[Aftershock] Looking to buy a new rig, shortlisted to this 2 systems after much research

[kaputzzz]

That video is one reason i started looking at the ugly, non-RGB pump Artic liquid freezer Cooler....still its less ugly than my old Hyper 212

In my experience, air cooler is more dependant on your case fans and case design. Must harder to "design" it right especially if u want it quiet....

I think AIO is the future of cooling tech la... Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech. AIO is undoubtedly more efficient than air coolers by a long shot. Better spend money to invest in a good AIO for ur system

 

[poooooo]

Yeah been reading alot of good things about it but since im going for a i9-13900K i guess AIO cooling would be a better option despite air cooling being very efficient... no matter how efficient air coolers are, theres still a bottleneck vs an AIO cooler. Gonna do abit more research on which AIO coolers are good... any recommendations?

Those aio that are better than Thermalright PA are big, thicc rad from artic 280 and 360,and other brand 360. Don't bother looking at any 240, it won't beat the PA at value, and most likely similar performance as PA.

 

[Daty41]

bro @KleoZy has a good benchmark video:

That video is one reason i started looking at the ugly, non-RGB pump Artic liquid Cooler....still its less ugly than my old Hyper 212

In my experienceir cooler is more dependant on your case fans and case design. Must harder to "design" it right especially if u want it quiet....

I think AIO is the future of cooling tech la... Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech. AIO is undoubtedly more efficient than air coolers by a long shot. Better spend money to invest in a good AIO for ur system

Well if i am running the PC 24/7, tucked away in a corner.. I will use Air cooler (likely this is not my gaming PC anyway)...but only Boomers still run a home server...everybody use cloud liao...or one of many mini PCs

 

[kaputzzz]

Those aio that are better than Thermalright PA are big, thicc rad from artic 280 and 360,and other brand 360. Don't bother looking at any 240, it won't beat the PA at value, and most likely similar performance as PA.

I still need to do alot of research on this stuff... Back in my days no such thing as AIO... U want water cooling u need to build a custom system and fix the pipes urself then add the liquid and coolant and due and lightings... Very complicated stuff... That's why most ppl use air cooling back then. Nowadays liquid cooling come in a packaged product that anybody can install... Totally changed how we cool CPU components.

Air cooling is fine for mid range systems that dun overclock but if u going for high end systems with high power consumption CPU I think u need a good AIO cooler at least for the best system performance

 

[kaputzzz]

That video is one reason i started looking at the ugly, non-RGB pump Artic liquid Cooler....still its less ugly than my old Hyper 212

In my experienceir cooler is more dependant on your case fans and case design. Must harder to "design" it right especially if u want it quiet....

Well if i am running the PC 24/7, tucked away in a corner.. I will use Air cooler (likely this is not my gaming PC anyway)...but only Boomers still run a home server...everybody use cloud liao...or one of many mini PCs

Like I said air cooler is sufficient for normal rigs that do simple pc tasks like browsing web, office applications etc but if u are building a performance system u should be going for AIO cooling. That's my opinion la

 

[kaixax555]

I think AIO is the future of cooling tech la... Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech. AIO is undoubtedly more efficient than air coolers by a long shot. Better spend money to invest in a good AIO for ur system

It's not

Laws of physics don't change regardless whether you are using Air Cooler or AIO. AIO doesn't "magically" mean better than air cooler just because they are AIO. A decent dual tower air cooler can perform just as well as a 240 AIO in steady state conditions.

At steady state, given same ambient temperature, similar surface area and similar airflow, both should perform identically, one will not perform better than the other.

What advantages AIO provides is mainly:
1. Additional thermal capacity due to presence of liquid, so to reach steady state, you need more heat energy to reach the same temperature, thus the temperature increase will take longer
2. Scalability of radiator as you can increase or decrease size and thickness more than air cooler (though there is still a limit)
3. Less affected by internal chassis airflow

However AIO also has its downsides:
1. More points of failure, now you have a pump, pipes and joints connected together
2. Difficult to observe failure, like for example if your AIO fins are completely funked, unless you can see through like an acrylic CPU block, you won't know if your AIO actually failed it's function. Tower coolers only have a fan, if a fan stops it is very obvious which part has failed.
3. More expensive and not necessarily better at steady state if surface area is less than an equivalent air cooler (e.g. 240mm AIO vs a 120mm dual fan dual tower air cooler)

Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, ultimately it is up to what you are looking for in a PC cooler.

 

[KYZT2021]

So Gen Z must custom WC already

 

[kaputzzz]

It's not

Laws of physics don't change regardless whether you are using Air Cooler or AIO. AIO doesn't "magically" mean better than air cooler just because they are AIO. A decent dual tower air cooler can perform just as well as a 240 AIO in steady state conditions.

At steady state, given same ambient temperature, similar surface area and similar airflow, both should perform identically, one will not perform better than the other.

What advantages AIO provides is mainly:
1. Additional thermal capacity due to presence of liquid, so to reach steady state, you need more heat energy to reach the same temperature, thus the temperature increase will take longer
2. Scalability of radiator as you can increase or decrease size and thickness more than air cooler (though there is still a limit)
3. Less affected by internal chassis airflow

However AIO also has its downsides:
1. More points of failure, now you have a pump, pipes and joints connected together
2. Difficult to observe failure, like for example if your AIO fins are completely funked, unless you can see through like an acrylic CPU block, you won't know if your AIO actually failed it's function. Tower coolers only have a fan, if a fan stops it is very obvious which part has failed.
3. More expensive and not necessarily better at steady state if surface area is less than an equivalent air cooler (e.g. 240mm AIO vs a 120mm dual fan dual tower air cooler)

Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, ultimately it is up to what you are looking for in a PC cooler.

Well if u want to compare like that of course one can't be "better" than the other since u are comparing both based on their pros and cons. But solely based on thermal dissipation performance AIO is definitely better than air cooler of similar size. This is because both coolers work based on different principles in physics. AIO works on conducting heat away with water while air cooler works based on conducting heat away via heatsinks and then dissipating the heat away through air. In physics, we know water is very effective in conducting heat away from a hot surface and takes a much lower time to cool down an object as opposed to using a fan to blow and cool it down. This is indisputable scientific fact. That's why AIO cooler is more effective than air coolers in terms of thermal dissipation. And this is also demonstrated on the benchmark video I posted.

Of course every product has its pros and cons and each have their own merits and disadvantages. Therefore as a consumer u should weigh them to see which product better suits ur needs. Using AIO on an office computer is excessive and using stock cooler on a i9 is severely limiting it's potential. U should choose the appropriate product that is designed for ur needs

 

[ragnarok95]

It's funny when you said, "as a consumer u should weigh them to see which product better suits ur needs" and "U should choose the appropriate product that is designed for ur needs" but then before this you commented "Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech".

 

[kaputzzz]

It's funny when you said, "as a consumer u should weigh them to see which product better suits ur needs" and "U should choose the appropriate product that is designed for ur needs" but then before this you commented "Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech".

Im speaking in different context. The prior statement i made regarding boomers is for performance systems that require a high level of cooling performance. This statement is for general users who have no need for high performance cooling systems. Please understand the context.

 

[ragnarok95]

Yes, it's still funny.

 

[Daty41]

It's funny when you said, "as a consumer u should weigh them to see which product better suits ur needs" and "U should choose the appropriate product that is designed for ur needs" but then before this you commented "Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech".

ah the glory days of air cooler.......

my very first "performance" cooler...SK6 with the hair dryer 60mm Delta fan that will put any new fans to shame (in terms of RPM and noise). Those days we do lapping of the coolers to get that shiny "flat" surface, the the 80mm to 60mm adaptor, the pull vs push configuration.....so many trail and errors
https://www.anandtech.com/show/825/6
More like GenXs reminiscing the glory days of upgrading air coolers ....boomers buy full PCs from Compaq, Epson, IBM......

 

[kaputzzz]

Anyways, most of the parts I think are finalised except for the cooler which I have been quite busy with work dun have much time to do proper research on it. Tentatively this is the final build

i9-13900k + GIGABYTE Z790M AORUS ELITE AX D5
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360mm
ZOTAC 4080 Trinity OC 16GB
KINGSTON FURY BEAST RGB DDR5 6000MHz CL40
2TB WD Black SN850X Gen4 7300MB/s Nvme M.2 Ssd(5yrs)
Asus Rog Strix 850W 80+ Gold Full Modular Ps
CM MASTERBOX NR600

Total is about 3916

We come a long way from that AS system and I appreciate everyone's input whether we may agree or disagree, it's been very insightful discussion hope u guys learned as much as I do. I'm probably gonna wait till end of may to start building my system as I'm not in a rush to build it and maybe hope for a few more price drops along the way or source for cheaper parts online. Overall, thank you to everyone that made contributions to this thread

 

[ragnarok95]

Memory i feel you can look at amazon deal. 6000CL30, 6400 and above.

 

[BlackWing1977]

Perhaps you could take a look at Invader PC as an option? They are a subsidiary of Dynacore, which is a part-selling store in SLS so they have access to better quality components and are not limited to using inferior parts, this is quite evident just based on the build alone.

On the other hand, AS appears to use lower-tier parts that DIYers usually don't use or avoid, so this means those parts are plenty n it's easy for AS to bulk purchase cheaply and use them for their builds.

If you look at AS's Google review.. there is a **** ton of pre-sales reviews and also a lot of sketchy review, their review dont match the product quality. Like i dont even know wtf is this "title p title insert coordinates", it's like someone using a template to leave all these reviews?

View attachment 39713

A lot of customers think they spend 3k on prebuilt, so the cut cost part is little, but that is not true.. many companies still do it. The experience not going to be better than choosing good parts.

The limited choice in PSU and some motherboard kinda push me toward DIY route instead... though very tiring...

 

[ragnarok95]

The limited choice in PSU and some motherboard kinda push me toward DIY route instead... though very tiring...

More rewarding when fixing up your own rig.

 

[BlackWing1977]

More rewarding when fixing up your own rig.

Yeah.. you learn a lot when doing it yourself.. and of course all the fun researching parts, and dig deeper info on whether can it all fit together... and on the day of the purchase.. you walk in like a boss... literally... handing stack of cash over...

 

[BlackWing1977]

It's funny when you said, "as a consumer u should weigh them to see which product better suits ur needs" and "U should choose the appropriate product that is designed for ur needs" but then before this you commented "Air coolers is for boomers who refuse to embrace new tech".

ah the glory days of air cooler.......

my very first "performance" cooler...SK6 with the hair dryer 60mm Delta fan that will put any new fans to shame (in terms of RPM and noise). Those days we do lapping of the coolers to get that shiny "flat" surface, the the 80mm to 60mm adaptor, the pull vs push configuration.....so many trail and errors
https://www.anandtech.com/show/825/6
More like GenXs reminiscing the glory days of upgrading air coolers ....boomers buy full PCs from Compaq, Epson, IBM......

I am using Air Cooling in my new build though... but can really tell if the trend continues... Air Cooler will further loses more market share to AIO instead... even though now new CPU uses smaller nm but as it is so dense... the heat from it also no joke... despite drawing similar power to older CPU but bigger size for the heat to spread across...

 

[ragnarok95]

Air cooler is still a good option. AIO is still better overall ( 360/280/420 only ).

 

[BlackWing1977]

Air cooler is still a good option. AIO is still better overall ( 360/280/420 only ).

Yeah Air Cooler is good for certain lower TDP CPU... but I did it wrong by purchasing the Air Cooler early on Amazon.. and that really took out a lot of options for me unless I willing to sell cheaply away...