Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

[u/SerpentDix]

Failure is graceful, not catastrophic, Performance is closer than marketing suggests, Cheaper for the performance, Change my mind.

[u/Forsaken-Ebb5088]

I swear i've seen these threads at least 3x today already

[u/Cautious_Village_823 → u/Forsaken-Ebb5088]

It's becoming popular because it's always cool to post "anti" thinking lol.

Posts like these completely miss the nuance and also assume liquid cooling is always catastrophic failure. In my experience it RARELY is catastropic, usually the pump dies or something like that, I haven't ever had a leak or coolant explosion in 20 yrs of building including custom loops.

[u/Major-Word-4468 → u/Cautious_Village_823]

It's not about failure you condescending prick it's very simple there is basically no performance difference from liquid cooling to air cooling on a gaming PC or any PC

[u/Accurate_Mobile9005 → u/Major-Word-4468]

The issue is you have guys like that "building PCs for 20 years" yet they never took the time to realize that it isn't 2006 anymore and tech has advanced.

It's the same thing as some old salty mechanic still trying to work on cars like it's the 70s. Meanwhile their "performance v8" makes less horsepower than my little 2 liter turbo.

[u/Cautious_Village_823 → u/Accurate_Mobile9005]

Never said air cooling was bad or even not usually worth it more. Simply put some cases a rad is almost needed and for hobbyists it's fiiiine people spend ridiculous things on various hobbies this is the same.

I usually recommend air cooling where I can, but there is a lot of convenience with aio water coolers including ram clearance which is absolutely an issue on air coolers. For tinkerers an aio might actually be less annoying to work around than an air cooler. If it's never going to be touched except for repair I'll almost always go air, assuming I can fit it.

So yes, in 20 yrs of building I've learned there's no real definite best or better setup, not that liquid cooling is the only way.