Sick of watercooling...

[SiliconWizard]

So, here's the deal. I've used watercooling on my computers for years now. I did like the performance compared to air cooling, and the fact they would take up a lot less space on the motherboard itself. I've also done overclocking so those watercooling solutions worked well.

Gone from a couple AIOs to a custom loop over the years.

But I'm now getting sick of them. The probability of failure is much higher than with air cooling. Leaks are always possible, so you need to have a regular look at the installation. Even when it doesn't leak, air bubbles are also always possible at some point and can be a major annoyance (from noise, decreased cooling performance, to the pump failing.) All in all, they work great when they work, but they are just too much maintenance for my taste now.

So I'm looking for good air cooling solutions (ventirads), that are not too bulky (some of the current ones are VERY bulky and do not always fit easily on some motherboards, etc.)
The target TDP would be something between 150W to 200W.

Any good suggestions are most welcome. So far, I have my eye on the Be Quiet Dark Rock 4 (not the Pro, which is apparently pretty good, but much too bulky for my taste and use case.)

[BeBuLamar]

If you live some where cold put the computer outside during winter months. I deal with a lot of stuff with water cooling (not computer though) to not want to water cool my computer.

[bdunham7]

https://www.electronicproducts.com/ces-2017-highlight-cool-your-pc-by-fully-submerging-it-in-this-non-electrically-conductive-fluid/

[KaneTW]

Interesting that you're running into failures. My custom loop has been running 24/7 for about 5 years now with no issue, maintenance about every 2 years.

Maybe look into how data centers to watercooling?

[RoGeorge]

 

[Gyro]

It was the Cray-2 that was imersed in Fluorinert wasn't it?

[TimFox]

I saw a CDC 6600 mainframe (ca. 1964) in a computer museum that had a pressure gauge on the front panel to measure the Freon pressure.

[free_electron]

yup. real computers are dunked in a tank of freon.  and you blow air bubbles through it so the sysops can hit the emergency shutdown if the bubbles stop (no flow)

[TimFox]

For high-power transmitting vacuum tubes, "vapor phase cooling" (a boiler around the plate and a loop for the steam to pass through a condensor) has the advantage of gravity feed and no noisy mechanical fans or pumps. 
The temperature at the anode interface is maybe 100^o C, and exploits the latent heat of boiling water to carry off more heat than a liquid-phase cooling system.
See pp 121ff of  https://w5rkl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Eimac-care-and-feeding-of-power-grid-tubes.pdf

[SiliconWizard]

Thanks guys, that's being pretty helpful so far!

[Mechatrommer]

i recently purchased Jonsbo CR1400 White Edition for my latest PC cpu upgrade, checking it, its about 1/4X the price of Be Quiet Dark Rock 4, because its cheap, i also bought the CR1200 3pin fan at half the price of CR1400 as spare or use it to cool some mosfets... even though they have colorful led that i dont quite like, maybe when kids see it they think i'm cool. otoh i have water cooled system (SEGOTEP HALO BLUE) in my Lecroy SDA6000, and also another one stored as spare. just because the space is tight that an appropriate sized heatsink + fan wont fit, so i carefully checked the piping wont pass above sensitive circuit in case of leak, SDA6000 has a compartment/separator like casing inside that can act as water drainage i guess channeling the leak coolant to the side of unit i hope out of the sensitive circuit. and maybe in 5yrs or so time from installation date (about 2 years ago), if bend check shows crack appearance on tubing, i will refit with the best undestructible rubber tubing available on the market, view glass to ensure flow of coolant and/or other mechanical fanciness.. ymmv.

[Berni]

I tend to go with PC cooling products from Arctic Cooling. They make good quiet fans at a good price.

Unfortunately tho with air cooling getting great cooling performance while staying quiet means gigantic heatsinks. At quiet low fan speeds you don't have a large volume of air to work with nor the static pressure required to push it trough tightly packed fins. So you need many fins with a lot of spacing, so means the cooler overall is very big.

As a result most of my coolers occupy most of the available room. Going from the top of the graphics card to the top of the case and going from the motherboard right up to the case lid. The cooler manufacturers know the typical room inside a PC case. The place to watch out for is RAM slots, those can get in the way (especially if you have some of those tall gaming marketed sticks). Asymmetric designed coolers can help with this since you can rotate it into an orientation that gives more space where the ram slots are (Unless you have a server CPU with tons of slots on both sides)

[Jeroen3]

Just go on the website of Noctua and pick one.
You say not too bulky, but the bulkiness is what defines the performance.

If you take the NH-D15, which their largest offering, you can probably get a reasonable processor into turbo most of the time.
But you can also get on their NH-U series, which is smaller.
Not the most high-end stuff though, like AMD's 64 core threadrippers are just very hot.

If you take the AMD Ryzen 7 5900X you can see compared performance.
For example, the D12 and D15 can take all of it. And the U12 can take most of it, some limitations in turbo to be expected.

[Ranayna]

I would suggest taking a look at Noctuas catalog. Yes, they are bulky, among the largest air coolers available. Yes, they are expensive. Yes, you might find the "shitbrown" color scheme ugly.
But they are the best.

I myself use a DH15s, on a Ryzen 7 5900x, in a Fractal Design Define 7. This case is quite large, so the cooler fits well. Memory height *might* be an issue if i fit a second fan to the cooler, but i don't need one.

The "s" of DH-15s is important though if you use a large GPU. The 15s is not symmetrical, therefore there is more space between the cooler and the GPU. With a normal DH-15, there is essentially no space between these parts. With a GPU without backplane you might have to put some insulation between the two to avoid shortcuts. And you will not be able to reach the clip at the end of the PCIe slot to remove the card.
The DH-15s fits much better.
Clips to mount a second fan are included, if you need two (i don't with my setup), you can simply add one.

And considering past actions of Noctua: If new CPU Sockets become available where their coolers don't fit, you can get new mounting hardware for very cheap or even free. A Noctua cooler can theoretically last you for may CPU generations.

[bd139]

Any good suggestions are most welcome. So far, I have my eye on the Be Quiet Dark Rock 4 (not the Pro, which is apparently pretty good, but much too bulky for my taste and use case.)

Can recommend anything by Be Quiet. If building PCs I use their coolers, power supplies and fans exclusively. I've had nothing but reliable and near silent PCs out of them. Paired with the Fractal Design Meshify cases they are a winner.

Couple of gotchas though: Make sure you use the motherboard compatibility checker on their web site for the coolers and watch out for the incompatibility with some new Intel socket 1700 if you go down that route. They will send out a new bracket kit if you have a 1700.

If you go for a Be Quiet power supply grab a -CM variant which are semi modular. None of the last builds I've done needed any of the SATA cables and it saves bundling them up somewhere horrible.

Looking at the thread, a lot of people have suggested other coolers because they are cheaper, which is true. But you're paying for the fan as well. Remember that. Most of the coolers ship the crappiest fan they could strap on to it.

But I dumped all that for a mac mini because it was faster and quieter.

[newbrain]

f you take the AMD Ryzen 7 5900X you can see compared performance.
For example, the D12 and D15 can take all of it. And the U12 can take most of it, some limitations in turbo to be expected.

Minor quibble: 5900X is aRyzen 9, not 7 and, in fact, you pointed to the 5800X page.

That does not change the matter though: I have exactly a 5900X with a D15.

Cool, very silent in normal usage, OK under 100% load, and BULKY.

Obviously, for good air coolers, the bulkier the more silent and efficient.

Choose your MB and RAM carefully if you get one of these, did I say they are BULKY?

I gave thought to water cooling, but the risks are too high for my use case:
I often use the machine from another country for long periods, and while an air cooler failure (quite improbable with two fans) would just shut it off for overheating, a water cooling failure would be catastrophic.

For high-power transmitting vacuum tubes, "vapor phase cooling" (a boiler around the plate and a loop for the steam to pass through a condensor) has the advantage of gravity feed and no noisy mechanical fans or pumps. 

Every reasonable consumer air cooler or GPU has that nowadays.

[RoGeorge]

I'm a big fan of Noctua.  Have a huge https://noctua.at/en/nh-d15 on an i7-4790k and it's silent in a quiet room.  TDP for this proc is 88 W (average according to Intel), I don't know the max power.  The fans can only be hear (as a silent air hiss) while compiling with all the 8 cores at 100% load, for example when compiling Gentoo.  I don't overclock.

[Ranayna]

I forgot to add something regarding compatibility of the Noctua coolers.

It is *very* rarely a mainboard issue. The keepout zones around the socket are well defined, and the Noctua coolers hold well to that. I have not yet heard of mainboards with compatible sockets, that the Noctua coolers do not fit. But Noctua publishes an extensive compatibility list, so you can check if your particular board has any issues: https://ncc.noctua.at/coolers/NH-D15S-5/motherboards/all
Memory *can* be an issue for the NH-D15, or the D15s with two fans. You can either omit the second fan completely, or if the case allows mount the fan a couple of centimeters higher, to give your RAM enough clearance. Again, a compatibility list by Noctua: https://ncc.noctua.at/coolers/NH-D15S-5/ram/all

The deciding factor for cooler compatibility is your case. The DH-15(s) is high, and according to noctua, needs almost 180 milimeters clearance. But again, Noctua publishes an extensive compatibility list: https://ncc.noctua.at/coolers/NH-D15S-5/cases/all

[Ed.Kloonk]

Another Noctua fanboy here.

Have been for many years.

Any PC that I build and don't farm out gets a big fat heatsink. The only noise now is the spinning HDDs. But I'm sure even that would stop if I bothered to put the sides back on the cases. 

[pcprogrammer]

I have been using Scythe coolers for years and are very happy with them because they are quiet https://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/cpu-cooler/mugen-5-pcgh-edition.html

Might be to bulky for your taste though.

[DavidAlfa]

Scythe are great. I have my Ninja 3 since 2010 or so. The fan broke down years ago, but being so big it managed to keep the temps down by natural convection.
Until the pandemic lockdown, I installed some games and started crashing after 15 minutes or so,  hitting 90ºC. New fan and doing great again.

If you want an air cooler for such TDP, you can go two ways:
- Small cooler with fan rocketing at 10.000rpm
- Large cooler with silent fan.
You can't have a small cooler to get rid of such power silently.

There's a very good one for the price,  check Thermalright PA120
Relatively cheap on Amazon, "SE" version adds support for Alder Lake socket.
There're several reviews, like this, this and this (Nice pictures, different TDP vs temps), it plays with the bigger ones, but much cheaper.

[Zoli]

Another Noctua fan(pun intended) here; for the last 10 years I'm running an NH-D14.
My recommendation would be to move to 140mm PWM fans(air cooler choice will be limited, but that's the scope) both cooler and case; as example for fans: NF-P14s redux-1500 PWM; idle @500RPM - inaudible from 1m; max @1500RPM - slight hurricane.

[SiliconWizard]

Thanks for the feedback.

Before switching to watercooling, my go-to brand for ventirads was Noctua indeed. Never used Be Quiet so far, but I've only heard good things about them.

Just to reply to the point of watercooling failures: I haven't had that many over the years: essentially one bad failure, a leak in some Corsair AIO (so not your random cheapass shit) which ruined a graphics card. And then as I said, occasional annoying air bubbles and pumps sometimes failing to start. Yes, most watercooling pumps are pretty finicky due to their simple design, and sometimes the tiniest air bubble may make them fail to even start.

But as I said, it's also just the maintenance factor and the objective fact that watercooling has more probability of failing than just a ventirad. Having to flush it every year or every two years is not a huge deal but it's annoying. And moving a computer with watercooling installed is always tricky.

And yes, a fan failing on a ventirad (and I've personally never had any fan fail) is less serious usually. You have significant leeway and enough time to act before it gets too hot, while with watercooling, if the pump fails to start, it just gets to > 90°C temperatures within... seconds. Pretty bad.

Problem with those bulky ventirads is that many of them are very hard to fit unless you use the restricted number of motherboards listed 100% compatible. If not, most of the time, they just get too close to RAM sticks or even prevent to install them altogether. Major pain. Another point I'm not very comfortable with is their weight. Must put some nasty constraint on the motherboard, however sturdy the backplate is, especially when in a vertical tower.

I mentioned the Dark Rock 4, I've seen tests which show just about 3° above what you get with the Dark Rock Pro 4 (which is the bigger one and closer to the Noctua ones mentioned here too), but it's significantly smaller. So that may be adequate. Would be cool if anyone here had experience with it.

I've also seen the relatively new Deepcool AK620, which, while "cheap", seems to be one of the best at the moment from tests I've seen. But it is also big and heavy.

Also wondering if anyone else had or was having the same thought as me, going back from watercooling to aircooling, to hear about their experience.

I might also end up sticking to watercooling, who knows. Possibly using better pumps and a reservoir easier to flush would make things a little less annoying.

[DavidAlfa]

Unless you have rams with large heatsinks, it'll fit without problem. See how the heastink has a zone for that.
The fan can be moved easily.

[SiliconWizard]

Have you looked at your picture? You think that's appropriate? I personally don't. And even so, those are the smallest RAM sticks I've seen. But the fan is stuck to them as far as I can tell, and it'll happily keep transmitting vibrations to them. How sweet!

I think ventirad designers must smoke something strong. And on many motherboards, there are RAM slots on both sides of the CPU, so you can't move the fan anywhere else, it'll be the same. It's just a huge mess bordering ridiculous IMHO and one reason why many people these days resort to watercooling even when they don't actually need the extra cooling performance.

[bd139]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

[Mechatrommer]

the fan can be "adjusted" up by shifting the clips 1 or 2 fins up away from RAM. and the orientation can be rotated so fan on top blowing down vice versa or from left blowing to the RAM, depending on your motherboard populations and suitability. another thing about watercool is components on vicinity of cpu usually the hot smps' wont get airflow if heatsink is far away or on the outside, requiring extra casing fan to airflow the motherboard/bridge/gpu/smps. so the bundled intel cpu fan (blowing right to the cpu/motherboard direction) is still much preferable for me imho. the next option is that vertical fan setup, if the bundled fan is not enough anymore for the "upgraded cpu", and the last option is watercool. for me watercool is only reasonable if you cannot fit air cool system into the given space.

[SiliconWizard]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun. Yes, some RAM sticks have ridiculously tall heat spreaders, but I'm not even talking about those. If you look at the pictures/look at the dimensions/and have ever mounted any PC, you'll figure out that the available height for RAM sticks with most of those huge ventirads is ridiculously low.

Of course the above won't matter whatsoever to people using only laptops.

I've found this Be Quiet top-flow model, which sits mich higher above the CPU and would fit much more easily: https://www.bequiet.com/en/cpucooler/1074
that might be an option. There's no miracle though, and it's not nearly as effective as the bigger ones.

[nctnico]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun.

Just buy a professional workstation from Dell or HP an be done with it. These have dedicated ducting to get airflow where it matters and that makes these machines super quiet and reliable. I have left the consumer grade crap behind me a long time ago.

[bd139]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun.

Just buy a professional workstation from Dell or HP an be done with it. These have dedicated ducting that makes these machines super quiet and reliable. I have left the consumer grade crap behind me a long time ago.

I had a Z6 here for a bit.

Nope!

[nctnico]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun.

Just buy a professional workstation from Dell or HP an be done with it. These have dedicated ducting that makes these machines super quiet and reliable. I have left the consumer grade crap behind me a long time ago.

I had a Z6 here for a bit.

Nope!

Indeed. That is not a real workstation. Just blowing air into a case isn't going to work well. Look at the Dell Precision 5800 series; this has air ducts. HP (Compaq) should have similar solutions or they may have dropped air ducting.

[wraper]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun.

Just buy a professional workstation from Dell or HP an be done with it. These have dedicated ducting that makes these machines super quiet and reliable. I have left the consumer grade crap behind me a long time ago.

I had a Z6 here for a bit.

Nope!

This ducting and stuff is not less noisy or cooler that a decent case of a somewhat larger size and several 120mm case fans installed (running at low speed). CPU cooler in such PC is guaranteed to be worse than a good cooler in custom PC. Also this ducting is pretty much useless if you install a decent GPU. Of course you can use a blower type GPU which throws air out of the case, but it's an opposite of being quiet. Basically the only advantage is you can get a computer with decent cooling in smaller case and with lower number of fans. But under high load conditions, it certainly won't be able to compete with a good custom PC on temperature and noise.

[nctnico]

Utter nonsense. I can kick the crap out of my Dell T5810 and it stays quiet at full load (with the CPU temperature well within safe limits). I guess you never really looked at proper workstations. The key really is air ducting; without that a CPU cooler is just recirculating it's own hot air making it extremely ineffective.

[MrMobodies]

I did like the performance compared to air cooling, and the fact they would take up a lot less space on the motherboard itself.

you need to have a regular look at the installation. Even when it doesn't leak, air bubbles are also always possible at some point and can be a major annoyance (from noise, decreased cooling performance, to the pump failing.) All in all, they work great when they work, but they are just too much maintenance for my taste now.

I had a water cooled pump and radiator in an Alienware case that was given to me. I had it opened on my workbench so I can plug stuff in there so it was convenient at the time where I can look out for leaks.

Three years later I started to hear bubbles a lot. I thought well the next change I do I'll replace it with a CNPS-9700 cooler that I got second hand in a job lot on Ebay which I am still using today. I have a few of them and fittings to fit newer boards at the time. The problem I find with them is that they can a bit too big for certain boards where it is round and sticks out so it can touch boards if the PCI slot is too near to it so I have rotate the heatsink around which reduces airflow where the card is in the way of the fan.

I put the watercooler stuff in a plastic box and a couple of months after that started to leak all over the rubber pipe. Maybe the seals were breaking up allowing the air to get in and I was pleased I stopped using it in time.

[Mechatrommer]

I guess you never really looked at proper workstations.

i suspect he has or own one because he mentioned exactly what i experienced on my Z800 workstation. installed a RX470 graphics, and i have to bore a hole on the second ducting below where it clashes with the card. upgraded further to RX580, i have to remove it altogether. the Z800 weigh like a cruiser's anchor and i find it for no practical reason other than putting my life in misery. imho the ducting and extra metal is just a marketing mechanical stunt. i'm doing fine with open area no duct custom PC for decades, i dont even need casing fan all this while, just a CPU fan everything works fine. upgrading them is a breeze too, i'm not sure what went wrong with your experience with custom PC. i upgraded the RAM and CPUs for my Z800 and now the Mobo reporting underpowered fans during every boot, good it has detection mechanism, but i have to put more work and google at modding the fan to get rid of the warning, because suitable upgraded fans for the cpu "used price" is unreasonable in ebay.

[wraper]

Utter nonsense. I can kick the crap out of my Dell T5810 and it stays quiet at full load (with the CPU temperature well within safe limits). I guess you never really looked at proper workstations. The key really is air ducting; without that a CPU cooler is just recirculating it's own hot air making it extremely ineffective.

My PC also stays quiet and cool enough with no ducts. If you assemble properly ia a good case, no hot air stays in the case for long. Once it's out of CPU cooler most of it gets blown out by case cooler which is behind it.

with the CPU temperature well within safe limits

Actual numbers is something that can be compared. I found this post about T5810: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/are-these-temps-high-dell-precision-tower-t5810.3414169/
Where the guy gets up to 176^oF (80^oC) CPU temp while gaming, which is not some very heavy load. And it's for a 6 core CPU which AFAIK actually has soldered lid unlike Intel desktop parts of that time with thermal goop. It's a not a good result to be frank.

[Mechatrommer]

it is imperative that you have cpu with built-in temperature monitoring and auto shutdown, i think newer cpus all have that feature, most of my older cpu's here dont. with temp monitoring i guess you dont have to worry about cooler malfunction, your PC will tell you when its time to change (when it shutdown).

[bd139]

Buy RAM without stupid head spreaders and problem solved 

You buy what's available meeting your requirements. I have 64GB of RAM on this computer in 4x16GB sticks, They by no means have huge heat spreaders, and yet most of those ventirads won't fit unless you butcher them completely, which I don't particulary find fun.

Just buy a professional workstation from Dell or HP an be done with it. These have dedicated ducting that makes these machines super quiet and reliable. I have left the consumer grade crap behind me a long time ago.

I had a Z6 here for a bit.

Nope!

Indeed. That is not a real workstation. Just blowing air into a case isn't going to work well. Look at the Dell Precision 5800 series; this has air ducts. HP (Compaq) should have similar solutions or they may have dropped air ducting.

So does the Z6. They take it off for all the photos.

My Ryzen 3700X with Be Quiet Cooler, power supply and 3x 120mm fans was virtually inaudible when running flat out. The Z6 was louder idling.

But screw that, the mac mini was faster and the whole box used 22 watts and didn't make a noise

[KaneTW]

I've never seen a pro workstation that had satisfactory noise performance under load.

Quick google for a comparative system to mine:
https://hothardware.com/reviews/lenovo-thinkstation-p620-review?page=3

60 dBa is unacceptable.

[amyk]

I wonder if the OP's experience is just due to the quality (or lack thereof) of most PC watercooling kit. Where are the leaks happening? MTBF should be in the decades, not weeks or months.

[NiHaoMike]

I wonder if the OP's experience is just due to the quality (or lack thereof) of most PC watercooling kit. Where are the leaks happening? MTBF should be in the decades, not weeks or months.

I think a lot of it has to do with watercooling hardware reinventing the wheel regarding the fittings used, they should just use the same kind of PEX tubing and fittings used in building plumbing, cheap and reliable.

[Ranayna]

There are sooo many reports about failing AOI coolers at the moment.
The pumps die, they leak, they clog...

There is just too much stuff that can fail in such a cooler. And they are not even guaranteed to be silent. They need fans on the radiator anyway, and some pumps can also be noticable.

Give me a decent air cooler any day. Fit as many case fans as you can in addition to the CPU cooler, set up a proper temperature controlled fan control, and the thing will be silent in many circumstances.

[wraper]

Average water cooler has no advantage over high end air cooler which probably will be cheaper too. You can only beat air cooling as such only with high end water cooling. But it comes with a much higher price and way more potential problems. The only problem with big ass air coolers is when you want to ship a PC with one installed. They can break a motherboard.  But so are the big ass graphics cards too.

[bd139]

I wouldn’t worry about the case breaking. If you look at some of the cooler instructions they tell you not to ship the PC with the cooler attached as it may break the motherboard

I’m done with custom PCs now. They add nothing to my existence other than uncertainty and unreliability.

[SiliconWizard]

There are sooo many reports about failing AOI coolers at the moment.
The pumps die, they leak, they clog...

There is just too much stuff that can fail in such a cooler. And they are not even guaranteed to be silent. They need fans on the radiator anyway, and some pumps can also be noticable.

Yup. That's my point after years of experience.
As I said, actually the only leak I experienced was with an AIO from one of the major brands. Was that a quality issue? Sure. They used rubber tubing, and rubber is known to dry up and crack over the years, especially when submitted to heat. Nothing new here. And that's exactly what happened: when it leaked, after inspection I noticed that the tubing had developed cracks around the fitting that connected it to the radiator, which was the "hot point" in the system. And it's still pretty common. Of course those AIO things have benefits and are easy to install and are supposed to be maintenance-free, but...

The custom loop I built (from Alphacool parts) has never leaked. The tubing is of way higher quality, I used "real" fittings (not the crap Corsair uses on their AIOs). But it still requires regular maintenance, and I had some issues with the pump sometimes failing to start - usually due to air bubbles. It's extremely hard (or even impossible) not to had a few air bubbles form over time in a custom loop, however well you have built and filled it. I should probably drain it more often, but that's a PITA. And to understand what makes a typical watercooling pump fail to start, you just need to take a look at how they are built.

Give me a decent air cooler any day. Fit as many case fans as you can in addition to the CPU cooler, set up a proper temperature controlled fan control, and the thing will be silent in many circumstances.

Well sure, that's kinda the point of this topic. Unfortunately, while there are many air coolers on the market, many of them have the drawbacks I mentioned: compatibility with a given system is most often a headache, or you need to resort to using the smaller ones which are just not enough to cool down some systems. Yep. Some of the higher-end Intel CPUs can generate a LOT of heat.

For future systems, I'm probably going to reconsider things, including the kind of processors I use, and more recent CPUs also tend to dissipate less power. But for now, this will have to do. The workstation I'm talking about is working plenty fine and is pretty powerful, I'm not gonna throw it away and buy new gear just because I have a hard time finding a proper air cooler.

What would be pretty cool is a cooling solution that would give the best of both worlds. A relatively small CPU block with heatpipes running up to a distant place in the computer case, then going through a big heatsink with a fan or two would be nice. Of course, the problem is that heatpipes are not flexible, contrary to watercooling tubing, so while this kind of solution works for laptops and for completely custom cases, it's impossible to make one that would adapt to a variety of motherboards and computer cases...

For instance, on the other end of the spectrum (or almost), I have built a small headless box for running Linux, a completely passively cooled system with a mini ITX motherboard, a Core i7 4790T with 16GB of RAM, in a case that has a buit-in heatsink connected to a CPU block with heatpipes. The case was not cheap. It gets warm after a while, but the CPU never gets over like 65°C under full load and there is absolutely no fan, no noise, no failure point. Of course it doesn't perform as well as my workstation, but the difference is actually just in the order of 30% which is significant but not huge. The only downside is that it has no decent GPU, only the builtin one in the CPU. Doesn't matter for a headless box, but would not cut it for a workstation.

But I'm definitely considering something in that vein for a future workstation. Proper cases can be expensive, but if you add up a decent, classic tower case plus the cooling system for the CPU and the additional case fans, add it all up, and a dedicated case for passive cooling may not be that much more expensive...

[KaneTW]

Air bubbles should not form in a pump. The pump should be at the lowest point of the system after the reservoir. Any potential air bubbles would be caught in the reservoir, and the pump always has enough suction head.

[Mechatrommer]

Air bubbles should not form in a pump. The pump should be at the lowest point of the system after the reservoir. Any potential air bubbles would be caught in the reservoir, and the pump always has enough suction head.

the problem is people dont usually think in common sense.. or either the space not allow it... i'm thinking of a "raiser" (closed or semi closed) pipe installed on top most where the heatsink should be, a little bit or air inside to see coolant level, trap the bubbles and provide some pressure relieve. tee fitting should not be too hard to find.

[David Hess]

The two 65 watt AM4 CPU systems that I built last year have a Scythe Fuma 2 and a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO V2 respectively.  The systems I built 10 years ago had Hyper 212s.

I was not impressed with the performance of the Scythe Fuma 2 but it is comparable to the Hyper 212 EVO V2; I expected more.

I do not consider any of the above loud but there is audible noise.  The case fans make more noise.

The systems I built 10 years ago used 120 watt CPUs, yet I had a much easier time cooling them than my current 65 watt CPUs even with the nominally same Hyper 212 heat sink.  I think the difference is that the smaller CPU die on the modern AM4 CPUs yields a higher junction-to-case thermal resistance than the larger die of the older 120 watt CPUs.

[Ranayna]

I had to get used to the Ryzen as well
There apparently really is no issue with the new AMD processors when they hit 90 degrees. I think they throttle soon after, at 91 or 92 degrees.

[bd139]

Ryzen will be fine up to 90 easily. However depending on where you are in the world it can be unpleasant to have one in the room with you. I remember summer with that 3700X blowing on my feet here 

[David Hess]

I had to get used to the Ryzen as well
There apparently really is no issue with the new AMD processors when they hit 90 degrees. I think they throttle soon after, at 91 or 92 degrees.

It is just a question on longevity.  If you only expect to get 5 years out of your CPU then 90C is fine.

My old 120 watt Phenom 2 940 never ran above 65C, but my 65 watt Ryzen 3100 and 3700X hit 75C.  With the stock heatsink, the 3100 thermal throttled at 99C.

I think the difference is that the large die size of the 940 yields a proportionally lower thermal resistance.

[Ranayna]

Yes, the die size is the very likely reason why the Ryzen gets hotter.
If i remember correctly, the 5800x has only one CPU die. That model has the reputation of being a "hothead", the Ryzen that is most difficult to cool.

Longevity... Sure, higher temps accelerate aging processes. We will have to see how relevant this really is in practice. The 5xxx are about two years old. I hear nothing yet about dieing CPUs in significant numbers.

[SiliconWizard]

Air bubbles should not form in a pump. The pump should be at the lowest point of the system after the reservoir. Any potential air bubbles would be caught in the reservoir, and the pump always has enough suction head.

Air bubbles do not necessarily form "in the pump". They may form anywhere in the loop at some point. If so, they will eventually get to the reservoir indeed, sucked in by the pump. Depending on the reservoir, pump design, turbulences, etc, the air bubbles may get close enough to the pump to make it stall. I again suggest looking at how most of these pumps are designed to get a better understanding. This is a very common issue.

Now of course not all reservoirs and pumps are made equal, and the best ones (pump+reservoir) can go for over $200. So uh, yeah. But sure better gear and proper installation can make things significantly better.

Air bubbles are a lot less likely to form (if at all) in AIOs, but as we saw, those can have other issues.

And otherwise - one simple trick to deal with a stalled pump is just to tap it a couple times. It usually works.

[MathWizard]

Interesting that you're running into failures. My custom loop has been running 24/7 for about 5 years now with no issue, maintenance about every 2 years.

Maybe look into how data centers to watercooling?

And I get annoyed taking out my gpu for cleaning

[SiliconWizard]

What are the failure statistics on AIOs anyway?

I don't have any, but i'd say stay away from those that do no have proper fittings for the tubing. Those that just use rubber tubbing shrunk around small fittings without anything to keep them tight in place - that's a recipe for failure after a couple years. I think Be Quiet AIOs are rather well made. Alphacool ones too. But they are not cheap. Been pretty disappointed by Corsair's stuff.

Do favor compression fittings. Unfortunately, those are more common in custom loops than in AIOs. I think Alphacool AIOs have compression fittings, IIRC? But they also are "refillable" AIOs. And again, not cheap.

Leaks at the CPU waterblock are less common from what I've seen. Not that they never happen either. Or from the radiator's tubing - that would likely come from corrosion, which would mean you didn't use a proper coolant or failed to replace it (if not an AIO) in due time. Obviously never use tap water.

But the stories of ruined graphics cards due to leaks are everywhere, and I did witness one myself.
That part could be mitigated by putting a sheet of metal or plastic over the card to catch any potential leak, but doing so usually hinders cooling for the card, so to be done carefully.

[wraper]

I may just end up building less critical stuff out of air / water coolers like dummy loads or such vs.

What's the point? You don't need any water cooling or heat pipes for such application. If you are into such total heat dissipation to even consider water cooling, you should use multiple pass transistors anyway. Which means that heat dissipation will be spread out. Things like water cooling or heat pipes only are needed when you have a very small area with a lot of heat generated.

[SiliconWizard]

I agree there. If you are the designer of your application and said application can be implemented spreading the heat sources around, passive cooling will be no problem and much easier to handle.

The real problem with those powerful CPUs is that a very high power is dissipated over a very tiny area. Indeed not what you would typically have to deal with for a "dummy load".

[SiliconWizard]

Just to add a little something - if you're interested in designing your own cooling systems for whatever application, then you could also consider what I suggested earlier: using heat pipes to conduct heat, and dissipate the heat further away from the source. This is what liquid cooling achieves "easily" (but with maintenance that comes with it), but you can also do this without any liquid.

This is how heat is dissipated in modern laptops, for instance. You can still use heatsinks and fans, or go fanless depending on the context. But the benefit is that the heatsink(s) and fan(s) can be put further away from the components to cool down, which would give you flexibility.

Actually, this is the main benefit of watercooling for computers IMO. Sure, the liquid has a good thermal capacity, but good heatpipes can be pretty close, without the hassle.