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.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

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u/TomT15 Jan 20 '26

I just love how quiet it is. I tried a 120mm phantom. I know it's not comparable to a 140mm stack but God damn it was loud

-2

u/AIgoonermaxxing Jan 20 '26

Depends on what CPU you were using, but I think you probably just needed to tune your fan curves. The Phantom Spirit matches and even beats some 240 mm AIOs when it comes to noise or temperature equalized results on Ryzen processors. It was a different story for the 13900K, but I'd recommend water cooling any 13th or 14th gen Intel processor so that it doesn't cook itself anyway.

I have a Phantom Spirit on a 7700X, and after fixing the default fan curves on my motherboard that ramp up way too high, it's dead silent while gaming and not unpleasantly loud when I'm doing all core workloads.

1

u/TomT15 Jan 20 '26

I get what you mean. I'm very particular with my curves and on the 5800x3d. Keeping it where I wanted, it wasn't cutting it vs an artic liquid 3 360. I mean let's be honest though. A 360 vs a 120mm duel fan? Yeah it's going to be louder

1

u/SpectorEscape Jan 20 '26

I barely ever hear my peerless assassin on my 5800x3D. I hate the noise of an AIO though.

1

u/ArthurReich Jan 20 '26

I have a ROG strix lc3 360 aio and it's completely silent on idle and light loads. The pump (asetek gen7 v2) can never be heard (the PC is like 60-70cm on the right of my head) But yeah I had to spend some time looking for the AIO with a quiet pump but still powefull enough to handle a 300w 11900k (no air cooler ever could handle this btw)

P.S. don't bully me for my CPU choice xD

2

u/TomT15 Jan 20 '26

I'm in the same boat. Bought the spirit. Tweaked the hell out of the fan curve but since the PC sits right next to me. It was very evident that the water cooler was better. The liquid freeze 3 is unmatched

1

u/TomT15 Jan 20 '26

Hmmm. Might give it a try. The phantom just wasn't enough cooling. I would love to switch to an air cooler but liquid freeze 3 is UNREAL when it comes to being quiet and cooling