Also, liquid cooling is very efficient, but I don't like the feeling of having liquid flowing inside the PC case. I prefer good air cooling.
well be aware AMD recommended a 240 or 360 mm rad with water cooling for their 5900/5950 parts with are 12/24 and 16/32 treads . all big cores.
of course big honking air coolers can put up some serious cooling if done right.
ive run several AIO water setups over many years for the cpu with no problems.. and i run then pumps 24/7 with the fans occasionally turning off . both radiators and pumps are corsair.. a Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix Liquid CPU Cooler for an amd 5900X thats run constant for about a year (i never turn the main computers off) . the corsair H80 (i think) and thats was built like 7 years ago? it runs 24/7 also and is still running im my home lab.
so a name brand aio is is likely to last, its the custom loops that could be issues - mainly due to operator error issues.
remember HEAT DEGRADES (well slowly) electronics, so good cooling on the NVMEs drives, chipset, and cpu gpu(s) plus serious case airflow
i have a lianli O11 dynamic. 360 rad on the side, then on the ceiling and floor each has 2 140s and a 120
I was building custom watercooled systems for overclocking after the millenium with a former collegue, for our gaming systems, with coolers outside the actual case (these things were BIG in size, with the aquarium pump and water tank. The most sick thing i have seen in that time while browsing the internet for ideas was a dude that had a water cooler outside the house, with water hoses buried in his garden, connectors on his PCs, pipes going through the building's outer wall in several rooms, also with connectors and just connected his PCs with tubes, fitted with connectors to the "inhouse cooling circuit", just like with those vacuum cleaner systems built into homes.
Today, i have a corsair watercooling system in my gaming PC. It's reliably built and even if it would leak, thermal throttling would save the cpu, the chipset/bridge could take higher temperatures for a while, and the non-conductive fluid wouldn't do much harm to the 12V electronics inside, too. The GPU cooler is way noisier than the watercooling-fans under full load and the temps are also ramping up on the GPU, while the CPU stays in a convenient range. I have to check the specs of the system, but it looks way oversized, compared to what i already knew, so i might have a good chance to include the GPU into the watercooling circuit. I don't feel very comfortable when the Nvidia chip is reaching +85°C Temperatures while the cooler (actually two fans) spins at top speed.
I consider commercial watercooling as safe, never heard of any related accidents.
Good recommendations, thanks. I know liquid cooling is safe nowadays, with good brand AIO setups. My current build (late-2022) uses a chunky be quiet! air cooler, which looks...cool, but is barely enough for my i9-13900K at stock speed.
I will likely be using an AIO in my next build, unless some major tech change happens in CPU design and efficiency improves. I tend to keep my PCs for many years.
Regarding Aircooling, i had the best experiences with Noctua coolers (and fans) in my newer systems (last 10 years or so).
You need a good board that can take the weight and a case with good airflow and enough room, in summer i used to take off the side panel of the tower case, sometimes.
Before the Noctua era, i used to use Zalman (Pentium times) fanless coolers which were cooled with fans, which i mounted on custom holders over the fins without touching them (decoupled), which was much more silent.
EDIT: In retrospect, i can't imagine living the boring life of a non-geek
