Cooling Are AIO Coolers OK?

Having recently acquired an NCase M1 and being actively involved in case design discussions, (Dan Case C4-SFX on SFFN), I'm not sure whether I've got the measure of AIO coolers.

My use case is photo editing and gaming, with a trip to LAN night locally most weeks.

I'm sure I've been warned off AIOs due to coolant loss and pump failure.

That said, the guys on SFFN are saying that's not the full story, and unless I'm flying with the rig, it's a much better solution than air cooling the CPU.

Answers on a postcard please...

 

The early AIOs with PTFE tubing used to slowly leach fluids, but slow to the point they'd evaporate on the outer surface, so you're talking millilitres per year. Eventually though, that would introduce air into the loop and the pump would cease to function. Nowadays, with better quality tubing and years of T&E, it's far less an issue.

I wouldn't want to comment on the pros and cons of AIOs in small builds as they're not my thing and I'll defer to those with experience.

 

We have 4 pc's with AIO's and I think they are great.

Several years now and all different and touch wood we haven't had any issues.

I have a H80 which I bought 2nd hand that was giving issues but I think that was my fault as I managed to break the pump control.

I have an H80i (again 2nd hand) in my pc, my daughter has a Antec Kuhler 120 I think, my son has an ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 and in our mini itx portable we have a 2nd hand H50.

I personally wouldn't go back to air cooling unless something drastic happened( fingers crossed)

Sometimes they are touted as space saving but that's not really the case as the rads and fans pretty much take up the same room as a large cooler but it does shift the bulk out of the way of the motherboard and frees up access to ram slots and cpu etc.

Only slight issue I find, seeing as you mentioned using the pc as a lan pc is that when you move a pc around and then fire it up again air seems to get trapped and make a lot of noise. Tipping the case from side to side freeing the air usually sorts it out, we had that this weekend when we brought the portable back from my in laws.

 

I don't think I've ever seen a non-diddled-with AIO cooler fail and dump fluid (a failed pump is a possibility but that just puts you into regular old thermal throttle territory).

For SFF intended for regular transport a little-observed advantage is that an AIO mounts the majority of the mass to the chassis rather than the motherboard. That means handling and moving it about is putting strain on a bit of Steel or Aluminium rather than several hundred quid of PCB.

 

If you're going to be moving it around and taking it to LAN parties I'd get an AIO, as Mr H says there's a non-zero chance that it could fail and cause more damage than a failed air cooler however the advantage / disadvantage for your use favors AIO IMO.

If it wasn't a SFF system and was going to remain in one place I'd favor a big high quality air cooler for the reason Mr H highlighted and the lower noise levels.

 

If an AIO leaks then in theory it should not cause any damage. However, for it to go like that you really do need some experience with water cooling, and stripping down all of your components and washing them in distilled water. Which is pretty brave, and not something I would entertain when I had a AIO leak on me (though to be fair it was an off brand). My GTX 480 and mobo still worked fine, but were showing signs of corrosion on the solder joints. So I sold them off cheap and let some one else worry about it. These days? pah, I would just give them a bath, but that has only come from spending the last two years doing nothing but water cooling.

The only downside of air cooling is weight, and pressure put on the mobo when you move it around. Even if I was back to before the day I decided to take actual (non conductive) liquid near an actual PC I would probably still choose an AIO for that weight reduction/stress on my mobo any way.

If you could get an air cooler that bolted through the motherboard and then anchored into the case? then I would feel safer.

 

My Corsair H100i is still going strong after 5yrs. No leaks or splits in the pipes.

 

Can I just say that the use of abbreviations in this thread is proper baus. We've got older AIOs with PTFE tubing, CPU, RAM, MOBO and PSU in danger of fluid damage; so take the SFF PC to a LAN night but watch out for damage to the PCB, IMO.

FWIW, I used to hang a 2kg Thermalright air cooler off my motherboard with no extra support, and there were no ill effects even after several months. All modern motherboards are reinforced with a metal plate behind the CPU socket, and what's more PCBs are essentially made of laminated plastic which is extremely strong, so believe me, something else will kill your computer before the CPU cooler does.

I have to say I'm with Gareth on this one: lugging a PC off to a LAN party regularly, I'd prefer a 0% chance of damage/failure than a >0% chance.

 

It's not the PCB itself to be worried about, but all the bits attached to it. Attached by utterly miniscule blobs of solder that are really quite fragile in shear stress, and attached on one side to an surface - the PCB - flexing in a different way to the surface on the other side - the packaged component. In particular, the solder balls attaching the CPU socket to the motherboard are already under strain from the cooler mounting pressure, adding periodic flex to that (e.g. carrying a case with a tower cooler cantilevered off of it and walking a few hundred paces) is that sort of thing that makes those little solder balls decide to go from spheres to pairs of hemispheres. Such failures are known for their effects such as the 'Red Ring of Death' (XB360 solder ball failure), 'Yellow Light of Death' (PS3 solder ball failure), 2007 Macbook Pro GPU failures (in that case an unreported solder formulation change in the wrong thermal environment), 2011 MBP GPU failure (wrong solder formulation from the get-go), etc.
In short, don't flex PCBs with large components on them! Static load is unlikely to cause failure unless you're very unlucky, but repeated dynamic loading (transport) is much higher risk.

 

Yup, that is totally why I would still choose an AIO, even with the risk of a leak (very low). The possibilities of damaging the PCB with a heavy cooler are much larger. Not only that but you take the PC from a warm house out into the cold air, take it to a LAN get it hot and then back into the cold air (especially in winter time) then you will have issues. The board will flex when the solder is the most vulnerable.

 

Thanks for all the interesting banter here. I'm still thinking that a Noctua U9S small tower cooler would be the best solution for me, but the weight aspect is interesting.
One thing about my current SG13 is there is a lot less stress on the board than the NCase as the board is horizontal and the GPU is vertical.
That said, its predecessor, the Parvum ITX was fine with a vertical motherboard setup.
If nothing else, I think the i5 K needs a better cooler than the Cryorig C7.

 

The U9S is a pretty good solution for an NCase, especially if you double up with two fans. Lots of options in terms of fan setup too - can do front to back airflow with a side intake, or the reverse with back to front and side exhaust.

 

Thanks @bawjaws, I've been trying not to think about the 120mm fan options, as my brain gets overloaded every time I try to work it out!
So far, in my mind it's a U9S + 92mm redux fan 'upgrade' + 2x 120mm reduxes to be ordered.
I am not even sure if double fan is better with the 2nd fan push pull on the U9S or on the rear of the case...

 

I think it depends on the direction of airflow tbh. If you're exhausting out the back then I'd stick the second fan on the rear of the case rather than directly on the heatsink, but otherwise I don't think it makes any difference.

You planning to put a 120mm on the side and another on the floor?

 

Possibly... No idea on 120mm fan placement TBH. I have a GTX 970 with a blower cooler, so a bottom fan would have to not fight with its intake.

 

You want the intake at the bottom any way, given heat rises. So the 970 should be fine mate.

 

To be honest, the smaller the volume, the less you need to worry about heat rising as there's going to be very little still air in a confined space.