my PC spec
I5 760 oc-ed to 4.0
run for 24/7
temp 45-56 +/- (non aircond room)

I was using Cooler Master V6GT for 3 years..

untill 1 day, one of the fan stop working,
and I decide to switch to AIO cooler..
and I picked Corsair H100i

The result shows that AIO vs FAN just improve about 3-4c..



Any 1 of u feel the same?

I was once wish to taste custom water cooling,
but after AIO, i doubt custom cooling worth it for that price..

Personally I don't feel that custom water cooling for CPU is worth the money, too much hassle for minimal performance gains.

GPU on the other hand.

Agree with you. But it's kinda weird if use aircooling to CPU & watercooling to GPU only ...NZXT G10?

Yeah memang weird. If you already went through the hassle to buy the pump, reservoir, radiators and GPU block, might as well include CPU into the loop.

The G10 I got consider before, but it doesn't cool the VRAM which makes me worry.

If only we have EVGA retailers here, can get the hybrid cooler.

there is a big gap between aio and custom water cooling in terms of cooling performance (there are plenty of things that you can do to make the custom wc packed with better performance). however, if you go custom, it makes more sense to use it to cool cpu, mobo, and gpu, instead of cpu or gpu only.

aio is mainly meant for convenience. compared to decent air coolers, a decent aio will be slightly better. (not all aio can do that. many are actually with similar performance, if not worst).

i used corsair h110 for cpu previously, and now i use swiftech h240-x. both are 280, but h240-x does the job better (i think it might be related to the rad material. h240-x uses copper rad, h110 uses aluminum rad, like most aio).

thats because of the die size that makes gpu more efficient in transferring heat.

but take note on the common misconception

Custom WC on GPU will increase heat in the room dramatically but less heat in the casing.



This post has been edited by cstkl1: May 26 2015, 10:03 PM

can u tell more about the big gap u said?
as i could see, in a non aircond room,
the differentiation average temp of CPU wont be too much no matter air or AIO or custom WC

the max cpu (4790k) temperature in a non-air conditioned room that i have seen before was about 68c under load, after long hours of gaming session. for aio, the same cpu with corsair h110 is about below 85c. with swiftech h240-x, it's around 77c. my setup is a lousy one. air flow is a problem. (a quiet mid tower) i will change to a full tower and add more fans later.

for air coolers, i have no idea because i don't have any.

I think you haven't try to push your CPU hard enough to feel the difference.

I believe the difference will be more pronounced if you're running higher clockspeed around 4.2ghz .

Now your temp is around 40~50~ only.

Push till getting 80~90 C for air cooling. Then AIO will give you the temp difference.

I myself prefer AIO because I don't like too much weight of the heatsink putting burden on my motherboard.

Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme user here.

This post has been edited by k!nex: May 27 2015, 01:41 AM

i thought the same about processing loads vs. efficiency, like k!nex pointed out. if the usage can be handled well by air coolers, even aio is an overkill.

Advantage using AIO WC for stock speed or non-K CPU is you can lower down fan speed & noise as much as possible to make quite rig...

4.0 is already my maximum clock,
The stock clock is just 2.8
I have been clocked almost 80% higher than stock..


the only scenario to max the CPU temp is running benchmark. Even high intense gaming doesnt use much of CPU..

in your case, there is no need to go further if the current one is already sufficient.

in terms of cooling performance, i believe what i have tested and seen. do i need the best of them? no. practically, as long as the cooling system is good enough, i'm good.

At least you decreased your mobo strain from that heavy V6GT.

I'm currently running with Corsair H110. Definitely better compared to a decent air cooling.
However, at overclocked state, if I run benchmark, will still hit >90C

for my case,
the temp arent very big difference when I overclock to 4.0ghz

while I can get 4.0 by using v6gt..
corsair h100i doesnt seems able to push it even higher..

but, one thing is, the temp wont hit above 75c
in normal use/gaming.. (but not benchmarking)

h110 is terrible with benchmarking tools in this part of the world. doing it in air-conditioned room might help, but that's lying to show those results without stating the actual environment imo, because i think most people are expecting something that are done at room temperature.

however with that said, for real-world gaming, it does its job fine (well within my limit of 85c). furthermore, i just did push configuration. (using stock fans) it might be be slightly better if it's a push-pull.

later i will use h110 for gpu cooling. maybe that will make it more useful.

My room is pretty hot, and seldom turn on air-cond to cut down electricity bill Of course if I turn on air-cond, the temp will drop another 5-10C.
On nearly all real-world usage, my 4790K @ 4.6GHz will be below 70C at full load except video encoding.
And yea, I'm using push-pull fan config.

By the way, how do you mod H110 for GPU cooling? I'm interested in doing that as well

This post has been edited by llaw: Jun 2 2015, 10:29 AM

go custom la... fuck AIO as most noctua air coolers will just beat it anyways

put it this way, in ANY hobbies, there are diminishing returns.

custom WC is just that: you spend loads more, and gain less.
however custom wc is still going to beat AIO anytime any day; in fact, high end air cools like noctua (D15 anyone?) will rape almost all AIO like nothing, while possibly spending less!