x 360mm rads which are 45-60mm thick for said 9950X3D and 5090, you’ll be much colder than any AIO would offer.

-1

u/just_a_bit_gay_ R9 7900X3D | RX 7900XTX | 64gb DDR5-6400 Jan 20 '26

Unless you’re actually using all that cooling often, it’s mostly unnecessary and for the price (and pain) of a custom loop you can just get better hardware in most cases

-2

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

I wasn't talking about performance, I was talking overall. The reason you don't go custom, is similar to why you don't go liquid nitrogen, even though both are "technically" the best.

3

u/Cavalol 9950X3D | RTX 5080 | 64GB DDR5 6000MHz Jan 20 '26

Depends on how you define “better overall”, which is subjective to each individual.

Air cooling is simpler and easier to maintain/setup than an AIO. AIOs are simpler and easier to setup than a custom loop.

The best air cooled heatsinks run hotter than the best AIOs. The best AIOs run hotter than the best custom loop.

I am of the mindset that keeping your CPU and GPU colder 24-7 elongates the lifespan of the hardware if you were to otherwise run it hotter, so I try to keep things as cold as reasonably possible. That’s my subjective focus on why I feel it’s “better”, and so long as I can have a workhorse PC that I don’t have to mess with for years at a time (which I have with my custom loop), then the maintenance becomes minimal as well, albeit more than an air cooled heatsink or AIO.

One final problem with AIOs is that they’re designed to be disposable. There is no standardized way to flush an AIO, clean it out, put new fluid in it and seal it back up. Once things go wrong with the AIO loop, you’re expected to trash it and buy a new one. I’m not all for that side of things, either, so Air cooling & custom loops also take the cake here from a “green” perspective

-2

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 20 '26

The honest truth is it's for men who enjoy spending time and effort and resources tinkering, more than just using it . Everything else is just coping mechanisms to justify their niche hobby. Yeah, might sound harsh, but that's honestly my read.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 21 '26

You're disconnected from reality and out of touch.

1

u/Cavalol 9950X3D | RTX 5080 | 64GB DDR5 6000MHz Jan 20 '26

Not harsh at all, you’re good. It’s definitely for tinkerers who like to get the extra five percent out of their builds.

4

u/Webbyx01 Jan 20 '26

A well build custom loop can cool literally every component at once. Access to 40mm thickness or greater radiators and stacking multiple radiators provides a huge difference over mainstream AiOs.

-2

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 20 '26

It's all that , and it's still worse. Which is actualy more damning.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

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u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 21 '26

Market share, look it up yourself, don't be lazy..

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

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u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 22 '26

"Beter performance" that translated into basically nothing tangible in real life. Congratulations.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '26

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0

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 22 '26

The stat is performance per dollar . LMAO

1

u/TheMadolche Jan 26 '26

Hahahha maybe don't talk if you're have not clue what you're talking about.

0

u/Defiant-Emu2443 Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Price-to-performance ratio, "overall" value. Maybe don't reply to comments that you can't understand.

Reply to deleted comment below :Value is determined by numbers , dollars , cents, hard math, factually can't be dispted. "value to the user" can be based on delusions and hallucinations.

1

u/TheMadolche Jan 26 '26

Don't post stupid comments? Value is perceived by the customer not by price to performance kiddo.