Discussion Ncase M3 Grater build cooling question

kamanshaman

Chassis Packer
Jun 15, 2020
15
5
I'm building an Ncase M3 Grater. RTX 5070 FE, ASUS B 570-1, AMD RYZEN 7 9950X3D. Do I air cool or liquid cool. It's the last brick in the wall before I start. I was going to liquid but a number of new builds I've seen are using Noctura. Help!
 
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confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,687
7,953
Auckland, New Zealand
sff.network
Personally, I prefer air for cleanliness and maintenance. A closed loop cooler can sometimes be a pain in the ass to install - and I've done my time with custom loops to know that I'll likely never do it again on a desktop :p
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
6,123
5,031
Belgium
Same. I've had the experience and the fun with building a custom loop from concept to realisation, only to end up going to aircoolers as watercooling is more work (considering install, maintenance replacement of PC parts with custom loops) for too little payoff. Especially how much better aircoolers have become. It's often more of an issue that extracting the heat from the cores becomes the bottleneck instead of the surface area when large coolers are involved. AIO liquid coolers might be a solution but only if tests show a compatible liquid cooler is going to give better performance.