is a AIO cooler worth having?

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CruffTheMagicDragon@reddit

waste of money and they look like medical equipment

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Ready-Brilliant3664@reddit

No. Don't ever buy it, it's just a fashion choice: some people buy gucci and some people use their braincells and buy decent clothes.

There's only 1 valid case:
1. SFF (Small Form Factor) builds, where you can't fit a more traditional heatsink and somehow it allows you to install an AIO. That's literally the only valid use case -- everything else is just snake oil salesman who wants you to buy their new heatsink, or teens shilling something they don't understand beyond a raw number.

Top comment's "usefulness" is flawed:

Aesthetics are subjective, and in my opinion AIO looks worse than a cool, black double-fan Noctua. However that's a matter of taste and shouldn't be accounted for in the first place.
You should never buy a 300W CPU. That's borderline brain damage choice. You need to be literally stupid to do that. There's no use case, ever, to actually do that -- there's always a better alternative. For example 14900K can be easily replaced by 7950X, at 3x less power usage, which is better in every conceivable measure. It's not even cheaper, too, which makes it even funnier.
The actual freedom is always restricted by a case anyway; and this is also flawed; in the end the waterblock also has to sit on your CPU. All you can decide is where to put the radiator with the fans, and even then, you can do that with a normal heatsink as well. What freedom does it really give with those ugly dandling wires?

Nevermind the *actual, serious downsides* of AIO:

Risk of catastrophic failure. If your AIO fails, you risk your entire PC being flooded and becoming scrap electronics, losing all your data and so on. This is the reason you will never see any server being water cooled. Everything's is on air.
Rust accumulation, pump problems, noise. The best noise-normalized heatsink is still an air cooler.
Bringing your CPU from 50C to 42C is pointless for any and all cases. That's the only illusory advantage the liquid cooling will do. CPUs do not throttle until well into 80C+ territory.

Owning an AIO tells you about the owner of the PC: he's an easily propagandized fool who falls for marketing.

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longebane@reddit

You’re really not going to convince anyone of anything I’m life with that judgmental attitude

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Jez_WP@reddit

He convinced me

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HoNeYBeaR777@reddit

He didn't convince me. Reddit sure is a trip sometimes, lol.

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tyrenanig@reddit

Same lol you could never convince me to put something that could brick your PC

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rndmdude_47@reddit

a faulty motherboard can brick your pc, dont wanna use a motherboard now, hm?

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forgottenoldusername@reddit

Wait until that guy hears about poorly fitting GPU cables...

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Antifapirat161@reddit

Your pc, if you build one with aio, will never be destroyed by the aio. If there are leaks, which doesn’t often happen, then you can easily get a refund by the company, if you buy it on a trusted company like Corsair

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tyrenanig@reddit

That’s the point. I don’t want even a small chance of liquid being leaked in my PC. If my air cooler is broken, well bummer but I can just get a different one without any consequences.

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spencer654322@reddit

i feel like its more likely you would fry your mobo with static from your fingers than your aio failing

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Several_Aardvark_509@reddit

This!

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Diligent-Arugula9446@reddit

Yeah terrible advice

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Alarming-Can3288@reddit

I got a pc from my friend with a AIO i onlypaid him $400 for the whole thing but came with everything but the gpu (3060ti) which i already had im paranoid about the day it fails idk dick about oc building but hey i inly paid $400 for it

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Lilshredder187@reddit

I record my guitar playing as a fun hobby and I was having an issue where my pickups were capturing the sound of the fans spinning so I decided to give AIO units a try, had 1 pump failure and MSI sent me a free one not even shipping charges totally free. Other than that 1 incident, iv never had any issues with AIO units.

Do I recommend them to everyone? No actually a regular CPU fan will work just as well if not better. For my personal needs, it worked out very well. I got my first unit 10+ years ago and have never questioned my choice.

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Stargate_1@reddit

AiOs are mostly actually useful for:

Aesthetics
Cooling actual high-powered Chips like the 14900
Provide freedom in case design / airflow layout, as their position can be variable, whereas an Air cooler will always sit in the same spot.

If you want one, go get one, but it's unlikely that it will change anything meaningful about your cooling / performance

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MyStationIsAbandoned@reddit

it's also, from my understanding, better at cooling when doing CPU intensive stuff that isn't just gaming.

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Hammer--Forge@reddit

Like farming bitcoin 🤣

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MRToddMartin@reddit

Just remember. AIO is air cooling. Just has a different vehicle for heat transfer.

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Psychotic_Squirrell@reddit

Came here a year after looking for this comment. Props.

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Kitchen_Part_882@reddit

The experience of others may differ from mine...

My CoolerMaster AIO is now on its fourth CPU, bought when I wanted to overclock my FX8120, it has since cooled a Ryzen 5 1600, Ryzen 9 3900X, and my current Ryzen 7 5800x3d.

Overkill for at least one of those I know, but didn't want to go back to air.

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WonderfulPatient3117@reddit

Could you please link to your CoolerMaster AIO or provide the model number ?

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Japresto1991@reddit

As someone who just built a new pc with kraken 360 aio here’s my takeaway. The design is super simple and effective but it has a few kinks. For example running a gif image or dual infographic data on the screen like cpu temp, gpu temp people have noticed that your operating temp will be about 10c higher at idle than standard, I switched this to only showing one piece of data the cpu temp and idle temperatures dropped back to normal. There is a flaw or bug in the software where running multiple sensors or a gif on the screen causes cpu load and temps rise, same happens if you have the lian li lcd fans on the radiator displaying sensor data, for example I had all my lcd fans displaying fan speed, gpu load, cpu load, temps were about 10-12c higher at idle. I switched the fans all to gifs or solid images and temps dropped. Just something to be aware of but with everything set im sitting at 35c idle on a 7800x3d overclocked so they work

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ghxstkodoku@reddit

Really? So basically half the reason for getting the lian li fans can’t be used?

I was strongly considering an all lian li fan build and wanted to display temps. What was the temps like with this setup, with the temps displayed, on a heavy load?

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