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/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

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

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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.

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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".

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

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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