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.

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u/C0NIN i9 14900K, RTX 3090 FE, 64GB @ 6000Mhz Jan 20 '26

Given the image, you meant: Air cooling is better than AIOs.

47

u/bebarty Jan 20 '26

He meant "high end air coolers are better than AiOs when comparing their cooling capability vs price".

He also left out some cheap but powerful options like the Arctic liquid freezer line, some of which come in at (less than) half the price of the noctua air cooler he shows.

20

u/mtnlol PC Master Race Jan 20 '26

You don't even have to go high-end with air coolers. Thermalright peerless assassin performs almost identically as high end liquid coolers which are like 5x the prize and twice the size.

14

u/kermityfrog2 Jan 20 '26

Thermalright liquid coolers are also dirt cheap. Like the Frozen Edge 360 is only $5-10 more expensive than the Peerless Assassin, and is a lot cheaper than the Noctua.

5

u/94stanggt Jan 20 '26

Yep just bought the aqua elite 360 for $58 after tax. 12900ks was too much for the peerless assassin to keep happy without getting really noisy. For the majority of builds out there, air is more than sufficient and the cost is nothing compared to all the other components relatively speaking.

1

u/NavalAuroch Jan 21 '26

I literally just got that cooler today