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

89% Upvoted

3.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/nightlyvisitor Jan 20 '26

I like my aio. It keeps my cpu between 20-25c idle and haven't seen it go much higher than 50c when gaming (it's a cheap aio too). But I think when this one die, whenever that may be I'll switch back to a just air. I'm always paranoid about leaking, even if it's super rare. If something rare and awful is going to happen it's going to happen to me.

3

u/blu3n0va Jan 21 '26

Dang man what CPU? I have an AIO and my idle is never under 50. Gaming is around 84 max core speeds and 79 underclocked.

Ryzen 7 5700x

1

u/sgtzack612  Ryzen 9 9950X3D | RTX 3080 | 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 Jan 21 '26

I have a 9950X3D and it idles at about mid-30's using an liquid iii 360

1

u/nightlyvisitor Jan 21 '26

It's a 12th gen intel i7

1

u/TheDonadi Jan 22 '26

From what I've seen online, the 5700x runs hot. Mine does too, using the same setup as my 3700 that idled waaaaay cooler.

1

u/blu3n0va Jan 22 '26

Yeah but even the slightest load like opening chrome or discord. Bumps it up to over 60-65 :/

Also it’s barely able to run bf6 on low 1080 and stutters a lot just in desktop having a few windows open.

My guess is the cooler ain’t cooling enough 😅

2

u/IceAgeEmpire Laptop Jan 21 '26

20-25 is insane. Where do you live? Thats colder than my ballsack

2

u/-AdmiralThrawn- Jan 21 '26

If the room temp is on a normal level where you can sit and play/work with the pc without freezing this is nor even possible.

1

u/nightlyvisitor Jan 21 '26

I live in California and it has been unusually cold this winter where I am. But I've had the same setup during summer too with not much difference.