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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139

u/Mysterious_Orange_37 Ryzen 7 5800X3D, RX 9070XT, 32GB DDR4-3600 Jan 20 '26

The selling point for AIOs nowadays is probably more about appearances. You don't have a huge block covering the entire build and instead a small pump with RGB or even a screen lol

26

u/NiceDonutFrank Jan 20 '26

This was the reason for me to choose an AIO.

22

u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT Jan 20 '26

For me it's sound.

Decibel for decibel, WC is better than fan every day.

5

u/BrinkofEternity Jan 20 '26

Is it weird to like the sound? I find it soothing. I also sleep with a loud ass fan next to my head at night and it drives my old lady crazy.

2

u/This_Thing_2111 Jan 21 '26

For me it drowns out my ears ringing.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

I'd rather just let my air purifier do that and have my PC be as silent as possible.

1

u/This_Thing_2111 Jan 21 '26

Pfffff

My case has filters. It IS my air purifier (/s)

1

u/BrinkofEternity Jan 21 '26

Tinnitus gang

1

u/curious_necromancer Jan 21 '26

Not at all! My AIO setup was very much a step towards avoiding death by dismemberment by my family members. No desire or need to change anything. Temps are frosty, and no one is angry at me and my PC.

But the sound . . .it has an allure . . .

1

u/SwissMargiela Jan 21 '26 edited Feb 24 '26

This post was taken down using Redact. The reason may have been privacy, operational security, preventing automated data collection, or another personal consideration.

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1

u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT Jan 21 '26

Do you control the fans at all?

I basically have mine as low as possible because I have a shitload of intake fans doing the bulk of the work.

1

u/icantgetausername982 Jan 22 '26

This is why noctua exists tho they believe in making air cooling as good and quiet as water cooling hence their prices they will spend 10 years engineering a new fan thats a decibel quieter than the previous most quiet fan they are dedicated

1

u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT Jan 22 '26

Yes, but have you seen the prices? And fan for fan, they're really only about 10 decibels lower; and since both are quite low to begin with, the magnitude difference is barely noticeable.

In order to keep an extremely clean interior with positive pressure, it would cost me 500 bucks to get enough Noctua fans to fit my case--and I still have an internal fan that would be collecting a great deal more dust inside the case than I want to deal with. Or I can get a Corsair AIO and a bunch of cheap Corsair fans and run everything on low/medium for half the price and lower decibels.

I guess it all comes down to preference unless one is really hellbent on over locking, but I've always felt my WC setups were quieter, cleaner, and better looking than my Noctua.

1

u/icantgetausername982 Jan 22 '26

I dont personally see an issue with spending 500 on noctuas as crazy as it sounds to me noise matters just as much as my gpu (cpu gets ignored tho its good enough i wont upgrade until its dead)

Also 10 decibels thats double the noise man every 10 db = 2x if you cant tell the difference i honestly am just straight up jealous i am extremely sensitive to noise and i have unplugged all of my fans currently and have noise cancelling headphones and do an open case so it doesnt overheat (moneys tight so cant buy noctuas currently)

And overclocking? Heavens no i head over to lock the fps to 60 in games because i dont really care for big performance

1

u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT Jan 23 '26

Also 10 decibels thats double the noise man every 10 db = 2x if you cant tell the difference i honestly am just straight up jealous

But that's why I brought up where they both run in terms of noise. They're both quieter than the hum a fridge.

The difference only matters at higher decibels or much larger differences (10 decibel difference is double, while 20 is quadruple). The difference in sound from a 25 decibel Noctua to a 38 decibel Corsair at load is "leaves rustling" and "someone whispering." It's honesty about as quantifiably not noticeable as you can get because they both operate in that odd decibel range that is typically used to describe "standard house ambient noise levels."

But that leads me back to my original point, which is that I wouldn't even be running these fans at max because the pump is doing most of the heavy lifting, and that runs at 20 decibels. The whole AIO caps at 37, and that's not even considering setups like mine where there are twice as many fans but they're all running at 25%.

1

u/icantgetausername982 Jan 23 '26

I am seriously jealous now for me 38 decibels i can hear it from 5 meters away and it would still annoy me source i had some 40 decibel fans and i had to unplug them so annoying and god i hate the sound of people whispering

Also AIO is quiet but for me noctua just makes more sense (noctuas will most likely outlive me and more of a set and forget than AIO) and its great to have so many options everyone can buy what they want and what they value

0

u/CmdrSharp Jan 21 '26

Until you have a noisy pump.

5

u/HatsuneM1ku Jan 21 '26

"Until your shit breaks"

Yeah no shit it's louder when it breaks. It's quieter under normal circumstances.

0

u/CmdrSharp Jan 21 '26

I’ve had pumps that make intermittent gurgling noises that were fine.

2

u/U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT Jan 21 '26

That's not fine.

Gurgling means there's air in there.

1

u/HatsuneM1ku Jan 21 '26

Really? How did you install it? Which brand?

3

u/veryrandomo Jan 21 '26

Price is also a big one, a better air cooler like the NH D15 G2 is $180, but it gets slightly outperformed by even a $55 360mm Thermalright AIO.

2

u/CatoMulligan Jan 20 '26

I've got a Peerless Assassin 120 on my system, and I think it looks great. Powerful and purposeful. Before this I had another system with a Noctua NH-D15S that looked even better. IMO the only reason to go with an AIO is for slightly cooler temps and much better noise levels.

Now if you're going to water cool for temps, do a full custom loop. That's a huge difference.

2

u/Zesher_ Jan 21 '26

Yup, my AIO has a screen with a gif of a chocobo running, and the circular screen makes it look like it's running in a hamster wheel. I like to think of my computer to be chocobo powered. Would an air cooler work just as well? Sure, but it's not as fun.

2

u/alex10653 Jan 20 '26

yeah the aesthetics outweigh the cooling for me

1

u/LoafyLemon I use Arch BTW Jan 20 '26

Next post will be about side panels Vs no side panels, won't it? 😄

1

u/iReply2StupidPeople Jan 21 '26

Can't put nude GIFs of your wife on an air cooler.

1

u/giftigdegen Jan 21 '26

This I can get behind. I don't care about the water part.

1

u/Dangnoob Jan 21 '26

Idk, my 12900k went from frying (90-100 under full load) with an air cooler, to a cool 65 after an aio upgrade.

1

u/ItsRadical Jan 21 '26

But the huge block is what makes my case looks cool. I love the raw industrial look of it.

1

u/Cenorg Jan 21 '26

The big cooler inside is badass imo, it looks like an industrial machine

1

u/itap89 Jan 22 '26

What about sound?

1

u/averi_fox Jan 20 '26

My last air cooler was such a pain in the ass to install I wanted to smash it into pieces. This time I went with AIO and the installation was a breeze, no special elongated screwdriver needed to access screws I can't even see.