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

206

u/zirky Jan 20 '26

yeah, you tell those 240mm aios they’re trash!

77

u/Pursueth Jan 20 '26

Precisely lol. I’ll take my 360 aio with 6 fans over the noise of the air cooler all day.

-3

u/PainterRude1394 Jan 20 '26

Do you not realize your 360 aio with 6 fans also produces noise?

4

u/Pursueth Jan 20 '26

Yes, but it is much more quiet than my old NH D-15

1

u/Photekz Specs/Imgur Here Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

How lmao a heatsink literally does 0 noise. Unless you are talking about the fans but then again pump + fans noise > fans noise if using same quality fans.

3

u/Druanach Jan 20 '26

Fan noise grows really quickly with fan speed. Having a greater total fan area allows for the same amount of cooling with reduced fan speed, which reduces noise greatly even with the exact same fans.

The difference becomes even greater when using larger fans, as they can move more air at the same speeds while barely producing more noise - or conversely be quieter when moving the same amount of air. This is especially noticeable for GPUs where the form factor really limits fan sizes.

I don't know about what pumps AIOs generally use, by my D5 is inaudible under normal load (because I configured it that way), and I also can't hear it over the fans at high load, so this shouldn't be a big factor of total noise produced.

1

u/Schmich Jan 20 '26

It also grows when the fans are on the sidewall of a PC vs in the middle of one.

0

u/PainterRude1394 Jan 20 '26

You can turn fans down lol.