Hydrogen Cooling vs. Liquid Cooling

[nervmeister]

Which is better for your PC?

[Tadhg Adams]

Both are likely to be tremendous overkill?

[nervmeister]

Both are likely to be tremendous overkill?It's to keep advanced graphics cards from burning the hell out.

[Jeff Brady]

Look, you don't know much about computers. You didn't know if a PC from Alienware used Windows XP or not (despite their ads touting its use). Liquid/hydrogen cooling isn't necessary for you unless your overclocking your entire system. Since you're just playing games, leave well enough alone and just stick to a couple of fans. I have an ATI/Raedon x800 for over a year, and no heating problems. I have one fan in the front of the tower, and two in the back. I run Doom 3 & Quake 4 with ease.

[Callie]

I've heard horror stories about leaks.

Unless you're OCing the hell out of a Crossfire/SLI system, there's really no point to wasting your money on a liquid cooling system. Buy a good case, a top-of-the-line fan/heatsink combo for your processor, and a few more fans for moving the air in the case.

[Night]

Which is better for your PC? Hydrogen blows up.... liquid (dependin on what it is) can short circut. My "shuttle" box does have liquid filled heat pipes to the processor, but there passive (ie no pump) and are complely closed system. The only reason that they're there is that the box is too small and packed to hage a good airflow through the system. Otherwise "air-cooled" is the best for PC's (execept the aforemention OC'ers

[nervmeister]

Look, you don't know much about computers. You didn't know if a PC from Alienware used Windows XP or not (despite their ads touting its use). Liquid/hydrogen cooling isn't necessary for you unless your overclocking your entire system. Since you're just playing games, leave well enough alone and just stick to a couple of fans. I have an ATI/Raedon x800 for over a year, and no heating problems. I have one fan in the front of the tower, and two in the back. I run Doom 3 & Quake 4 with ease.Please don't let my slight lack of knowledge frustrate you. That's why I'm learning you know. That aside, thankyou for yor help.

[StoneGold]

Actually, there is a plus side to alternate cooling methods beyond keeping stuff cooler: no more fan noises.

That is all.

[Jeff Brady]

Please don't let my slight lack of knowledge frustrate you. That's why I'm learning you know. That aside, thankyou for yor help.

Sorry if it seemed like I was jumping down your throat there. Tadhg is one of our computer experts; when I see his advice rebuked like it's meaningless, it make me wonder.

[Night]

Actually, there is a plus side to alternate cooling methods beyond keeping stuff cooler: no more fan noises.

That is all.Well, sort of. You see the heat has to go somewhere. Often alternate cooling methods move the heat over to a heat exchanger, which means.... a fan... and often an added pump to move the alternate fluid between the heat source and heat exchanger. The thing is that you get to move the fan and the noise to somewhere else. Also many solutions move the fan outside so that the heat doesn't fill the room and force an A/C to work harder. Now this really only gets bad if there are multiple computers heating up the room. Usually it’s not worth the extra equipment to run active cooling for PC’s

The only way to get rid of the fan completely is to get a heatsink big enough to dissipate all the heat and that's assuming that the heat isn't so concentrated that it'll travel to the fins of the heatsink fast enough.

[BlairH]

I use standard air cooling on all of my PCs. I would only recommend water or Freon cooling if you are planning on dramatically overclocking your components. Go for standard fans, much cheaper and less unwieldy in my opinion.

Indeed, I'd like to retract my previous statement I dramatically overclock my components, yet I only use air cooling, so water cooling isn't really needed. It has it's own unique charm (it looks cool if you have a windowed side panel on your case) but doesn't offer many huge advantages.