The biggest issue is the fans. They are the only part that really makes any noise whatsoever unless you get a crappy pump. I own both a corsair H55 and a kraken x61 and both are dead silent except when submitted to stress testing, and then both are relatively quiet. However, I did replace the fan on the h55 with a Noctua nf-f12 I already had, because Corsair's SP120L are absolutely miserable fans. Both use Asetek pumps (the round ones) which are superior, Swiftec uses their own hybrid Asetek. The h100i series uses CoolIt pumps (square) which are hit or miss and the Eisberg are awful. I get 0 pump noise, even under a 4.9GHz stress test on my i7. Most complaints about pump noise come from the Corsair lineup, but what else is new when they have over 70% of the aio market. If only 1 pump in 10 is noisy, with over 1 million units sold every year, you are going to see some complaints. If only 1 fan in 10 is bad on a Noctua NH-D15, and they sold 20,000 world wide, you'll really have to dig to find a complaint.
If Corsair aios came stock with Noctua fans, 2 things would change. 1st, the noise argument would go right out the window, there's absolutely no comparing the quality of the Noctuas vrs Corsair's crap chunks of plastic they call fans, and 2nd, you'd actually see complaints about bad fans becoming more prevalent.
Here's the thing about air and liquid coolers in equitable circumstances, they pretty much work the same. Upto a point. The Corsair h60 has basically the same cooling potential as a CM hyper212 evo. The new h45 works the same as a cryorig H7. The Corsair h80i is equitable to a Noctua NH-D14. The Corsair h100i is equitable to a NH-D15. But thats where it stops. At most OC wattage ranges the king air NH-D15 will tie or beat a 280mm aio, except for maximum wattage. If you can actually push 250ish or better wattage, the D15 gets saturated and starts failing fast, whereas the 280mm are still going strong. Air coolers, even the largest towers, lack the one thing the large aios have, surface area. There's simply not enough at those maximum outputs. Anything less, yes, just as good if not better. Just as a 280mm aio can't compete with a custom loop running 2x 240mm,
not enough surface area to dissipate that kind of heat.
But that's history, with Skylake and newer cpus, you'll hit voltage limits long before hitting thermal limits, same with the Ryzen cpus. So air or liquid really doesn't make a difference at all, it's all aesthetics, which do you prefer, what fits in your case and what's the spending limit. You cannot ever over-cool a cpu, but you sure can under-cool one, so over-size limitations don't apply to the cpu, only to the case, your budget and taste.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram