A player leaves his gaming PC unattended for an hour, and then his PC is under water. This sparks the discussion of whether water or air cooling is the better idea.
What happened? A player explained on reddit that he wanted to thoroughly clean his gaming PC. However, when reassembling and connecting the components, he accidentally unplugged the power connector of the water pump for his cooling system.
He explains in another comment that the pump was functioning perfectly, he just accidentally unplugged it while cleaning. After cleaning, he started his PC and went away for an hour, leaving his PC alone. When he returned, he had to realize that everything was wet:
When I came back, my PC had frozen, I restarted it and noticed that my pump wasn’t running… the [cooling] block started to melt and water was running onto the motherboard and the GPU.
An annoying mistake that shouldn’t have happened. The “air cooler” crowd immediately stated: If it had been air cooling, none of this would have happened. For example, someone explains that this wouldn’t have happened with air cooling:
The water cooling people were very upset about this post. But they always reinforce my choice of cooling.
What is the advantage of air cooling? Air cooling is generally less complicated and requires less maintenance. And air cooling is more than sufficient for most computers. AiO water coolers are usually more complex to install than air coolers, but they also cool better than their “counterparts” and typically look “cooler”.
But you also need to connect an air cooler to your motherboard with a “power connector”. Usually, the connector is located near the processor. Otherwise, the cooler won’t move and won’t cool your CPU either. However, the mess with the water wouldn’t have happened with air cooling.
High temperatures lower the performance of your PC
Why should high temperatures be avoided? Hardware runs significantly slower at high temperatures. Processors and graphics cards throttle their performance to cope with the heat or shut down in emergencies to protect components.
Furthermore, some components wear out faster with high temperature fluctuations or at very high temperatures. That’s why many gamers try to keep temperatures and possible fluctuations in check and either use extensive air cooling or go for an AiO water cooler right away.
If you are struggling with high temperatures in your PC, check out the following guide here on MeinMMO. Here you will find tips and tricks on how to keep your gaming PC cool: 8 tips to keep your gaming PC cool and make it faster
