liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Cooling Processors quietly

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nimo11
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liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Sun May 27, 2018 6:33 am

i'm building new desktop.
the cpu will be Intel® Core™ i5-8600K Processor socket 1151.
i was recommended to get liquid cooling .
other recommendation was for something like Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler or similar.
I've been told that liquid cooling system will save me at list one fan inside the pc, is it right?
i'm looking for the combination of sufficient cooling but silent as it ca be.
will be glad to have suggestions.
the case will be choose accordingly .

btw does the liquid cooling system need some maintenance ?

Abula
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Abula » Sun May 27, 2018 7:33 am

I would avoid AIO if you are looking to build the quietest pc you can, some are not so bad like the NXZT Kraken, but you will always have the extra pump noise.

Any of the following coolers will be able to run the 8600K quietly, not sure what you can get in israel or what will be better in terms of price localy,
Scythe Kotetsu
Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B
Thermalright Macho Rev. B
Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power (careful if your case can clear 171mm)
Noctua NH-U14S (i dont recommend this out of being more expensive but it might be less where you live).

You will need to setup the fan graph though, the fans on them can be inaudible but if you simply plug it and run them 100% they wont be quiet, you need to setup the fan ramping up depending on temperture.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Sun May 27, 2018 8:00 am

the thing is that in many places i read , includind spcr, they say that wc is quieter .
what about "be quiet" brand products ?
also red good things about Noctua NH-D15

about prices i can afford this range ' it's not the issue, just looking for the quietest one.

Vicotnik
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Vicotnik » Sun May 27, 2018 2:31 pm

Quiet at idle and light load, what most of us want - go with air.
Quiet at full load all the time, like you are folding 24/7 - consider water.

Water cooling adds complexity. Don't think of it as a way to get rid of a fan. And for most people asking about water cooling, it's like if you have to ask, go with air. :)

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Sun May 27, 2018 11:35 pm

thank you.
so if my usual usage is : office applications , surfing, Facebook, you tube video clips, whatsup-web, downloading, etc, most/part of the time all of them simultaneously , you would say that i'm on "light load"? .

Vicotnik
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Vicotnik » Mon May 28, 2018 12:01 am

Yeah, then I would recommend one of the high performance air coolers that Abula listed above. Check prices and availability in your area.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Mon May 28, 2018 12:56 am

just to be sure i understood.
you mean to prefer one of the air cooling over the W.C ?
one thing o don't like about them ( have one of the kind um my current pc) is that they usually block some of the slots and make difficult to reach the ram sticks.

Olle P
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Olle P » Mon May 28, 2018 3:38 am

nimo11 wrote:... make difficult to reach the ram sticks.
And how often do you add/remove RAM?
It's not an issue.

Vicotnik
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Vicotnik » Mon May 28, 2018 4:04 am

nimo11 wrote:just to be sure i understood.
you mean to prefer one of the air cooling over the W.C ?
one thing o don't like about them ( have one of the kind um my current pc) is that they usually block some of the slots and make difficult to reach the ram sticks.
Usually not an issue. If you already have very tall RAM sticks, make sure the air cooler you decide to get don't interfere. Normal size sticks are normally not blocked at all.

Derek Semeraro
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Derek Semeraro » Mon May 28, 2018 12:52 pm

Liquid coolers offer 10% (?) better cooling performance for double the price.

Liquid cooling is good for those that want aesthetic, small form factor and maximum performance. However, it's not a practical investment for most PC builders and it won't improve performance nearly as much as getting faster storage or a stronger processor.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Mon May 28, 2018 1:29 pm

at list this isn't correct:
"for double the price"
there are many aio systems that cost same , or almost same, as a good air cooling.
the question was about sonic differences.

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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by CA_Steve » Mon May 28, 2018 4:38 pm

nimo11 wrote:so if my usual usage is : office applications , surfing, Facebook, you tube video clips, whatsup-web, downloading, etc, most/part of the time all of them simultaneously , you would say that i'm on "light load"? .
Yes, it's a fairly light load. None of these applications, separately or together, will benefit from the 8600K over the 8600. Go for the non-K part, get any of the air coolers that have been suggested, and have a system that's quieter than a water cooled system (as there is no pump noise and the low rpm cpu fan cooler will be quieter than the fan against a radiator).

Olle P
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by Olle P » Wed May 30, 2018 3:39 am

One can also be very knit-picky and point out that heat pipe is a form of water cooling, so all of the recommended coolers are in fact water coolers!
What makes them better than the AIO variety is that the water loops are driven by thermal dynamics instead of a mechanical pump.

JazzJackRabbit
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Wed May 30, 2018 4:03 am

nimo11 wrote:at list this isn't correct:
"for double the price"
there are many aio systems that cost same , or almost same, as a good air cooling.
the question was about sonic differences.
AIO that cost the same have inferior cooling compared to similarly priced air cooling.

Vicotnik is 100% correct when he said WC is only ever appropriate if you're folding 24/7, and go with high end air cooling for everything else. And even then it's kind of a toss up since high end air cooling is going to provide roughly the same performance at the same noise level during load. Except if you're sensitive to noise the WC pump noise is going to be painfully obvious when your PC is at idle/light load. If you have ever been to someone's house at night who has aquarium, that's what it's going to sound like a quiet, but very audibly annoying whirring.

I've done Red Mod, which is where you put AIO WC on your videocard, and it was a life saver back when I was mining crypto with R9-290, extremely quiet at load, like you wouldn't believe how quiet it was compared to the crappy stock R9-290 cooler. When I stopped crypto mining though I sidegraded to RX480 though because it gave me similar performance of R9-290, but without the annoying pump noise at idle.

For my CPU coolers I have always gone air. Whereas with my R9-290 Red Mod I had to compromise because it's really hard to make an air video card cooler that's high performing and quiet due to video card size limitations, the tower coolers for CPU are more than enough. I currently have Ninja4 on my 2700X in Silverstone FT05 case, the two 180mm case fans spin at about 500rpm, and 120mm CPU fan on Ninja4 at 600rpm. My PSU is 100% passive, RX480 is mostly passive as it shuts off fans at idle, and I finally removed my last spinning drive from my main desktop, it's all SSD now. My PC is as silent as it can be given the 105W CPU I'm using.

You're correct that many of the high end air coolers are big and therefore interfere with RAM placements. Even then you're typically OK if you use RAM without heatspreaders. My favorite, Scythe Ninja 4 can be used with standard height ram without heatspreaders. If you use RAM with heatspreaders like the popular GSKILL you may have to install RAM before you install heatsink, and super tall ram Corsair Dominator will not work. Having said that, unless you overclock your RAM to the max heatspreaders on your ram are totally useless, the ram just doesn't get that hot to require cooling, so I'd recommend getting standard ram without heatsinks and Ninja4. If you already have tall ram, then you can look into getting offset coolers like Thermalright Macho, they're specifically designed not to block access to the RAM, it's still going to be a better than AIO WC.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Wed May 30, 2018 5:08 am

thank you JazzJackRabbit for your detailed post.
that i totally agree- "AIO that cost the same have inferior cooling compared to similarly priced air cooling."

although my daughter trying to convince me to go for aio i decided to go for air.
she demonstrate me her desktop noise ( 7 gen. cpu, cooler master case , gpu etc.)
it really was very quiet to the level you can't tell if the pc is on or of.
but benchmarks and video comparisons i saw and heard , and other factors like fluid leaking possibility , convinced me to go for air cooling.
i think i understand your meaning about the noise similar to an aquarium. it really cane drive you mad if you are sensitive to noses' as i am -:) .

didn't made research to compare , but right now i'm thinking on one of the naktua air cooling or BK.
btw , what was the reasons you choose the ninja ?
i have a nunja on my current pc, 8 years old.

if i may several other questions.
this is the memory kit i'm planning to buy.
how it is with the things you wrote about physically interference?
https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Predator- ... B071ZZDGY8

another thing. doe's full atx mobo will work good with not full tower cases like define c or be quiet Pure Base 600 TG?

do you have any recommendation on a case with very good soundproof ?
and for a power supply .

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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed May 30, 2018 5:26 am

Right - all cooling systems end up transferring the heat to the air. And all the systems use liquid as the interim heat transfer medium. Heat pipes are state change liquid and are passive - i.e. silent.

Air coolers usually also have lower air impedance vs typical radiators. So the fan(s) are able to run more quietly, than on a typical radiator. No pump, and quieter fan(s) means it will be quieter in virtually all situations. Folding@Home runs primarily on video cards, by the way, so you would have to do liquid cooling for the GPU as

I am running F@H and SETI@Home 24/7 and I'm using a Kotesu and the stock cooler on my 1070. It turned out the initial limitation was air flow through the case, so I have two very slow fans venting out the top.

JazzJackRabbit
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Fri Jun 01, 2018 6:22 am

nimo11 wrote:didn't made research to compare , but right now i'm thinking on one of the naktua air cooling or BK.
btw , what was the reasons you choose the ninja ?
i have a nunja on my current pc, 8 years old.

if i may several other questions.
this is the memory kit i'm planning to buy.
how it is with the things you wrote about physically interference?
https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Predator- ... B071ZZDGY8

another thing. doe's full atx mobo will work good with not full tower cases like define c or be quiet Pure Base 600 TG?

do you have any recommendation on a case with very good soundproof ?
and for a power supply .
The reason I stick with Scythe Ninja's is because they excel at low airflow. I do not overclock my PCs anymore, so I don't care about relative heatsink performance when the fans are going full blast at 2000RPM. I care about noise, I care about heatsink performance when the fan speeds are at a minimum around 500-700RPM. And this is where Scythe Ninja beats out all the others at a very reasonable $45 price.

The memory kit that you linked is not a standard height ram, it has heatsink that makes it taller than standard. When I say standard height RAM I mean something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6820236182

Standard height ram should not be a problem with Ninja4, it'll be a little tight getting it in, but it is 100% doable. The ram that you linked is too tall, you won't be able to put it into any memory slot blocked by Ninja 4 if you install Ninja 4 first. You'll either have to use memory slots not blocked by Ninja 4, or install RAM first, and then install Ninja 4.

Any case that supports Full ATX motherboard will fit Full ATX motherboard. I'm not sure why you're even asking this question. Just be sure that the case meets your needs. Nano C for example is best if you only use M.2 or 2.5" SATA drive, and say one videocard, it's not a good case if you have a bunch of 3.5" drives, or need an optical drive, or want to run SLI/Crossfire. For the majority of people who do not need optical drive, only have single 2.5 SSD, and one videocard max, Nano C is the perfect case.

As far as Power Supply goes. Just get cheapest Gold+ semi-passive Seasonic PSU if you can and you'll be fine.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:30 am

thank you .
my situation is kind of the same.
i not planning do o.c, not doing heavy application , so i'm not worry so much about temperatures, but mostly about silent work/
that's why i also look at the stock , low fan speeds on tests.
that's why i wrote this in some other post:
"if there will be a cooler that can give me a satisfactory temps. without any fan at all, i'll be glad to go for it.
but , with a fan, i think that high temps. will result higher speed of the fan=more noise.
that's the reason i'm looking for a good combination of both parameters."

in some tests i saw the noktua gives excellent combination of those two parameters.
must admit i did not see a comparison with Scythe Ninja's.

did't know that there is a semi-passive power supply. it's interesting.
i saw that there are also Fan-less p.s. will it work well?

what about the fan diameter in the p.s. ?
i know that usually bigger is quieter. there are 120 mm and 135.
can it be a problem with 135 mm p.s fan in some cases?

JazzJackRabbit
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:11 pm

nimo11 wrote:did't know that there is a semi-passive power supply. it's interesting.
i saw that there are also Fan-less p.s. will it work well?

what about the fan diameter in the p.s. ?
i know that usually bigger is quieter. there are 120 mm and 135.
can it be a problem with 135 mm p.s fan in some cases?
I actually have a fanless PSU, Rosewill Silentnight 500W (which is superflower rebadge I believe). So long as you have proper airflow they work very well, especially the newer platinum efficiency ones. I like fanless PSUs because 500W is more than I will ever need, they're silent, and I don't every have to worry about PSU fans becoming noisy.

The problem with fanless PSUs is that they're hard to come by. The rosewill that I have has been out of stock for several years now. Seasonic still sells a few fanless models, but they're expensive, 400W is $100, and 600W is $200. If you're fine with paying those prices, no problem. But if you're tight on budget a semi-fanless PSU from seasonic will do just fine. These semi-fanless PSUs should stay fanless up to about 200W, and only switch on the fan if you exceed that load. So unless you're gaming or crunching numbers on your CPU your PSU will have its fan off all the time. Theoretically 135mm/140mm fans should be quieter, but in my experience 120mm semi-fanless seasonic PSUs are quiet enough that I wouldn't go chasing 140mm models.

nimo11
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by nimo11 » Mon Jun 11, 2018 9:25 pm

thanks for the info.
i'll probably go on a semi-fanless seasonic .

cdnlinuxdude
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Re: liquid cooling vs. air cooling

Post by cdnlinuxdude » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:14 am

JazzJackRabbit wrote:
nimo11 wrote:at list this isn't correct:
"for double the price"
there are many aio systems that cost same , or almost same, as a good air cooling.
the question was about sonic differences.
AIO that cost the same have inferior cooling compared to similarly priced air cooling.

Vicotnik is 100% correct when he said WC is only ever appropriate if you're folding 24/7, and go with high end air cooling for everything else. And even then it's kind of a toss up since high end air cooling is going to provide roughly the same performance at the same noise level during load. Except if you're sensitive to noise the WC pump noise is going to be painfully obvious when your PC is at idle/light load. If you have ever been to someone's house at night who has aquarium, that's what it's going to sound like a quiet, but very audibly annoying whirring.

I've done Red Mod, which is where you put AIO WC on your videocard, and it was a life saver back when I was mining crypto with R9-290, extremely quiet at load, like you wouldn't believe how quiet it was compared to the crappy stock R9-290 cooler. When I stopped crypto mining though I sidegraded to RX480 though because it gave me similar performance of R9-290, but without the annoying pump noise at idle.

For my CPU coolers I have always gone air. Whereas with my R9-290 Red Mod I had to compromise because it's really hard to make an air video card cooler that's high performing and quiet due to video card size limitations, the tower coolers for CPU are more than enough. I currently have Ninja4 on my 2700X in Silverstone FT05 case, the two 180mm case fans spin at about 500rpm, and 120mm CPU fan on Ninja4 at 600rpm. My PSU is 100% passive, RX480 is mostly passive as it shuts off fans at idle, and I finally removed my last spinning drive from my main desktop, it's all SSD now. My PC is as silent as it can be given the 105W CPU I'm using.

You're correct that many of the high end air coolers are big and therefore interfere with RAM placements. Even then you're typically OK if you use RAM without heatspreaders. My favorite, Scythe Ninja 4 can be used with standard height ram without heatspreaders. If you use RAM with heatspreaders like the popular GSKILL you may have to install RAM before you install heatsink, and super tall ram Corsair Dominator will not work. Having said that, unless you overclock your RAM to the max heatspreaders on your ram are totally useless, the ram just doesn't get that hot to require cooling, so I'd recommend getting standard ram without heatsinks and Ninja4. If you already have tall ram, then you can look into getting offset coolers like Thermalright Macho, they're specifically designed not to block access to the RAM, it's still going to be a better than AIO WC.
I agree, mostly, but as with a lot of things in quiet computing I would also say, "It depends".

For me the biggest concern I would have with AIO coolers is that the pumps are not designed to last more than about 3 years, which is less than the life of an average workstation nowadays.

You can get AIO coolers that are actually pretty quiet. The Fractal Design S24 is supposed to be really good in that regard. My own personal experience with my Swiftech H220 is that if you swap out the stock fans with e.g. NoiseBlocker units and use the BIOS curves to control the fans and pump it is barely audible under normal use and has very reasonable noise levels at full load. Cooling my Ryzen 1800X, it never needed to go beyond half speed. And if you mount the radiator on the front of your case you can remove the front panel case fans.

All that said, if you're not overclocking or using some berzerko 200w TDP CPU, then a mid-range single-tower cooler like e.g. the Thermalright Macho Rev B or the Reeven Ouranos is a much more elegant and cost-effective cooling solution.

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