Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Cooling Processors quietly

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
MortyNO
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:34 am

Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Post by MortyNO » Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:12 am

Dear all,

Long-time reader, first post here, and I feel it's a kind of n00bish first question... :oops: But I haven't found anything good on this.
  • Assume that the extra cost of current closed loop "all in one" watercoolers is not a concern.
  • Assume that the case has a good mounting position for a AIO radiator unit.
  • This is for a new silent gaming + main living room PC. It will be a Haswell i5, and a NVIDIA Maxwell GPU.
I don't have any friends who have AIO coolers. And much online information seems a bit old, pertaining to the older DYI watercooling kits. Anandtech did a good 14-way roundup, but they're a bit light on the coverage of fan and pump noise.

Are current-gen AIO watercoolers a good bet for silent computing, do they make it easier to achieve almost completely silent builds? If you were starting from scratch, would you prefer to go AIO watercooling, or high end air?

CA_Steve
Moderator
Posts: 7650
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:36 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Apr 07, 2014 7:42 am

Welcome to SPCR.

You'll find the bias here to be toward air cooling as all pumps make some level of noise and you are adding another potential failure mode to the system. That said, if you plan to overvolt the CPU as part of an extreme overclock, then liquid cooling can be the way to go. Or, if you have a 10' UI (keyboard on the sofa, PC near the TV), then the threshold for noise can be a fair bit higher.

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Apr 07, 2014 8:41 am

MortyNO wrote:do they make it easier to achieve almost completely silent builds?


Not even by mistake.

If you wanna go completely silent, then you might give a look to the Streacom FC8 Evo solution, and check if it may fit your requirements.

MortyNO
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:34 am

Re: Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Post by MortyNO » Tue Apr 08, 2014 11:42 am

Thank you both, that clears up my confusion. :)

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Current-gen closed loop AIO watercoolers, inaudible?

Post by quest_for_silence » Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:53 am

MortyNO wrote:Thank you both, that clears up my confusion. :)


Give a Look at latest SPCR reviews of Tundra coolers, and you'll have a more educated guess about quietness of current gen AIO liquid coolers.

Post Reply