Well said, the only benefit is your system will like you better, and you may get more headroom out of it for overclocking or whatever. Ambient temperatures also play a huge factor in how efficent the cooler is able to do its job, Aircoolers overall are not that much affected by ambient temepratures as they actually gain a slight amount of volume of transfer as the air is warmed up, liquid coolers though, can really be affected by ambient temperatures as once the liquid gets hot it takes time for it to wick away its heat.
Very much like a person working hard in the winter or in the brutal sun, much easier to stay cool when its cool out :P
Water as a fluid has a huge advantage of being able to soak up heat as its capacity for heat is much much higher then any metal, however, it does not like releasing that heat
Metal such as copper or aluminum are not altogther the great on the storage or capacity of heat energy so they are not able to soak up as much heat before getting warmer, however, once hot they also do not hold onto that heat very well.
So basically they are almost the exact opposite of each other.
There is also another cooling method, evaporative, this can take alot of forms, such as phase change and such. A simple way to get this is let the rad and pump do thier thing, but the liquid is dumped in a tower type chamber, the chamber has a fan or a volume of air blowing through it to disapate the liquids gathered energy much faster then it could on its own. This can actually get the liquid to below ambient temperatures quite easily, unfortunately you lose alot of liquid over time, you have to be carefull obviously that the liquid doesnt get blown onto electrical parts, and to make sure there is a good meshing system so dust and such doesnt get driven into the pump or what have you :P
Either way, long story short, the faster the parts are cooled off, the faster it gets into the surrounding environment(temperature exchange) with water and other liquids they can soak the heat alot longer before getting warm themselvs, which can be self-defeating, ask anyone who has used a limited capacity liquid cooler, it just gets to the point where it cannot shed the heat that it build up over time. Aircoolers may not have near the capacity, but they are almost a steady heat output vs liquid.
One is capacity, the other is transfer of energy, water is much higher capacity hence doesnt get hot very fast, metal transfers the energy very well, but has a very poor thermal capacity, Iron would be the best for capacity but very very poor transfer. This is part of the reason why they like to use different metals in rads, heatpipes and such, trying to get the best of all worlds :P
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February 14, 2012, 01:00 PM
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