Quote:Yeah, but watercooling is more expensive than air cooling
High end water cooling is more expensive. The Corsair H80 is priced about the same as high end air coolers. It provides little to no benefit against comparable air coolers in its price range though so I wouldn't bother. Nor is it any quieter than the competition.
Right now the liquid cooling market is split into two types of products. AIO (all in one) coolers which are priced at $60-120 usually and compete with high end air coolers. They have become increasingly popular in recent years.
And traditional discrete cooling systems which cost $160-600 which are what people usually still think of when they think of a liquid cooling system. These have been declining rapidly in market share over the last few years and there is barely any market left for them anymore. In recent years they have provided little benefit in most systems which means it's hard to justify the extra cost, space used, installation time, and risk of leaks. This is because as the majority of users have been buying HSFs over the last decade due to their low cost this has flooded those companies with money to do R&D to improve their products. As a result HSF designs have continued to improve at a fairly rapid pace over the last 10 years while water cooling has improved at a much much slower pace. The difference just isn't as big as it used to be. And while the difference can be significant in some cases we have reached an age where processors are clocked so high with stock or HSF OC that we require a tremendous amount of extra cooling to get even a small extra bump in clock rate.
In a few years vapor chamber cooling systems will likely replace both as they perform very well and are cheap to produce.
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-Ron Swanson
"I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. "
-Mark Antony