An open loop system looks cool but is expensive and requires maintenance. You really should flush it out every 6 months to a year. Plus there is always the chance of a leak.
I would say it’s worth it only if you want it to be a show piece.
All-in-one coolers take up less room and some people prefer the look. Makes it easier with ram height. They usually end up losing to a high end air cooler in temp and noise levels.
^to compare performance/noise output of different cooling solutions.
Making any custom solutions (like the open loop system @Jalsar mentioned) will cost MUCH more money, time, and attention, and usually result in voided warranties to boot.
My go-to recommendation is almost always a good air cooler by Noctua or BeQuiet!. As far as AIO water coolers go, anything in the $100-200 range from any of the major name-brand companies will work basically the same, though some improvements can be had with replacing the radiator fans.
One last thing worth noting is that water coolers have more points of failure: fans and pump can fail, and a pump doing so is bad news. With an air cooler only the fans can die, and those are much cheaper to replace than a dead pump.
I could never justify spending money on an open loop. Would be a wiser choice to spend it on a better gpu or cpu (or probably both with how insanely expensive an open loop is). Plus air cooling is virtually maintenance free. Once a year or so I dust it out.
The + is temps if you're overclocking - no, air coolers don't have the same headroom - and silence at load.
With enough radiator you can keep a cpu at ambient + 10-15c no matter the load, and/or keep the noise below audible at full system load. Loudest thing in my system at full go is the lone mechanical hard drive clicking around.
Downside: very expensive, we're talking 100 bucks in good quality fittings to start with, yearly maintenance, possible leaks, needs a big case or you'll go insane routing stuff and fitting everything. Small case water cooling is for showing off on yt.
I've never had a leak in 20 years but start saving with cheap fittings and it's a very real concern.
If you don't think you can put up with the risk and maintenance, just stick to high end air.
Closed loop coolers are for compact cases, there's no advantage in a properly sized case with good airflow, a high end Noctua walks all over them and doesn't go bad in 4 years.
I am no gamer and certainly don't overclock. I don't need super cooling. But I do like it to be as quiet as possible, and have a nice Noctua cooler and other cabinet fans.
Can't help thinking that water cooling is a bit of a geeky thing. Couldn't be bothered with it.
It's trivial to get quiet cooling at idle - my machines that don't get loaded much just run noctuas, because why do more?
Quiet at load can only be done with open loops, especially for GPU cooling.
I've gotten used to never hearing anything no matter how hard a rig is working for 20 years and anything else seems like a malfunction, but spending 1k+ to make that happen is definitely very niche.
Quiet cooling at load and speeds you really can't get on air are definitely the reasons for water cooling, but I easily spent the amount of a Yggdrasil on watercooling.
I really enjoy building custom loop (did quite a few custom machines as a side job) but not a fan of those maintenance routine , for me it’s something really soothing when i bend those petg/acrylic tubes and installing them in place.
But yeahhhhhh, just stick to air or aio’s , everyday-use machine is much better that way.
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