All that being said, let’s talk about the benefits and the downsides of it.
Liquid Cooling’s Pros And Cons
Liquid cooling is primarily known in hardware enthusiast circles for its great cooling performance which allows people to get more out of their hardware, especially CPU and GPU overclocks. Let’s take a moment to talk about those.
Increased cooling performance. Keeps your system from overheating and allows your components to more comfortably stretch out to their full capabilities, since they aren’t being throttled by high thermals. Less noise. Nobody likes a noisy computer, especially not people who do frequent voice chats or professional voice recording. A noise-free setup can be a godsend to some, and liquid cooling can be near silent in some setups without sacrificing performance at all. Getting the most out of your overclocks. An overclocker’s dream is a chip that can handle being pushed as far as possible without overheating. Liquid cooling makes that dream possible and allows people to get a higher level of performance out of their hardware than would otherwise be possible.
However, liquid cooling isn’t without its downsides, either. Let’s go into those.
Significantly more expensive. A low-end watercooling system can cost $50 US dollars. Higher-end solutions go to $150 and beyond. All of the benefits above come at a price – a very real, very tangible price out of your wallet. More difficult to set up and harder to fit into some cases. A stock Intel or AMD heatsink is pretty easy to apply to the CPU. Watercooling solutions require removing pre-existing cooling, applying your own thermal paste, and setting up a place to mount the radiator inside your case. For most smaller cases, this is a no-go. Maintenance, when necessary, is more difficult overall. PC maintenance is actually easy, usually. Open it up now and again, do some dusting and make sure everything’s in place, and you won’t have any thermal throttling. Water-cooling setups often have to be cleaned and refilled once every six months or so, however, and this process can be quite a pain.
Who Is It For?
Finally, let’s talk about who it’s for. Liquid cooling definitely isn’t for most users. It’s prohibitively expensive and can be very difficult to work with. That being said, tech enthusiasts who want the most out of their hardware (PC gamers, video editors, etc.) will see very real benefits from liquid cooling, and even though it isn’t for everyone, it’s definitely cool. Are you interested in liquid cooling? Do you have it or know someone who does? Let us know in the comments! Image Credit: Bjorn3D
