Air Cooling VS Water Cooling

[rhino56]

Air Cooling VS Water Cooling

VS

Within the past few years, I have seen air cooling heatsinks become better by leaps and bounds. The introduction of using heat pipes has brought them to a new level of performance. With this I have seen many people give up on water cooling for the ease of just slapping on a heatsink and having great cooling performance.

Water cooling has also improved with the introduction of the storm, the apogee, and pumps that are quieter and more powerful. But how far has air cooling really come? That’s what I wanted to know.
So I took the latest and greatest and pitted them up against each other in a head to head battle.

The test system
Motherboard- Asus P5W-DH Deluxe
Processor- Intel 3.2 GHz Cedarmill

The cooling systems to be compared

Air Cooling
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

Water Cooling
Swiftech Apogee GT and the MCP655-B

I know water cooling is typically quieter than air cooling and I didn’t want to focus on anything other than top end performance. So the amount of airflow and sound level will not be considered in the comparison, just the actual heat removal abilities of the heatsinks. This will give ideal conditions for both of them.

To do this, I chose the ultimate in fans: the Delta TFB1212GHE
Specifications of this fan are beyond impressive:
120x120x38mm,
An incredible 220 CFM @ 4600 RPM,
A screaming 65.0 dBA with Maximum Air Pressure 26.44 mm H²O
This fan is so loud that I had to use ear plugs because I just couldn’t take the noise levels of sitting next to it running for so long. It’s comparable to a standard vacuum cleaner noise level.
Here is that comparison just for kicks.
http://cryo-laboratory.com/upload/us...cs%20177-1.wmv





To evenly compare the two cooling systems, I made sure ambient temperatures were the same for all tests, which was 27 celsius. The motherboard temperature remained between 31 and 32 also. However the motherboard temperature sensor has little to do with anything, since it is located near to the the southbridge.

As seen in this chart below, at stock speeds the water cooling was only slightly cooler than the air cooling.


I overclocked the processor to 4.5 GHz and ran the same tests again. I was surprised at how well the air cooling did. Within a margin of 2 degrees celsius is not what I had expected at all.


In conclusion, I can see why so many people have opted to pack up the water cooling gear and go with air cooling, It’s much easier and there is very little to worry about in comparison to water cooling.
I do think that most real water cooling enthusiasts won’t be persuaded by the findings in this head to head comparison. With nearly silent pumps and the asthetics of water cooling, it is still better, cooler and quieter. I will be making a test bed that will be capable of running much higher temperatures than even the hottest chips out there. When it is completed, I will run the same tests again and update my findings.

[Fishboy]

Nice comparison! Man, those results are surprising. I expected water cooling to completely own air cooling... That heatsink sure is huge though, lol.

[J2T]

yeah nice comparison, the air coolers have gotten much better..than again they have got enormous lol

[aronmartin]

I wanted to water cool my current rig, but air was quite a bit cheaper. I decided to do air. With the possiblility of upgrading to water in the future. but time will tell. I also have the thermalright ultra 120 eXtreme. I am able to use speedfan and throttle my fans back and the rig is very quiet while still remaining cool.

[sigs]

Thank you fro this comparision. I am looking for this comparision for a long time. Now, i can easily buy a cooling system for my computer. Before this, i am confused that which will suit me. But after seeing your comparison, i am sure air cooling system will be good for me!!!

[dunk3r23]

I have never heard a lot about water cooling. So I'm still using air cooling. I will consider more about cooling options now.

[Thyrteen]

I have 2 complete water cooled rigs. one is a simple zalman reserator on a athlon xp 2800+ slightly overclocked, and a geforce fx 5900 ultra (that has a gpu block), and a chipset block. The thing is so quiet, I would walk into the room and turn it off, thinking it was off already. Now it's a linux server, and stays on all the time.

My desktop is a Core2duo e6600, with 7900gtx's that I do sli sometimes with games. I have sli water blocks, and the proc water block, with only 3 fans in the whole case. next to go is the chipset. It's a lot more expensive to do a nice watercooling setup, to do the setup "right" on a system like this, with chipset included, you'd probably be about $750 usd or so. You could probably get an HD cooler or memory block and stuff there too and be around the same price. Power supplies are quiet enough if you get a good one (I have a zalman "silent" (with fan) psu in the one server, and it's really quiet. no need to do anything there), and you can knock a full system down to 2-3 fans otherwise for great cooling, or you can do 1-2 for pretty good.

If anyone wants advice picking parts or anything, I'm here to help, I guess. Just offering the hand since some of you seem interested!

Edit:
oh, and how could I be so rude as to not post pics?

New Comp:
Inside (Radiator not showing with single fan though)
The passive radiators. - Those 2 could probably passively cool them under normal load, and only use the fan for gaming, but I'd rather have not gotten them and just bought a 3-120mm top mount and ran them slow and had a regular reservoir.

Old comp (server):
Server inside
- can't see gfx block.
Outside / Radiator - yep, that's about as simple as it gets, but man, it's soooo quiet.
If you guys want more pictures of whatever / close shots, lemme know. Also seeking advice for my setup, but I do have some plans in place already. Let's see what we come up with.

[rhino56]

very nice rigs Thyrteen, i am thinking on my next rig i will watercool everything and use a passive system also to make it completely silent.

[Thyrteen]

I have to say, for a price / performance deal, that zalman reserator is a recommendation I'd make to anyone for passive cooling. The only downside is if you can't do it with that tower, you need a different system. no expansion really. I mean, the system that one's on is a nice computer though. and I think they make a new reserator now, so that might be better too

Otherwise, if you look at the prices of passive cooling components available, it's really worth it to get one of those triple-120mm fan things, and run it slower for low noise.

[rhino56]

Originally Posted by Thyrteen

I have to say, for a price / performance deal, that zalman reserator is a recommendation I'd make to anyone for passive cooling. The only downside is if you can't do it with that tower, you need a different system. no expansion really. I mean, the system that one's on is a nice computer though. and I think they make a new reserator now, so that might be better too

Otherwise, if you look at the prices of passive cooling components available, it's really worth it to get one of those triple-120mm fan things, and run it slower for low noise.

i may have to get one and hook it up to my system now and see what it can handle. my only problem is the mosfets need air blowing on them and the memory also gets pretty hot when its overclocked. the heat has to be removed, but im tired of hearing fans.