Vista Tutorial - Air versus water cooling

I've been wondering for some time now what the benefits and disadvantages of water cooling versus air cooling and vice versa are? The noise and dust obviously, but it those where the only ones, we'd all switch to water cooling wouldn't we? Anyone comment?

Amplid

Water is more cooler than air. Water is more risky than air. Water is more expensive than air.

Anyway, it depends if you want your temps to be very low.

I prefer water cooling than air cooling. But there is always a danger of water leaking & watch sparks come out of my system.

Water cooling has never really interested me....

i can pull the same performance as any water cooled rig (with matching specs), mine just runs hotter.
you may be able to pull an extra 400-500mhz OC if your lucky
so the benefit is not high enough for me ..(performance wise)

the extra cost & risk would really only buy me ..extended component life, & in this day & age its hardly a worry.

the noise factor really don't bother me ....i only have 1x 80mm intake in the side & the HSF...but yours might be a lot louder.

if you heavily OC then it may be a useful addition.

Water will let you reach those overclock speeds that Air will not let you reach, but to be honest those speeds aren't all that needed. yea games and programs do get a little better the faster your CPU goes, but it's mainly the GPU you have to worry about.

like me, I have my Q6700 from 2.67 GHz to 3.66 GHz, and I can go to 3.7 GHz but then the temps are a little higher than I'd like. I can use it, safely. but I don't wanna be near my limit all the time you know. if I wanted to go to 3.8 Ghz or higher, I'd need Water cooling. but then any game or thing I do on a quad with 3.33 GHz is basically just as good as at 3.8 GHz, except for maybe benchmarks. so in reality, it's not completely needed. but for others it may be.

Yeah well, not into it with this rig... (boohoo!), but I'm upgrading soon (gradually, don't have much money to spend..). I'm interested now already, but when I tried on this one, I figured it wasn't really worth the trouble, because there'd always be my GPU bottleneck, right...

Oh well, you've convinced me: NO WATER COOLING (but you have to admit, it looks hot)

Cheers guys,

Amplid

Water is a more efficient conductor of heat than air, and when properly set up it therefore has the potential to move more heat out of your computer, faster. Be advised there are a bunch of cheap 'solutions' out there. And as you would expect, enthusiast advise is generally along the lines of "Go Big or Go Home", though in this case the reviews of pre-made liquid cooling products seem to back this up. I haven't seen any reviews where premade stuff beat good air cooling.

Downsides?

Expensive, more of a pain in the behind to set up, has to be maintained with regular flushes and Algicide so things don't grow in your coolant, and a failure will leak on your expensive components. Leaks are obviously very bad mojo for computer parts.

I do overclock, but don't liquid cool. If you are careful in your parts choice and diligent about maintenance, you should have no troubles. I know that I'm OK on the first part, but greatly less so on the second. And since I'm not pushing all that hard, I don't see a whole lot of point to it. Though the recent addition of a somewhat noisy 4870X2 GPU has me thinking about it again. Not really because I'm worried about temps, but rather for the potential to quiet the computer down.


My best advise is to do a LOT of research before you make the jump, if you decide to make the jump at all.


Good resources:

Danger*Den <<== Seems to be the apparent leader

FrozenCPU.com | 1.877.243.8266 | World's Largest Selection of PC Modification Supplies

Quiet PC USA - Quiet Computer Hardware - Soundproofing Acoustic Material Kits

Air coolers have just gotten so efficient these days that water cooling hardly justifies the cost. As Scotteq pointed out, unless you get a badass Danger Den setup, or something comparable, you're just wasting coin. You'll end up paying hundreds of dollars for a couple hundred MHz, over the 1GHz you can already get on air, when the reality is after that initial 1GHz, you've got more than ample cpu strengh to begin with.

I prefer air aswell. Water is too risky for me and too expensive. and either way you cant get below room temperature.

A big issue that people leave out of the equation is the ambient temperature of the room the computer is sited in. That aside, with some excellent cases with large slow moving fans and a wide selection of custom CPU and GPU air cooling units, all at very reasonable prices, I feel air cooling is the way to go unless one wants to squeeze the last bit of overclock out of a CPU processor and in respect of games most games are GPU limited rather than CPU limited, so ramping up the CPU processor performance is unlikely to be much of a help in the relatively small difference between, an over-clocked processor with a custom air cooling unit and an over-clocked water cooled processor. As for looks, some of the custom CPU air-cooling units look really cool, okay not as fancy as a water-cooling set up but if they fail, you just pull out the air-cooling unit and fit another one, if a water cooling unit leaks the water can wreck anything in the computer it gets near.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/T...ake/BigTyphoon

The above is the air-cooling unit I have fitted to my Athlon 64 4800 dualcore 939 socket, it was really easy to fit in that allthough it does require one to get at the back of the motherboard to fit it in the case of the Athlon 64 939 instilation, that was no bother to me as it was a new build instilation. I haven't got that rig over-clocked but I do appreciate it's quietness with the custom cooler on the CPU and a Gainward 7600GT GPU with passive cooling fitted in a Coolermaster Stacker case.

I really only got the Thermaltake cooler [ though it is an excellent product and I am very happy with it ] because the folks I get my kit off don't do Arctic products, but otherwise I would have gone for a cooler from Arctic

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/cpu.php


Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer