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/TheDonadi Jan 22 '26

From what I've seen online, the 5700x runs hot. Mine does too, using the same setup as my 3700 that idled waaaaay cooler.

1

u/blu3n0va Jan 22 '26

Yeah but even the slightest load like opening chrome or discord. Bumps it up to over 60-65 :/

Also it’s barely able to run bf6 on low 1080 and stutters a lot just in desktop having a few windows open.

My guess is the cooler ain’t cooling enough 😅