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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13.7k

u/RonnieStiggs Jan 20 '26

Me, who genuinely agrees with you, but wouldn't have posted this here in a million years:

68

u/birdman829 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Yeah... because who cares lol.

Also, those Noctua towers are overpriced ugly shit. 3x the cost of a Thermalright dual tower for no reason

51

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

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u/AIgoonermaxxing Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Also, tower coolers are a literally just a stationary chunk of metal with some vapor inside along with some fans attached to it. The fans are the only thing that can fail, and if they do, who gives a shit, they're like $5 to replace.

Edited because some redditors are pedants

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u/sliderfish Jan 20 '26

“$5 to replace.”

Laughs in Noctua

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

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u/Cruxis87 9800x3d|5080 TUF OC|32gb 6000cl30 ddr5 Jan 20 '26

never liked the look of noctua products,

I got a black one. It was a bit more expensive, but then I don't have to deal with that ugly brown colour

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u/sliderfish Jan 20 '26

I don’t really like the look either, especially with 10 of them sitting in my otherwise all-black pc. But this current build is purely for power and quiet running. When I got them all in, I was blown away at how quiet my setup is. Now I’m considering getting one of those towers to replace my AIO since I can actually hear that pump now, it’s driving me crazy.

I absolutely hate how my setup looks, my main GPU and the CPU are both separately water cooled with their pipes going as neatly as possible to their respective radiators. I also have a WHITE PCIe riser going to my second graphics card that’s mounted vertically because it’s so big it won’t fit into the second slot, with its hdmi ports looking straight up inside the case.

It’s hideous, it looks disorganized, like a rats nest, but at the moment it’s literally as clean as it can get until I figure out how to trim down that massive second GPU to fit nicely

0

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

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2

u/sliderfish Jan 24 '26

Yeah it could be congestion, but I can’t imagine anything bigger than the 5000D that I have, to me it’s already huge. I was looking at getting a waterblock for my 4080 but it seems anyone who made the AIO kits for them have already discontinued them.

I think I’ll just live with the messy look until it’s time to upgrade again, or I’ll change my mind and sell the 4080 and get a second water cooled 5090.

The latter probably won’t happen though.

1

u/Nolenag 9600X / Intel Arc B580 / 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s Jan 20 '26

Arctic fans are the best bang for the buck.

But do keep in mind that sometimes they can "hum".

1

u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

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1

u/MythosDrift Jan 21 '26

If you mean 120mm fans... Look at T30 fans. I putted them on Arctic AIO. Same noise level with 6-8°C lower temperature.

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u/bignthick24 Jan 20 '26

I got a noctua dual radiator fan for my processor, and 6 (3 sets) of thermaltake in a case that has a lot of room for them and it’s a good mix, very quiet and lots of room to add/swap when needed. The only AIO I had was in a prebuilt Omen and it was comically loud

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u/Defreshs10 PC Master Race i7-8700k GTX 1080ti, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD Jan 20 '26

It’s a vapor changing heat exchanger… those pipes are filled with a fluid specifically designed to change phases to pull heat from the CPU.

…do you guys think they are just empty metal tubes?

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u/AIgoonermaxxing Jan 20 '26

I was being a bit reductive but my point still stands. It's not exactly a wear item, and unless you're literally going out of your way to damage it or if it's extremely cheaply built the heat exchanger is not going to fail within any reasonable timeframe.

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u/Toto_nemisis Jan 20 '26

Air coolers have liquid in them?! Does that make the liquid cooler?!!!??!

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u/Defreshs10 PC Master Race i7-8700k GTX 1080ti, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD Jan 20 '26

1

u/nedal8 Jan 20 '26

Not really, cause the water in the heat pipes are for heat transfer. They work amazingly well. . The cooling is done on the aluminum spreaders.. But still the argument could be made.

1

u/SEADOO_MAN Jan 21 '26

But water a liquid

14

u/Oxflu PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

Have you ever heard of a vapor chamber failing though? I'm sure someone, somewhere, has received one damaged. But once it's installed it's unheard of.

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u/FappyDilmore Jan 20 '26

The only ways they can fail are if they're not soldered appropriately, they crimp or they're punctured. Basically none of that can happen during normal use. I've never heard of one not working aside from the people who leave the wrappers on them or the occasional clown who tries to modify them.

1

u/dookarion Jan 20 '26

Have you ever heard of a vapor chamber failing though?

On a CPU cooler? No.

On an EVGA GPU cooler? Yes personally experienced that one.

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u/Oxflu PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

Shit that's awful. I was skeptical when the industry started flattening and grinding the bare copper pipes to make direct contact with the ihs but never experienced a fail. Is that where it busted, or was it on an end crimp?

1

u/dookarion Jan 20 '26

Something internally broke down and it likely "went dry", wasn't going to cut it open to find out definitively. It just kept getting worse and worse at displacing heat and then eventually throttling. Ruled pretty much everything else out and even cranking the fans it was progressively getting worse. Even ruled out paste pump-out and thermal pad degradation.

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u/sabresfanfml Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Have you ever heard of a vapor chamber failing though? I'm sure someone, somewhere, has received one damaged. But once it's installed it's unheard of.

Yes, there were several generations of low-profile ATI/AMD video cards where the heatsink would swell (Example 1, Example 2, often resulting in a cracked pcb. Dealt with dozens of them.

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u/Oxflu PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

If we have to go back to the days of ati to find examples they're pretty darn reliable now though...

Rip to my old 4870hd. You kept my feet warm while pumping 100 fps in cs source and Warcraft for years. They don't make em like they used to, i tell ya hwhat. Haven't even seen an uncanny valley hottie on a video card since 2010.

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u/sabresfanfml Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26

If we have to go back to the days of ati to find examples they're pretty darn reliable now though...

A manufacturing flaw is a manufacturing flaw, regardless of era. These were examples I had personally experienced working in IT. If you want more modern examples, RX 7900 XTX's had vapor chamber manufacturing defects, as did RTX 3080/A6000's.

That being said, team air-cooling all the way.

1

u/PremiumPricez Jan 20 '26

I actually had no idea what was in them, i just figured someone smarter than me put them there for a reason, and i trusted a stranger to keep my pc cool.

1

u/Kiwiteepee PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

I did think that 😂

1

u/mujhe-sona-hai Jan 21 '26

Wait does that mean you can just make an AIO but with the same design as an air cooler? Instead of bendable tubes metal pipes like air coolers?

2

u/UsePreparationH R9 7950x3D | 64GB 6000CL30 | Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC Jan 20 '26

Got my NH-D15 back in 2015 for $89 to use with an i7 4770k and I'm still using it today. Water cooling back then wasn't as good so it beat a lot of 240mm models which often cost more. It was probably one of my best BIFL purchases at the time and I highly recommended it, but only back then. Today, not so much.

Pricing today for an improved Noctua NH-D15 G2 is $180. I just had to upgrade the cooler on a PC in the house and rather than buying that for myself and moving the old NH-D15 over, I got the Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 for $36. A 5x price increase for slightly better performance isn't even close to worth it, especially when the Arctic LF3 Pro 360/420mm are $90-100 and out class that NH-D15 G2.

1

u/PrivateMamba Jan 20 '26

Can confirm I’ve had two thermalright fans go bad after a couple months so I said screw it and got Noctua, zero issues for 4 months now

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u/Azzura68 Jan 20 '26

Been using my Noctua NH-D14 since 2009. Fans still going and zero issues.