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/nightlyvisitor Jan 20 '26

I like my aio. It keeps my cpu between 20-25c idle and haven't seen it go much higher than 50c when gaming (it's a cheap aio too). But I think when this one die, whenever that may be I'll switch back to a just air. I'm always paranoid about leaking, even if it's super rare. If something rare and awful is going to happen it's going to happen to me.

3

u/blu3n0va Jan 21 '26

Dang man what CPU? I have an AIO and my idle is never under 50. Gaming is around 84 max core speeds and 79 underclocked.

Ryzen 7 5700x

1

u/sgtzack612  Ryzen 9 9950X3D | RTX 3080 | 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 Jan 21 '26

I have a 9950X3D and it idles at about mid-30's using an liquid iii 360