Normal
Water loops are definitely cumbersome. They're nice if you can stomach the cost of (and have space for) QDCs, but without those it's a major hassle. Air coolers are big, take lots of room, might stress your motherboard, and don't deliver quite as much cooling, but in terms of practicality they win out 100% of the time. And that matters quite a lot. AIOs split the difference pretty well - practical in some ways, not in others, and cooling is in the middle. If I was doing a scratch build these days I would quite strongly be considering going full air - but having invested quite a bit of money in water cooling components that by itself is an argument to keep going that direction at least for now. (And of course I just bought QDCs, so suddenly I have a modular and practical water loop - hooray!)Also agree that the (especially hardline) water cooled showcase SFF builds are getting a bit old. Performance, practicality, accessibility and ease of building/maintenance are far too undercommunicated. But I guess that's the nature of a scene driven by YouTube and Reddit.
Water loops are definitely cumbersome. They're nice if you can stomach the cost of (and have space for) QDCs, but without those it's a major hassle. Air coolers are big, take lots of room, might stress your motherboard, and don't deliver quite as much cooling, but in terms of practicality they win out 100% of the time. And that matters quite a lot. AIOs split the difference pretty well - practical in some ways, not in others, and cooling is in the middle. If I was doing a scratch build these days I would quite strongly be considering going full air - but having invested quite a bit of money in water cooling components that by itself is an argument to keep going that direction at least for now. (And of course I just bought QDCs, so suddenly I have a modular and practical water loop - hooray!)
Also agree that the (especially hardline) water cooled showcase SFF builds are getting a bit old. Performance, practicality, accessibility and ease of building/maintenance are far too undercommunicated. But I guess that's the nature of a scene driven by YouTube and Reddit.
