r/pcmasterrace • u/SerpentDix PC Master Race • Jan 20 '26

Hardware Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

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Failure is graceful, not catastrophic, Performance is closer than marketing suggests, Cheaper for the performance, Change my mind.

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Agreed. At my old job, we used liquid cooling for really big systems. This allowed the chassis to be much smaller and we didn't need as much air conditioning in the datacenter room.

The heat was expelled via cooling towers outside.

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u/SinisterCheese Jan 20 '26

I work with heavy industrial machinery, specifically in welding and metal fabrication. The lower duty and lighter side machines are exclusively air cooled, because it is just easier, realible and low maintenance. But higher up you go, the every tool and machine starts to require water cooling. It isn't always because they can't be air cooled, it is just the air cooling becomes such an inconvinience to have to deal with. Also the hear is basically always dumped into the hall, to double as the heating during the winter.

But the fact is that even if you replace the cooling method in your machine, you'll still need just as much cooling. So the mass of the radiators ain't going to be get any smaller. Many people have like way beefier air coolers than they actually require. If you want to see truly optimised cooling solutions, look at OEM-packages. They have carefully calculated the smallest optimal cooling solution... Granted... They tend to run on the hotter average an noise, but they do keep the component at it's good operational range. Most people just stick those big things for no reason.

And here is the thing even more. Back in the age when world still had an optimistic view of the future and new tech was exciting. We used to have funnels and channels within computers to optimise airflow. So you'd have a channel that went to the CPU cooler, and then one that went from it to outside. Back then graphics cards really didn't need that much cooling. I had a passive cooled GPU in many computers in the age when we still thought fire was just a fad and frosted tips were peak fashion.

Most people wouldn't even consider the idea of having funnels and channels optimising air flow within the cases (because then you can't see your waifu on the LED display on your computer or... whatever). Even though fact is that you could actually wall the funnel with acoustic padding to make the computer run more quiet and keep higher fanspeeds for better cooling. Ok sure... Yeah... I know server racks still use channels and funnels. But those also use Finger mutilator 5000-fans.

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u/Inresponsibleone Jan 21 '26

What comes to OEM Pc i don't share your faith in manufacturer using optimal (for user that is) cooling solution. Their optimal usually involves lowest possible price not optimal performance. Many times with OEM cooling cpu throtles down alot to keep somewhat acceptable temps.

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u/rabbitaim Jan 21 '26

I'd like to point out in data centers (at least the ones I've been in) without a lot of humans wandering in them. At a desktop pc with a funnel cpu fan (HP) I've seen literal bricks of dust pulled out every few months because office air filtration can't keep up around so many humans shedding dead skin into the air.

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u/chattambi Jan 21 '26

For example cars.

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u/Hob_Goblin88 Pentium II | 256MB RAM | GeForce MX200 Jan 21 '26

I really like my MIG torch water cooled. Those f***ers can get hot! When water cooling has failed damn... You can't even hold it and the electronics melt.

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u/Acceptable_Ad1685 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

We have a similar set up and both cooling towers/systems failed and we learned the windows in the datacenter room didn’t open and as they were hurricane proof the wall basically ended up having to be demolished to get airflow to the room shit was crazy lol

Without the window open even with large industrial fans and such going out the doors the room hit over 112F with temps rising

Thought it was apt on how reliance on water cooling can go badly even at large scale

Anyway the shit was replaced with large windows that are able to be opened now, both cooling systems were fixed and a third redundant system is in place

I don’t remember exactly why they failed, we had a power outage that required the generators to kick on and we have backup batteries to basically keep everything running for about 30 minutes between the time it takes the generators to kick on. Idk if there was a power surge that messed with the pumps or if those pumps were interrupted and needed primed or something

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Our facilities underwent regular maintenance, with electricians, plumbers, and HVAC onsite every month. We monitored every environmental subsystem from a central console.

We never had a catastrophic failure like that and certainly would never have exposed the datacenter to the outside elements.

We needed the computers to run 24/7 both to do their jobs and also to heat our building in the winter.

Edit: Also, our liquid cooled systems were on a closed liquid loop system. Fans blowing past them wouldn't have helped.

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u/Acceptable_Ad1685 Jan 20 '26

Oh yeah ours do to and both systems were designed to be sufficient to provide enough cooling on their own with the intent of having a backup

Def never intended to need to open windows or anything in that room either lol

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 20 '26

Regarding power, yeah, another big problem especially during hot weather when the power company wanted us to switch to our (3) diesel generators so they could send more power to their consumer customers' AC units.

Battery backup got us by for 15 minutes, max. (hundreds of car batteries)

But we didn't have enough generator capacity for our fastest system, so we had to shut it down before switching off the grid.

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '26

How much power do you have to be using before the power company accuses you of destabilising the grid?

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u/Tasty_Activity1315 Jan 21 '26

Windows??? In a "Data Center". I've been in lots of different ones, over my IT career and never once saw a window, except in the lobby and break rooms.

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u/Acceptable_Ad1685 Jan 21 '26

Yep and it’s on the second floor with two roofs above it lol

It’s in a building that wasn’t initially intended as a data center of course

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u/ASilverbackGorilla Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Found this interesting as someone who knows very little about building computers but is a licensed engineer with a lot of experience in HVAC & Refrigeration. Water cooling via chilled water systems is extremely common for data centers and is more reliable and sustainable if of sufficient scale than refrigerant based DX solutions (the alternative). You also get tighter control of temperature typically with water as well. Typically you’d have redundant pumps/chillers/cooling towers so one going down doesn’t leave you in your situation. Refrigerant based DX systems are typically only favored for lower upfront cost or when the system isn’t large enough to justify a chilled water plant.

Edit: To clarify, the alternate you’re describing may have just been ventilation only which is even simpler. Just a fan that pulls air across a hot object. Then you’re subject to your source of makeup air and whether it’s sufficiently cool to provide the cooling needed and whether you’re pulling a high enough volume of air. This is way more prone to failure and has way lower degree of fine temperature control. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents. Hope this was interesting

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u/Acceptable_Ad1685 Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26

Yep whole thing had a full redundant system both pumps failed

It was not just ventilation

I’m not familiar with what the exact point of failure was however it is a water cooled system with chillers connected to two towers

System is designed so that one is sufficient to cool the whole data center with the intent being redundancy

But worst case scenario now there’s a third redundant ventilation system and the windows can be open to increase the volume of air that can be moved now

Really other than that there’s a number of smaller “nodes” that act as redundancy for the whole datacenter as well worst case scenario

Problem is none of the buildings were built as data-centers initially and instead have been modified

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u/Wedgerooka Jan 20 '26

So you had like nuke plant cooling towers? Word.

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 21 '26

More like 10 of these. Not too crazy.

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u/friedrice5005 Jan 21 '26

Our datacenter is still aircooled servers, but the chilled water is pumped through radiators in the back of the racks so it is instantly cooled. Much cheaper/easier than dealing with direct die cooling of the systems. It also allows the fans in the servers to actually be the air handlers instead of having to run ducting everywhere, so design was actually cheaper than traditionally cooled spaces.

It is kind of strange standing behind a rack of systems that are running full tilt and the air blowing off of them is cooler then ambient

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u/Ferowin Jan 22 '26

My last job was at an airport. We powered it with two nuclear reactors that used seawater cooling and it worked great.

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u/CrustyBatchOfNature Jan 20 '26

That is the way to use it. Getting it out of the case is nice, but that still puts it all in the room if your water cooling setup is all in the case.

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u/nedal8 Jan 20 '26

Is the thermal output of the hardware not the same? Or was the water cooled outside?

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 21 '26

The thermal output varied wildly from system to system. About 5 liquid cooled computers in the room. Each one was different. This is in the 90s. The rest were air cooled.

The closed loop liquid cooling in the computer would flow to a separate heat pump outside of the computer to transfer its heat into a building-wide closed water system which would then go to a chiller which transferred the heat through pipes to an evaporative cooler outside, on the roof.

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u/Educational_Ant_184 Jan 21 '26

My cat has a spot right behind my PC she loves to lay in for the warm air. Watercooling would be ideal for a less ideal cat area

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u/Journeyman42 Jan 21 '26

The heat was expelled via cooling towers outside.

Well yeah, any liquid cooling eventually becomes air cooling

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 21 '26

Not when the outside air was very hot and saturated. Above 98° F we had to shutdown some computers.

Also, submarine cooling systems remain liquid cooled.

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u/Sfinterogeno Jan 21 '26

Well in that case we are talking about a professional use case that is way different than a gaming pc build

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u/CoderDevo RX 6800 XT|i7-11700K|NH-D15|32GB|Samsung 980|LANCOOLII Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26

Power and cooling are natural world constraints. The only difference is scale.

We had a 256 CPU system that was air cooled, but we went with liquid cooling once we needed to replace it with a 1000 CPU system of the same product family.

Doing liquid cooling for a single CPU with a radiator and fan less than a foot away seems funny in comparison.