this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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85
Switched back to air cooling after over a decade on AIOs (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Left is idle, right is under full gaming load (Helldivers 2). My previous rig (Intel) easily went up to 85-90°C in the same circumstances. Ambient temps are slightly elevated as well since we've been having ~30°C temps daily here for a while now.

To me this is almost ridiculous. I had never dreamed I could get my temps under load under 70. CPU is at stock speed since there is literally no reason to push it any further at this point. Can always choose to up the clocks later if I still want to.

Cooler is a Noctua NH-D15 G2. I don't see myself returning to watercooling any time soon. And Noctua has a new customer for life.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Air cooling is really quite good unless you're running a monster CPU with like 200W+ of TDP.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Or a have specific space constraints. AIOs are great for SFF builds.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I like the AIOs cause the fans don't sound like they're lifting an aircraft carrier. I'm more conscious of noise cause my gaming PC is near to the main tv so don't want my gf to be inconvenienced when she is watching TV, I suppose I could get a lower sound fan that'd do it well (haven't really looked at options for years) but most of them sounded loud when I switched and I like my toys too, though I swear my previous version was making a whining noise for awhile (pump I think) but long since upgraded since I forgot to check radiator size one case upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Good air coolers are usually as quiet as an AIO, sometimes quieter due to no pump noise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Huh, I have a Fractal Design AIO that's several years old at this point, and I cannot hear the water pump unless I literally stick my head in the case and ramp the speed up and down. I just leave it at 100% full time.

[–] Drbreen 6 points 2 days ago

Pump should be at 100% all the time anyway

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I may not have had a good air cooler but I rarely hear my pump unless I put it up high then it's only cause I'm listening afterI changed the speed. Usually it works fine on regular or low. I haven't had an air cooler for about 8ish years now either so good chance they've improved.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

GamersNexus has in depth data on fans, noise, and how much air they move.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Haven't checked out many of their reviews I'll keep them in mind, at first I had them confused with guru3d who seem to come up often for parts reviews. I always like to find the worst points of a few reviews then if they don't seem too bad maybe the product is acceptable heh. Though you do need a handful to check for sure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

It's good practice to check multiple reviews. GamersNexus has very good reviews though, if I ever had to place my trust in just one review it would be theirs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's the Noctua experience all right. 2-3x as expensive as most other options, but DAMN do they make great fans.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

They are so quiet while pushing so much air, it's fantastic.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Noctua is fantastic, their products are well worth the asking price. They are the only fans I will ever buy.

The NH-D15 performs as well/better as most 240mm radiators. More than that though and liquid coolers are still king, especially when paired with Noctua fans.

(Oh and Noctua are developing an AIO, well a pump-less one)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah I was gonna say I have a custom loop and Noctua fans, it blows the shit out of an AIO or an air cooler. Plus my GPU is under water also so there’s no gpu fan noise either.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have a huge chonky Be Quiet! CPU fan and it works great. It's really quiet too.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys 3 points 3 days ago

I'm switching to Linux soon, and I'll probably have to swap my NZXT cooler out for a tower cooler since their shitty control software won't work

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I ditched air cooling because of the sound of the fans ramping up and down whenever I did anything briefly intensive, like installing a package.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Needs some hysteresis. Something most custom fan speed curves lack is a hysteresis option. Basically for short loads don't ramp the fans up to full blast just because the CPU got hot for 0.5 seconds. Liquid coolers aren't immune to this either. If the pump speed is low then it has to start ramping up. And pump noise equally drives me insane.

Like OP said Noctua fans are basically magic. I have mine set with a very not aggressive curve and hysteresis so I rarely notice them ramp up and down.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yeah, you can leave them set pretty high and they basically make no noise. No point having them drop super low, or go super high, as they push a lot of air for the noise they make. With a good hysteresis function, as you say, hardly ever hear them ramping.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Thats an issue with how your fan curves are set up more than the cooler type. Not enough hysteresis and ramp smoothing.

Its also just less obnoxious with a good air cooler that's still fairly quiet at 100% fans.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

That was my initial reason to go with an AIO. But this Noctua is damn silent. Its "ramping up" is a gentle whirr. An AIO's pump is generally about as loud.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Have you had a look at your BIOS into the "Fan step up/down time" options?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Gekoloniseerd. And personally i've also been considering air cooling my cpu again just to switch it up a bit and see what it's like, plus on linux it might make my life easier because i can just let the bios control the fan speed instead of relying on reverse engineered open source alternatives to get it to work. I don't think i'll buy a new cooler until my current aio dies though. I'm pretty sure i've had it for 6 years now and it's still going strong.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Same as others here, the concern for me was noise back when I was on an intel platform that wanted to dump 220W into the CPU. Noctua or not, you can't run that silently even with an AIO. I ended up lowering the power limits on that just to keep noise down.

The radiator gives you more room to run more fans slower and make less noise for the same temps, which is nice.

I moved from that to a 7800X3D and that capped out at 75W, so you could cool it by blowing on it from across the room. Newer AMD CPUs are a bit more power hungry again, but it's still nowhere near the little square of a supernova Intel used to ship. I do still use an AIO... mostly because despite some of the other comments here, I actually have a couple of old ones in working order and haven't felt the need to change things around.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I did the same when I rebuilt with a 9800x3d. It’s so nice not having to worry about the pump or aging parts that might leak. No gurgling sounds on startup.

I used the Thermalright Frost Spirit 140 as it was quite a bit cheaper than Noctua which used to be my go to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I just got a new rig last week. I got the 9800x3d instead of the 9950x3d as it is exclusively for gaming. Also got the DH15 G2. Really happy with it and it's so quiet!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Literally hollywood