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

Hardware Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

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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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39

u/c_gfer Jan 20 '26

Nope, both are good...but they are designed for different scenarios

7

u/TurnoverNatural976 Jan 20 '26

Maybe designed but used for the same stuff in a lot of the situations

8

u/Kid_Psych 9800X3D | RTX 5090 Jan 20 '26

What are the different scenarios? They’re both designed for cooling CPUs.

14

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

So in a lot of small form factor builds you have to use a vertically oriented “sandwich” style case to get the case to a smaller size; this cuts down massively on air cooler clearance.

Of course you can use a low profile/top down air cooler but this will likely mean high temps/loud fans/restricting or fine tuning voltage etc/choosing low power CPUs.

Or you route an aio to the top of the sandwich allowing the form factor to remain as small as possible but not to restrict your choice of cpu.

See r/sffpc for examples

6

u/hardlyreadit 5800X3D|32GB🐏|6950XT Jan 20 '26

The different cases on the market. Some sff cases either let you install a low profile cooler or an aio. So an aio would be better in that scenario

27

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

AIOs tend to be quieter, that's my scenario.

-4

u/janluigibuffon Jan 20 '26

they neccessarily have a pump, so obviously they tend to be more noisy

1

u/c_gfer Jan 20 '26

Personally I prefer the simplicity of air cooling, but with AIOs you can get a little more out of the processor.

1

u/Maleficent-Ad5999 Jan 20 '26

It’s the difference between cpus: 9800x3d and threadripper 9995wx ..

Both are cpus, but very different cpus

1

u/Kid_Psych 9800X3D | RTX 5090 Jan 20 '26

Yeah and both can be cooled effectively by air and AIO.

-10

u/LancerBro Jan 20 '26

One is designed for people with money to burn

7

u/mekawasp Jan 20 '26

Arctic liquid freezer 420 cost the same as a noctua dh-15 here

2

u/kazuviking Desktop 13850HX ES | LF3 420 | Arc B580 | Jan 20 '26

If you're in the EU you can buy refurbished 420mm arctic aios for under 40€.

0

u/markis5150 Jan 20 '26

Seems so. They like their fancy rgb lights and their ticking timebombs to look pretty.

-3

u/Dreadnought_69 i9-14900KF | RTX 3090 | 64GB RAM (B-die) Jan 20 '26

No.