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What kind of cooling do you use poll (2009)

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What is your primary method of cooling your main system?

  • Air cooling

    Votes: 315 76.3%
  • Water cooling

    Votes: 93 22.5%
  • Other cooling (please explain below)

    Votes: 5 1.2%

  • Total voters
    413
  • Poll closed .
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muddocktor

Retired
Joined
Nov 1, 2001
Location
New Iberia, LA
This poll is one of a series of polls designed to give members the opportunity to see what the membership as a whole have chosen in regards to some of the more common cooling choices. This particular poll is for members to show what kind of cooling is being used by them. It will also give anyone who feels the need, the opportunity to explain why they have chosen that method and possibly help others decide on what their next cooling setup will be. This poll, along with the others will be stuck in the appropriate section and will be open for one year, after which a new poll will be set in place to allow future members to show their choices, current members to list any changes in their choices, and to allow members to track shifts in trends over an extended period.

Having said that, what is your primary method of cooling your main system, with air, with water or with something other than the first two?

NOTE: eobard's original poll thread is here.

The 2008 poll thread is right here for you to to follow the progression of the cooling scene.

This poll will run 1 year after which I plan to replace it with a new poll. Please make your choice based on your main computer's cooling method.

muddocktor
 
I've been watercooling my main pc for ages. I chose watercooling for 2 reasons:

1) Better cooling over air
2) High end air is a bit too noisy.

:)
 
I voted Air Cooling as that is what my Main Rigs have at the Moment
OCZ-Vendetta 2 + HR-05 IFX N/B 7 x 120mm Case fans

Manly for ease of maintaining and cost.


One day will go WC
 
I've been running the Swiftech Apex Ultra H2O-220 since 2005. It has the original Apogee CPU block & has performed very well.

I've been considering updating the block & going to a 3x120 rad for my next build though. Also new fans & a fan controller would be nice. The current fans are a bit loud running at 12v.
 
I use Air Cooling, IMO it has the best cost to benefit ratio, with a TRUE and a good case you can get really good temps
 
I have made a big switch to watercooling for most of my Seti farm lately. Of the 9 machines I own that are crunching in my Seti farm, one is a laptop and another is a Mac Mini. Of the other 7 systems, 5 are now under water. I like the stable temps I get with watercooling and I find that they are easier to care for than high end air myself.


I've been running the Swiftech Apex Ultra H2O-220 since 2005. It has the original Apogee CPU block & has performed very well.

I've been considering updating the block & going to a 3x120 rad for my next build though. Also new fans & a fan controller would be nice. The current fans are a bit loud running at 12v.

I would highly recommend the Swiftech GTZ for a replacement block. I am getting great results with the two GTZ blocks I own.:thup:
 
I have made a big switch to watercooling for most of my Seti farm lately. Of the 9 machines I own that are crunching in my Seti farm, one is a laptop and another is a Mac Mini. Of the other 7 systems, 5 are now under water. I like the stable temps I get with watercooling and I find that they are easier to care for than high end air myself.




I would highly recommend the Swiftech GTZ for a replacement block. I am getting great results with the two GTZ blocks I own.:thup:

+1 for GTZ
 
Air cooling for me. Someday I would like to try water, it sounds intimidating though to me since I am still learning. I would do a lot of research first.
 
Combining cooling pad (3 fan) with internal fan (stock) and arctic silver 5 thermal compound.

as wel as my self adjusting htt-FSB multiplier trick I posted in cooling
lol
now I dont need the cooling pad.

right now cpu1 44c cpu 2 44c max cpu temp recorded 67c NOTE my cpu is good past 75c just slower...lol amd 64 x2 tk-55 "Tyler" OC @ 2.25 GHZ -- 25% overclock from 1800 mhz
 
I chose air cooling because i believe heat transfer is most efficant is there are less mediums. (water(cpu,copper,water,aluminumthen air))vs(air(cpu,copper,aluminum then air)) and either way at the highest efficancy room temp is all you will get.

I believe one advantage water has over air has to do with "heat soak" though, a water cooling system with a substansual resavoir system is less prone to "heat soak" vs a stand alond "air" cpu cooling system.
 
Air

I've been using air and most likely will continue to do so. Before I get to my list of why I'll quickly say that while I do like air I find what goes on in communities like this not only very cool but a good think for the industry as a whole. Much like how the automotive industry benefits from racing. Finally I'll give a few SSs of my very modest air systems: AMD system before, AMD system after, Intel system before, Intel system after.

-- Air is easy and well known. I've been using air cooled systems since before there were any real need for fans. From my very 1st PC, a TI 99/4a, to my systems today which you see above as well as the number of rack servers that I employ air works. And important in deploying servers, often which are not close by, their mechanics should be easy work with.

-- Air cooling parts are highly available. Another important thing when dealing with servers is that they have high uptime. Now these days water cooling is much more viable than ever but still does not have the same level of product saturation that air does.

-- Air cooling is highly flexible and portable. With air's high availability as the cooling medium it's very easy to design systems that use it. Furthermore moving a system that is using air is typically very easy and has little additional downtime cost.

-- PC air cooling's use of heat sinks, convention, and pressure can be very quiet. For a few years I suffered, due to nobody's fault but my own, with a few noisy systems. It was laziness on my part mostly. Finally I said no more and picked back up more than just a functional familiarity with PC hardware and how to make it do more than just work. (Mind you air is not the only way to keep hardware both cool and quiet just saying that air actually can indeed be quiet too.)

-- And as a final augment to that last point above because of the way air typically works in conjunction with heat sinks it always can be used...in mass as it were. Or to put it another way, who has not taken a box fan and just put it right next to an open case to keep things cool when say a fan were to die.
 
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