Water Cooling Vs Air Cooling

With the proper case and fans, I don't think liquid cooling is necessary or really worth it at all for SLI unless you are going to a) go for dual loop or b) just want something exotic in your system.  But i'm no expert...

My take:

It's been months since Kelly of DSO responded to a post I made about air cooling and the 850i vs 950i cases, and after much reading, I finally understand what he was getting at.

Air is a terrible conductor of heat. Water is a reasonable conductor of heat. In order to make up for the performance deficit, air cooling requires *volume*. Huge amounts of air need to be pumped through the system in comparison to how much water is needed.

Provided the case is equipped to do just that, air cooling can be extremely efficient. You will *not* be setting any overclock records on air, but at the same time, I run a B3 stepping quad at over 3 GHz and maintain temperatures under 55*C on the cores under load on air. Newer processors can reach even higher speeds with the voltages I use, to the extent that unless you are running triple SLI, your CPU should never be the bottleneck in a gaming system.

A large number of posts don't make me an expert either Joker3. I'm learning just like everyone else here. I think before DSO offered their stage 3 air cooling, it may have been a different story, but in the right case, and by "the right case" I mean the 850i, stage 3 air cooling is highly effective.

The only gripe I have, is the lack of a 120mm based CPU HSF. The 92mm AC Freezer 7 Pro, is fine for stock speeds on quad cores, and for even overclocked core2duo's, but it struggles a bit with an overclocked quad in my experience. Something like the Xigmatek HDT D-1264 would be a nice addition to the air cooling selections. Toss an S-flex on something like that, and you'd see some dramatic differences.

The nice thing about DSO is they do honor special requests.

When you add in GPU's the cooling question becomes a little more complex, but the single best way to ensure that the entire system keeps it's cool, IMO, is to select video cards that do not recirculate the hot air inside the case. This means selecting an 8800GTS over a GT for air cooled applications for example.

Again, I'm *not* an expert, just another guy with the urge to surf the net, read, and share what I learn.


Edited by Tyler Lowe - 05 Mar 2008 at 12:36pm

Hey dog Lover, is "Thermoelectric Liquid Chilled" enough for cooling with 2 8800gtx? you don't use any fans at all? Becuase I thought "Thermoelectric Liquid Chilled" only cooled your cpu.