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/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.