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I've built systems with air cooling, with water cooling, and I've also bought an air-cooled prebuilt. My goal, in each case, was to minimize noise. What I've t

I've built systems with air cooling, with water cooling, and I've also bought an air-cooled prebuilt. My goal, in each case, was to minimize noise. What I've taken away from that is: - It's perfectly possible to build a quiet, air-cooled, relatively cheap system. - But you probably don't have the skill for that. It's a complex task, and requires either good intuition or an entire engineering degree. - Building a quiet water-cooled desktop is relatively easy, because you can oversize the cooling massively. So would I recommend water-cooling? My goodness no. It's a lot of work, it's expensive, and in the end the pre-built was marginally quieter. But if the comparison is against a self-built air-cooled one, then water cooling can indeed come out on top.

dangus 4y ago
> But you probably don't have the skill for that. It's a complex task, and requires either good intuition or an entire engineering degree. That’s just ridiculous, come on. You google some reviews of some parts or watch some Gamers Nexus videos and that’s all you have to do.
- dangus 4y ago
  I’ll add on top of this: some of the air cooled solutions are stupidly cheap. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo has been on the market forever and it’s dirt cheap, good quiet performance, upgradable to any fan you damn please. It’s really as simple as a big-ass hunk of metal, it’s hard to go wrong. As far as graphics card noise you can usually buy something off the shelf and undervolt it in MSI Afterburner…or just buy a very large three fan mid-range graphics card where the cooling package is designed for something that draws way more power.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    See, that’s what I thought until I saw a properly built system. Sure, you can buy good components and that will get you fifty percent of the way. But it won’t get you to a literally inaudible PC.
    - dangus 4y ago
      Water cooling rigs aren't literally inaudible, either. They still have a pump and fans for the radiator. I'm talking about noise performance that is "more than good enough for most people." The price to dB reduction ratio of most water cooling setups, whether it's a cheap AIO or full blown custom loop, just doesn't make any sense when compared to air. These are seriously diminishing returns on investment. The reason people install custom loops is because they look cool, that's 80% of it. It's a hot rodding culture, and that can be fun and appreciated for what it is. But if all you want is a system that's quiet enough for the game audio on a relatively low volume to drown out the sound of the PC, air is all you need.

dangus 4y ago

> But you probably don't have the skill for that. It's a complex task, and requires either good intuition or an entire engineering degree. That’s just ridiculous, come on. You google some reviews of some parts or watch some Gamers Nexus videos and that’s all you have to do.

dangus 4y ago
I’ll add on top of this: some of the air cooled solutions are stupidly cheap. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo has been on the market forever and it’s dirt cheap, good quiet performance, upgradable to any fan you damn please. It’s really as simple as a big-ass hunk of metal, it’s hard to go wrong. As far as graphics card noise you can usually buy something off the shelf and undervolt it in MSI Afterburner…or just buy a very large three fan mid-range graphics card where the cooling package is designed for something that draws way more power.
- Filligree 4y ago
  See, that’s what I thought until I saw a properly built system. Sure, you can buy good components and that will get you fifty percent of the way. But it won’t get you to a literally inaudible PC.
  - dangus 4y ago
    Water cooling rigs aren't literally inaudible, either. They still have a pump and fans for the radiator. I'm talking about noise performance that is "more than good enough for most people." The price to dB reduction ratio of most water cooling setups, whether it's a cheap AIO or full blown custom loop, just doesn't make any sense when compared to air. These are seriously diminishing returns on investment. The reason people install custom loops is because they look cool, that's 80% of it. It's a hot rodding culture, and that can be fun and appreciated for what it is. But if all you want is a system that's quiet enough for the game audio on a relatively low volume to drown out the sound of the PC, air is all you need.