# Air cooling or liquid cooling for production computer CPU?



## timbit2006 (Nov 28, 2021)

Hello, I'm in desperate need of a CPU cooler upgrade. I am thinking of going with the Noctua NH-15, Scythe or Be Quiet! equivalent. I am leaning towards air cooling because of ease of use and reliability. I have heard though that liquid coolers are better at immediate dissipation of heat which will help with "burst" loads.
I'm running a Ryzen 3900XT so lower temps also directly equate to performance in my situation.


This video does a great job around 3 mins in explaining the "time to reach steady state" so for the Air cooler it got to its average temp 89 seconds in and the 2 fan liquid cooler got to its average temp in 260 seconds. That's a whole 171 extra seconds of cooled unrestricted boost speeds which could make a difference to a DAW. Personally I'm pushing the limits of RT CPU but that's likely due to thermal throttling because my cooler is underpowered for this CPU.

Does anyone have any specific experience in this area? Did switching to liquid cooling improve your RT CPU potential? Thanks for any insight.


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## Pier-V (Nov 28, 2021)

I'm not an expert but temperature managment is a big concern of mine, so I can share some tips I learned along the way:


Generally speaking watercooling is a lot more efficient, but also requires more maintenance and if not properly done it can lead to component damage. Water is also more dense than air (around 1000 more dense), which translates in more thermal inertia -> temperatures change slowly;
Especially in music production noise may become a problem: in that regard watercooling is simply unbeatable. Alternative solutions may involve physically separating your computer from your studio (not always possible) or using headphones for mixing;
Now some lesser known facts: thermal throttling starts well before many people think, usually 60 °C is already enough, but becomes DRASTIC at around 85-90 °C. Energetic consumption is affected by temperatures too;
Carefully tweaking your fan curves can help a lot, too. A badly shaped fan curve (too steep for example) may have an unexpected consequence where the cpu temperature oscillates back and forth, and THAT would be a problem in the long run since rapid temperature shifting translates in constant thermal expansion.
If you want to learn more I can suggest you the Youtube channel Linus Tech Tips - despite the clickbaity thumbnails and titles he and his team are incredibly competent and always back their explainations with graphs and benchmarks


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## dzilizzi (Nov 28, 2021)

I was thinking about water cooling, but it seemed a little too complicated for me as an amateur builder of PC's. If you don't get it perfect, it will leak. And water and electronics don't mix.


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## Pictus (Nov 28, 2021)

Go for a Noctua NH-D15 or a BIG AIO water cooler.
*The Noctua NH-D15 is good enough to cool Ryzen 3900XT*, but if you
want to be more silent go for a BIG Artic AIO water cooler + a case that fits.



If want ultimate cooler performance and silence at the same time, go
for a custom water kit and place the pump/radiator into another room.
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## Paulogic (Nov 29, 2021)

Buy a small fridge and put your computer in it. No joke, some gamers around here are
doing this and it seems to work. they make a hole at the side for cables and stuff and
make it airtight with Expanding foam.

ps : Not a deepfreeze


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## MarcusD (Nov 29, 2021)

Just use a large AIO cooler. It’s all you need. Water cooling is too much of a ball ache, expensive, and having to replace the fluids after x-amount of time is annoying. If it leaks well… not good.


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## cedricm (Nov 29, 2021)

I recommend an air cooler, such as those from Arctic, that only start the vent when the CPU temp is above a threshold.
I used to have a water cooler, but it died after 3 years and the noise of the water pump was annoying to me.


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## easyrider (Nov 29, 2021)

I’m cooling my 5950x With a Corsair AIO 280mm Radiator with 4 x 140mm in pull push.



Virtually silent.


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## nonstatic (Nov 30, 2021)

Even in 2021, I see little reason to fuss with water cooling. Too much potential for damage, and the noise levels aren't good enough to justify the higher cost over top tier heatsink/fan combinations. I put together a Ryzen build last year using a Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH edition and you can't tell the computer is on unless at full load when the room temperature gets to scathing levels during a heatwave. My previous build (an I7-860) performed similarly and that CPU was far less efficient. This is even in an ancient recycled Antec Solo case without modern airflow/cable management improvements.

It can take some research to find a good performing heatsink, but it's time well spent and then you never have to touch the computer again for several years. If your case can't fit large heatsinks or you will be transporting the computer often, then maybe water cooling could make sense. Otherwise, not worth it imho.


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 30, 2021)

timbit2006 said:


> Hello, I'm in desperate need of a CPU cooler upgrade. I am thinking of going with the Noctua NH-15, Scythe or Be Quiet! equivalent. I am leaning towards air cooling because of ease of use and reliability. I have heard though that liquid coolers are better at immediate dissipation of heat which will help with "burst" loads.
> I'm running a Ryzen 3900XT so lower temps also directly equate to performance in my situation.
> 
> 
> ...



If you have the room for it, go with the Noctua NH-15. It is extremely quiet and performs as well or better than a lot of liquid options. Even under heavy load, if your case has good airflow, it is unlikely the huge fans will need to spin up much with your 3900xt. Liquid cooling requires maintenance and you have to drain it to move it. Even closed loop liquid coolers have to be replaced after a few years. I've had them go dry on me. Liquid are good if you don't have the space for the NH-15, or you have a type of case or hardware configuration where a closed loop would work better. For instance, if you you run heavy GPU workloads and you don't want the GPU dumping heat into your tower cooler, you can run a liquid cooler as intake for for CPU.


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## timbit2006 (Dec 1, 2021)

I think for now I'll end up going for a Noctua NH-15 or similar air cooler depending on what's the cheapest. I'm seeing some NH-15s for less than 109 but there's also a more expensive model that mentions it has an AM4 kit. The cheaper model says its AM4 compatible as well. Does anyone know anything about this in particular?
There is a really good sale on the be quiet! cooler but it ships from a region that currently is cut off from a natural disaster so that might be risky and not come for a long time.
I was also considering going with the Scythe Mugen because I had the Ninja back in the AM3 days but from all the performance tests I'm seeing it ends up throttling higher core count Ryzen chips because the fan speeds can't exceed a certain RPM.

I might end up getting an AIO water cooler eventually but that's moreso because I want to build a smaller rack mounted PC that's portable for live sound dsp use but right now for costs sake I should probably upgrade both of my PCs from their underpowered coolers to Noctuas and that'd be more benefit than just doing one PC with an overpowered cooler. If I do eventually just go with an AIO for my main DAW PC I'll make sure to do some benchmarking before I switch over; to be honest the black friday sales almost got me into the whole watercooling thing and I'm sure there will be Christmas sales, then easter, then every other damn holiday and then eventually I'll end up with one even if I don't know if I really wanted it or not..
Thanks for the advice and suggestions!


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## timbit2006 (Dec 1, 2021)

Nigel Andreola said:


> For instance, if you you run heavy GPU workloads and you don't want the GPU dumping heat into your tower cooler, you can run a liquid cooler as intake for for CPU.


This is actually one of my considerations for going with liquid cooling. As is when I'm using this PC for gaming the card will start heating the whole case up and then even in games with low CPU usage the CPU cooler fans will speed up and down constantly. I'm also starting to get into animation and 3D design to the point where I may end up with this problem, a few FPS lost in video games is nothing to be concerned about but if it affects professional type work it might be worth it. Liquid cooling would also provide better airflow to the motherboard and RAM, my PC case has an 8" fan on the side of it that tower coolers also block.


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## Nigel Andreola (Dec 1, 2021)

timbit2006 said:


> This is actually one of my considerations for going with liquid cooling. As is when I'm using this PC for gaming the card will start heating the whole case up and then even in games with low CPU usage the CPU cooler fans will speed up and down constantly. I'm also starting to get into animation and 3D design to the point where I may end up with this problem, a few FPS lost in video games is nothing to be concerned about but if it affects professional type work it might be worth it. Liquid cooling would also provide better airflow to the motherboard and RAM, my PC case has an 8" fan on the side of it that tower coolers also block.


Try this, use the rear exhaust as intake and if your case has the option, use the center located top mounted fan slot as exhaust with a Noctua fan. Use something to block off the bottom of the tower cooler. Lower the fan speed of the front intake to their minimums. Reverse your tower cooler fans. Now you're blowing cool air directly on your tower cooler and the hot air from the GPU is moving to the top right and going arround the cooler. With all that positive pressure, and that top slot opened up with a low RMP Noctua fan set as exhaust, the case fans won't have to spin up to remove heat.

I have a similar situation and it's working really nicely. Even running my GPU at 100% for a long time, the CPU doesn't heat up. I'm using a liquid cooler in the rear exhaust as intake though, but the principle is the same.


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## dzilizzi (Dec 1, 2021)

I've been thinking about the "use a small refrigerator" idea. Part of me thinks it might be a great idea.

But.....Wouldn't they get too humid though? And then two things - on/off switch needs to be outside in case it freezes or something similar (BSoD); and fridges get noisy. 

I need to figure out something. My office/studio gets really hot in the afternoons (southwest corner)


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## MartinH. (Dec 1, 2021)

I don't like the refrigerator idea because it's a waste of energy and produces more heat in the room. I'm sure it "works", but at what cost?


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## Pier (Dec 1, 2021)

I don't know anything about water cooling, but I've been *super* happy with my Noctua NH-D15.

I use it to cool a 3700X. It's so efficient that I've been able to remove one of its fans. The CPU never reaches above 75ºC even when doing Cinebench multicore benchmarks, even during summer.

My case is super well ventilated though. I have 4 Noctua redux fans on the case.


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## dzilizzi (Dec 1, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> I don't like the refrigerator idea because it's a waste of energy and produces more heat in the room. I'm sure it "works", but at what cost?


That is kind of what I was thinking.


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## Paulogic (Dec 2, 2021)

That is what I think too and I didn't believe it until I saw it. The fridge, hight of a regular 
table, was customized to hold the gamers computer and then he also showed me some
other versions from friends and so on. Those guy's do everything to get the maximum out
of their pc's for framerate, resolution...
I have also a client who has an industry grade internet connection at home (read expensive)
to get the highest possible connection available for now. Fiber is not available in most regions
here... still coax cable for most of the faster connections.


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## dzilizzi (Dec 2, 2021)

Paulogic said:


> That is what I think too and I didn't believe it until I saw it. The fridge, hight of a regular
> table, was customized to hold the gamers computer and then he also showed me some
> other versions from friends and so on. Those guy's do everything to get the maximum out
> of their pc's for framerate, resolution...
> ...


I actually get that. I started out with DSL (only thing available at the place I lived previously,) so paying extra for something that consistently works well can be worth it. I have fiber and it still can be slow. Doesn't cable share the connection with others also? I can generally tell when the kids around me get home from school - I work from home - everything slows down. It technically shouldn't do that with fiber, but I think it's a circuit issue.


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## Pier (Dec 2, 2021)

dzilizzi said:


> I can generally tell when the kids around me get home from school - I work from home - everything slows down. It technically shouldn't do that with fiber, but I think it's a circuit issue.


ISPs don't have unlimited bandwidth and they typically oversell their capacity since they assume users won't be using all their available bandwidth at the same time.

Fiber, cable, DSL... the same concept applies. Your fiber doesn't go straight the to internet's backbone. There are multiple points that could become a bottleneck. From the node where you and neighbors connect, to nodes inside the ISP's network, to the carrier that is providing the ISP a connection to the backbone, and so on.


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## Trash Panda (Dec 2, 2021)

Pier said:


> ISPs don't have unlimited bandwidth and they typically oversell their capacity since they assume users won't be using all their available bandwidth at the same time.
> 
> Fiber, cable, DSL... the same concept applies. Your fiber doesn't go straight the to internet's backbone. There are multiple points that could become a bottleneck. From the node where you and neighbors connect, to nodes inside the ISP's network, to the carrier that is providing the ISP a connection to the backbone, and so on.


Almost like it's a series of tubes if you will.


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## dzilizzi (Dec 2, 2021)

Pier said:


> ISPs don't have unlimited bandwidth and they typically oversell their capacity since they assume users won't be using all their available bandwidth at the same time.
> 
> Fiber, cable, DSL... the same concept applies. Your fiber doesn't go straight the to internet's backbone. There are multiple points that could become a bottleneck. From the node where you and neighbors connect, to nodes inside the ISP's network, to the carrier that is providing the ISP a connection to the backbone, and so on.


LOL! And they keep building more houses around here. Should be interesting.


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## rgames (Dec 2, 2021)

Definitely air cooling.

Not only is it quieter to start with but it produces noise in frequency bands that are easier to attenuate (highs vs. mids you get from pump/coolant flow noise).

rgames


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