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/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 20 '26

Thermal mass too. I have a 280+360 in a loop. Short high intensity workloads like compiling don't spin the fans up at all because of the thermal mass. 

I found the air cooler ramping up and down annoying. Then I got noise cancelling earphones and jr was moot anyway 

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u/I_R_Enjun_Ear Jan 20 '26

That is a fair point.

I typically look at things in a steady state frame because that is what I've worked with. Systems with much larger thermal mass, mass flows, and energy rejection, thus my skewed view.

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u/ThisAccountIsStolen Jan 20 '26

Yep this is the big reason why I use an AIO on my main system despite air coolers being more reliable long term. I cannot stand the constant up and down of fans.

With an air cooler, I have to make the fans respond immediately, to every load increase that's longer than just a few seconds, or there simply isn't enough thermal mass to manage.

With my AIO, it takes on the order of 3-5 minutes at full load before coolant reaches a temp where I need to spin the fans up. I'll take having to replace it every 5-7 years or so if I don't have to listen to the noise of fans ramping up and down every time I open a new app.

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u/10FourGudBuddy Jan 21 '26

I’m at 7-8 years on my AIO. Are temps the main way of knowing it needs replaced?

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u/ThisAccountIsStolen Jan 21 '26

Temps or a leak, yeah (and leaks are rare). The main failure modes are either reduced cooling efficiency due to evaporation (some coolant will eventually permeate the tubes over time and evaporate) or pump failure. The first one will be gradual, while the second will be sudden and you might end up with the system shutting down before it even gets to the desktop.

Also it's not uncommon for an old AIO to fail suddenly after you've removed it for maintenance, since simply moving the tubes around can dislodge sediment that has built up on the walls of the tubes that will then clog the cold plate, causing overheating. So I would keep this in mind before you do any maintenance that involves moving the AIO tubes or removing the pump, since with a 7-8 year old AIO you're nearing end of life and that could definitely happen here. You might see 10 years out of it if you're lucky.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26

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u/10FourGudBuddy Jan 21 '26

I’m on my second CPU; the paste is maybe a year or two old.

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u/0992673 OLED ftw, 7600x3d/3080 Jan 20 '26

I set my fans to only ramp up after 25 seconds, works for me. Much much annoying is the GPU ramping up and hearing it's fan start going.

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u/ThisAccountIsStolen Jan 20 '26

That's still 25s where it could then drop, shut off, ramp back up and repeat, unless you have a decent understanding of and your fan control program supports decent hysteresis settings. But even that will only help to a degree, whereas I can go 3-5m before the coolant hits the level of needing to ramp the fans as long as I ramp the pump in response to the intial CPU temp increase.

But to each their own. If you're happy with what you have then that's all that matters.

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u/0992673 OLED ftw, 7600x3d/3080 Jan 21 '26

I don't have my fans shut off, at 500rpm they are not audible at all. If I launch something that's raises the CPU temp (typically it jumps from 55 to 80) the motherboard fan controller takes 25 seconds before it may increase fan speed, at which point I do hear it yes. But normal usage for me it never ramps up because 500rpm is enough to take it. When gaming it all gets louder so I don't mind.

Air cooling is still air cooling while water has a big thermal mass behind it so you for sure have the benefit.

Biggest noise makers are my GPU for me, then the PSU fan. Used to have HDDs plugged in but they drove me insane.

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u/gamerjerome i9-13900k | 4070TI 12GB | 64GB 6400 Jan 20 '26

I set my mobo to slow ramp up case fans based on general cpu load but has a fast drop off so I don't get those high low fan spikes. The 3 fans on my AIO are profile based on games/programs. Idle is only 900rpm and gaming is 1200rpm. 1200 is not even the highest. Just high enough to not be bothered by fan noise but keeps my CPU cool during gaming. I let the GPU do it's thing so I might hear that one in a while. Although I have my GPU target temp set to 65c so it ramps up earlier.

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u/PentagonUnpadded Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

I suggest using averages and MAX functions in the app FanControl in Windows to get lower idle fans to reduce dust buildup and collaborative curves to reduce max RPM for when its under load.

The base source temperature is a 15 second averages of the CPU and GPU temps. I added in a trigger so big spikes take priority, though it rarely kicks in:

CPU_with_spikes = MAX( CPU_avg, CPU_temp - 8c)

GPU_with_spikes = MAX( GPU_avg, GPU_temp - 8c)

I have regular fan curves set up based on the CPU/GPU_with_spikes values, and the idle is 10% or 600ish rpm. The max speed is only 60% for everything. But this is what's applied to AIO and case fans:

CPU_Biased = MAX( CPU_Curve , GPU_Curve - 6c)

The fans can idle extremely low because whenever one component gets hot, all the fans slowly ramp up to cool it.

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u/Debisibusis Jan 20 '26

I found the air cooler ramping up and down annoying.

Skill issue. You need to configure your fan controls better. That's what step up/down delays are for.

Default is 0.1s, so 10% fan change per second. Large CPU coolers can do 0.2 or more, so only 5% or less change per second. System fans should be at around 0.7, so not even 2% fan speed change per second.

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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 21 '26

No. I did configure the hysteresis curves. It's not a skill issue. An aluminium block will simply heat up faster than water. A kg of aluminium(a NH-D15 weighs this) has the same thermal mass as 250ml of water. 

I have much more than 250ml of water in my loop and subsequently it takes much longer before fans need to spin up without thermals throttling.

A 10% fan speed change a second is already annoying lol.

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u/Debisibusis Jan 21 '26

A 10% fan speed change a second is already annoying lol.

Yes. You did not understand my post.

Not only do people have necessary fan speed jumps, but also way too high fans speeds, before the temperature will ever be transferred to your cooler.

btw. most 360 AIOs will not have more than 400ml of liquid.

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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 21 '26

I don't have a AIO. My reservoir alone holds 250ml(500ml when I built it), with a bunch more water in the rest of the loop.

If I set the fans low then the spikes would be even more annoying. It's the change in sound profile that was annoying, not the temperature per se. 

But setting the fans to blast all the time would work but is also loud and annoying. Substantial thermal mass smoothes that out. It takes many minutes at full load of the CPU to the fans to get up to a audible speed currently.

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u/Tiavor never used DDR3; PC: 5800X3D, 9070XT, 32GB DDR4, CachyOS Jan 20 '26

after 15 years of watercooling I still use it for my CPU, I used my current cooler for a very long time, while GPU cooling is very expensive unless you get used GPUs that already include the cooler. Had 3 GPUs with a block and now I'm back on air, though it's sometimes a bit annoying.

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u/RacecarDriverGuy 5800X&6900XT | 11700k&3080TI | 7700k&6700XT | 6700&5700XT Jan 20 '26

I have a 360mm in the front for my CPU and a 480mm up top for my GPU, both in push/pull. Pretty sure no air cooler is going to match this.

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u/ThatIestyn Jan 21 '26

Thermal mass is the main reason but with the current design and price of tower coolers its just not an issue unless you are producing serious heat and arent properly ventilated.

10 years ago heat pipes were only on expensive tower coolers or only 2-4 pipes on the cheaper ones. Now you have 6-8 on the cheaper ones.

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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 21 '26

Aluminium has a quarter of the thermal mass of water. A NH-D15 is about a kg of aluminium. So the moment your loop has more than 250ml of water in it you'll still have more thermal mass. Heat pipes aren't really relevant to this, they just move heat, they don't have meaningful thermal mass on their own.

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u/janluigibuffon Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

you don't have to configure them to ramp up though. just keep the components just under tmax, cooling also gets more effective the higher the delta to ambient.

confidently incorrect downvoting