Air is better than water
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
536 points (93.6% liked)
Memes
45536 readers
872 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not necessarily, but one, it's a lot cheaper, two, air leaks are not a problem.
the bigger the air leak the better the cooling ๐ฟ
Yes, this is the best argument in favor of air cooling. Air cooling has less points of failure.
With water cooling there's tons of potential problems that "haha wind go brrrr cooling" just doesn't produce: Water block gummed up with mold? Take a performance hit. Pump dead? Sucks to be you. Leak in the system? Enjoy replacing your motherboard.
Main issue you might encounter in air cooling is just "fan died, replace fan". (Obviously not counting thermal interface materials since they are required for both cooling solutions)
One of the main reasons why brand name workstations and servers are still air cooled... and will probably be for a very long time.
There are some data centers that are water cooled though. I know OVH uses water cooling for some of its servers, and also seems to be developing immersion cooling.
Finally, there's water in the cloud ๐.