The problem with watercooling is unlike before, overclocking with watercooling provides very little value. It's now just pure luxury product, which effectively eliminates 99% of the market.
Overclocking in general is really quite dead now. If you supply better cooling the CPU/GPU just automagically runs faster to maintain the same temps. You can maybe change some biases for the clock/voltage/power balance, but thats about it. And then you might gain 10%. Long gone are the days of overclocking by 50%+ on big air or a full custom loop.
My problem with watercooling is that all the stuff is too expensive. You can buy mother board and cpu and good noctua for the price of custom loop. Should be that expensive for what it is
You can buy something as good or better than the noctua for even less, buy noctua fans and replace the stock fans on whatever CPU cooler you got, get the same or EVEN better temps than the noctua heatsink, and still have spent less than you would have for just buying a noctua CPU cooler.
It's been a long time since it last made sense honestly. I never did it for performance, only silence and if you plan to keep the same system, the only additional cost after building it is once you plan to upgrade the GPU to get another block. Of course once a year at most maintenance but even then, if you are using good tubing and liquid in the loop then you could get away doing it only once you want to upgrade the system.
Exactly. I mean, i would always buy a waterblock for a new GPU. But i don't need rgb and such. Also i graphics cards became so expensive that i just stopped buying new ones.
The biggest problem is that it's has no tangible performance benefit. It has always been a thing for rich people to show off their build. Nowadays people just buy 4090 and shove in a shoe box and call it a day
I did my last water-cool build back in 2011. Ever since I've used aircooling. Over the decade, I've seen aircooling advance substantially to the point that the only remaining reason to get watercooling is noise. And the noise with these modern day cases is NOT that bad.
I remember when you could hear the computer reading from the hard drive. You'd hear 'thunk, thunk... thunk-thunk-thunkthunk... thunk thunk' and you'd know that Windows is still loading things. It's when the hard drive noises stopped that you started to worry
@@imkiyori Much easier to insulate though. A fan needs to be exposed to air and pass through a bunch of turbulence inducing fins, so you can't insulate them. Pumps can be partially insulated. My pump for example is sitting in a small compartment of my case that i've padded with foam, and as a result is essentially inaudible.
In the covid years I plunged to watercool with an external rad. Yeah the hardware is cooler and also the noise is down but at what cost? Big gpu coolers are providing good cooling at very acceptable noise/sound and as said good cpu coolers are doing the same for 30$ I probably wont watercool again in the.
Yep. A properly setup case airflow with the right amount of quality fans in the right spots should be pretty much silent. I never hear my TT P6 build and it's right on the wall next to me...
*points at thermalright* they are selling 360mm AIO's for 50-60$ now Until I can build a custom loop for 100$ (40% higher cost than going ThermalRight AIO) with a 360mm rad I'll never go custom loop route.
@@corpingtons Yeah, and it happened because the Chinese laid out long term goals and plans to achieve those goals and US companies made decisions to boost their annual bonuses. American corporate/British corporate culter is just toxic in every way. I love capitalism but the dominant Western version of capitalism is toxic as hell.
I built my first loop 6 years ago and it was easy to find anything I wanted...But I just built my new system last month and like you said, everything was on backorder! I ended up having to buy a waterblock for my 4080 super on Ebay, because the only one I found on a regular site was a $350 Heatkiller block which i'm not paying for...
Yeah, it kinda sucks. I'm currently building a loop for my 9900K/1070 Ti build, trying to do it as cheap as possible. But i still need a few things and it's already gotten quite pricey. Finding the right parts is a hassle for sure, living in Scandinavia doesn't make it any easier. Small population = Small demand = Little-to-no stock :/ I used to buy directly from EK but with the current situation, that's not an option i'd wanna use, so it's a bit of a bummer.
1. My $50 amazon ID Cooling frostflow 240 has been cooling my 13600k since release. Does just fine, temps never go that high unless the cpu itself just keeps cranking itself which it doesnt need to in most games i play, its quieter too.
It was actually EK trying to solve your second point that killed it. They ended up with millions of dollars in inventory that they couldn't sell causing them in turn to have no liquid cash with which to pay their employees and suppliers.
It's not a necessary investment if you're primarily a casual gamer. A budget-friendly air cooler like the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO, priced at around $20, will efficiently handle your cooling needs. Additionally, with prices continually rising, it makes more sense to avoid overspending on premium options unless you have the disposable income to invest in aesthetics or high-end features.
I think that's becoming tech as a whole. Modern smartphone does roughly the same thing as the one 5 gens past, but at a fraction of the price. Diminishing returns on the value of CPU cycles, video cards, etc. compared to past versions. I used to do a new PC every 2-3 years, now I'm on year 9 of this PC.
It really is a shame that prices have become so inflated, because as an enthusiast, you cannot enjoy your own hobby, nor encourage others to engage in your hobby with you. When I first got into PCs around 2016, prices were a little expensive for teenage me, but nothing ludicrous. But when I was finally able to afford a PC for myself around 2021-2022, I realised prices had increased around 4 times, and it really put a damper on my passion for the hobby.
Nah man, just get a midrange board, an Ryzen 5 7600X, a graphics card you can afford, ddr5 ram and CPU cooler. Piece it all together over time. Get a case with fans pre-built and a PSU that is enough for your build. It's all attainable.
I spent 3 years learning to build PC's while I saved money, built an $8000 pc, made the switch to mouse and keyboard because its impossible to compete on pc with controller, spent 4000 hours on aim trainers. Then I realized every single competitive game I enjoy is overrun by controller players cheating their buns off (i mean aimlock wallhack etc) because they cant compete without learning mouse and key. Or they cant afford good hardware, or their internet sucks, or maybe they are just scum? But talk about putting a damper on my passion for the hobby. $8k pc to basically just play Baldurs gate and skyrim because cheaters.
When you can get an air cooler for less than $40 that keeps a 7950X3D at full tilt below 80C, it is absolutely no wonder boutique products are struggling.
I can maintain temps under 40C full throttle with custom watercooling. Why let your system overheat off air cooling and shorten the life of your 2 most expensive parts?
@@tommycarl2353 The related question is: what do you define as "overheating" and how much would that shorten the life of the parts? I would submit that saving at least the cost of the CPU or more just by not putting in fancy water loops means it doesn't really matter because it's still cheaper to just replace the CPU if it ever goes bad. That said, which CPU are you saying stays under 40C at full load? These details are important considering the changes to thermal targets in recent processors.
@@tommycarl2353 80c doesn't shorten the life significantly. And no modern components are damaged by thermals unless you do something stupid to them. They have been engineered to function for years at up to 90-95c and even then will protect themselves from damage by throttling as a last resort. 40c is nice, you get a few more mhz, and any cooling system capable of 40c is probably also going to be quiet. But damage from heat is not a thing. Pretty much everything is perfectly comfortable at 80c.
@@Erowens98 You are correct. People worry a bit much about the heat. People running those old AMD, CPUs have had them overclocked and running for a decade like that, at over 80c... 🙂
Agreed when air cooling with the right case, CPU coolers, thermal paste, and fans for 1/2 the cost, or even less is within a few degrees of water cooling both AIO, & custom loops, it just doesn't make sense anymore. Plus with air cooling every couple of months I have to what take my PC outside on my porch, and blow it out with my powered air duster, and maybe replace the thermal paste every year, or so, which is so much less hassle that water cooling, and worrying about something going wrong in the middle of the night, or a loop getting gunked up.
Almost felt as though it happened over night. Corsair entered the market with their kits starting in excess of $500. EK's $140 kits, which were just as effective at cooling, all vanished and were not restocked. Instead EK opted to only sell 'premium' priced kits to match Corsair. Greed really was the cause of the water cooling demise.
@@CommodoreFan64 You really do not have to replace thermal paste. If you used a good paste, you should never realistically need to touch it again. Old, poorly designed thermal pastes are responsible for that becoming a thing. My 2600k build from 13 years ago only got repasted once about 5 years ago as a test... Temperatures did not improve after all those years of use and using the same paste. Repasting was pointless.
The resell value of these custom builds is also so poor, because once the parts get outdated, enthusiasts are not interested anymore and no sensible buyer is willing to spend the price premium for the custom loop anymore. I've seen dozens of high-end water cooled builds with insane prices sitting on FB marketplace and other websites for months. So it makes sense that less and less people are willing to invest considering the fact that you can't even sell it afterawrds.
I think it's the risk that stops people. For example my GF wants to save for a new GPU for my build. We looked at prices and were shocked how expensive things have become. And used market is a coin flip. You dunno if a GPU was used for crypto mining and is in bad shape these days, lol.
I am someone who takes advantage of that obscure market. I bought my current Liquid Devil 6800 XT in 2023 secondhand for $416, even over a year later nothing comes close to the bang for buck I snagged with this GPU. I have water cooled for a long time, but I'm also a cheap bastard who doesn't mind sitting back a few hardware generations, and I bet it would surprise people how often water cooling has saved me money after that initial painful investment so long ago. I'm still running the original Laing D5 vario pump and Swiftech MCR radiator I bought 20 years ago in 2004, and it's been very cheap to keep adapting them to new platforms. Hell, I ran a Danger Den TDX CPU block until 2019 until I finally got tired of adapters and grabbed a $52 Bykski AM4 CPU block, and that block was less than half the cost of any air cooler that could hope to compete with the performance/silence.
The issue is not that the parts are outdated. The issue of those PCs is, that there is not one person who is willing to blow multiple thousands on a used PC. People who buy used stuff are looking for a bargain. If you spend 3-5k on a PC, you don't even look at that stuff. You either build it yourself or you get a custom prebuilt. Like, why should anyone spend 3k on a used PC with custom watercooling when they can get a new one for 500-1000 more? You're already in a "money doesn't matter" situation with your PC so 1000 more isn't an issue.
I put the money in the case itself for my custom build, knowing that I'd swap out the parts in 3-5 years for something newer/better. I may not even do a watercooling loop the next time.
As a former Micro Center tech, I had the opportunity to build a few water cooled systems. The biggest reason why I haven't built my own is mainly the cost and the time to maintain the loop.
Plus you get 90% of the advantages and 0% of the disadvantages with an AIO. The only thing you miss out on is aesthetics, and aesthetics aren’t worth the maintenance and risk factors.
Also, I don't need extra chores. While the maintenance isn't terrible, it's still a pain and easily avoidable because of how well air coolers work. Even in the SFF space your CPU/GPU can stay relatively cool with small coolers.
@@lostin.psychosis7080 I have a 4090 and 5800x3d (higher tdp), no watercooling needed. The 4090 is powerlimited to 70% anyways and loses 1% performance
The problem is it's so much harder to get high performance parts that aren't bloated with useless or unwanted features. Like I don't want LCD screens and pointless RGB with proprietary drivers and launchers. The only stuff without those things are entry level or low performance save for one or two brands. Bloat as an excuse to charge more is a huge problem
uhhh it sounds like you are talking about AIO as most of the custom loop stuff is quite "lite" in such features. and story is pretty much similar with components. you got even high end gpus (e.g. 4080,4090) that can come with no rgb and just fans as a "feature". you got motherboards that are really bloat free and minimalist design, even for x/z chipsets. you got non rgb ram, even at high speeds....etc...
As someone who has never done a custom loop, I have to say the price is definitely the issue. I'm far from scared to attempt my first custom loop. But any time I'm pricing out my next build, I would much rather put that money into raw performance of the parts themselves, because overclocking isn't what it used to be either. I'd rather run a Noctua cooler, with higher end hardware, instead of having this awesome custom loop on average hardware because half my budget went into the loop... Just doesn't make sense to me. While pricing my new build, I'm definitely trying to go AIO, but even that doesn't make much sense these days given the overclocking situation
Former watercooler (custom loop and AIO) here. Unfortunately growing up and not having the time to do maintenance did me in on custom loops & my one experience with premium AIO which failed immediately after warranty expired led me to digging up my ancient NH-D15 which I had saved through all those years.. went to Noctuas website and got free mounting hardware for modern boards... And still running the D15 ever since which I bought in 2014
What stops me from building a custom water cooling system is that an AIO costs $200 and a single part of a custom water loop is $200. That's a no brainer. The AIO works perfectly. At least 10x the cost for something that does the exact same job? No thanks. If I had infinite money, I wouldn't do it just on principle. Fuck greedy companies.
When 90% of the worldwide PC users don't even own an Intel i9 with RTX 4090 which means that water cooling is practically redundant on mid tier builds.
That's actually a very good point. Making some of the performance affecting pieces of hardware super expensive.. ok wait.. it's really just the GPUs, right? Anyway, making GPUs as expensive as they are, people are more likely to spend their money on a better GPU than on optional stuff like a custom loop
it's redundant on high-end PCs as well. I have RTX 4090 and Ryzen 9 7900X cooled with beQuiet Black Rock Pro 4 and a Lian Li Lancool 216RX case with default coolers. No overheat, temps around 70-80 degrees celsius while gaming. IMO water cooling is not just an expensive gimmick, it's dangerous for the components and requires time for maintenance. Why would I spend $$$ for a thing that adds problems?
I was done with water cooling when the pump died and I realized there is no way to fix it without buying another one. Air cooler stops working, pop out the fans and replace, done.
Yeah I got done with desktops when my 4th motherboard died out of warranty... And being disabled I can't move them you I just have an alienwear 4090 laptop instead and have been much happier.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Fourth motherboard died out of warranty? I built my first PC in 2003. Built my first gaming PC in Oct 2008. Built my second gaming PC in Feb 2014. None of my mobos have died. What are you doing to your systems?
@@bricaaron3978anecdotal, but ime quality has tanked. No PC either myself or my friends have built in the last 5 years has been without one part that required rma. I had defective ram, friend had a dead cpu, another a bad psu, 2 have had bad motherboards. Also, back to water cooling, yeah prices are too high, and on top of this many places have shipping prices that are just insane.
The tech industry is suffering from the same issue that is bringing down manufacturing in general in this country. Higher prices and extremely lower quality. Higher profit margins have become the norm everywhere and it's starting to show when people refuse to pay higher prices for crappier equipment that is no even a necessity. It's a lot easier to just not buy because you don't NEED to upgrade. Until we bring quality and consistency in conjunction with lower prices, this is going to continue.
As a watercooler as from the early 2000's, using fish tank pumps and car radiators, I've realized long ago that besides some niche uses, watercooling is a complete waste of money and just for the show off. Back then, air coolers were a POS, but nowadays you can get heatpipes for cheap that replace the advantage of having a fluid moving the heat. That day, watercoolers stopped making sense to me.
same same. when you get older you realize it doesn't get better by watercooling it and having components that you'd get more out of by doing it is very rare.
The cost to performance ratio is just very bad. You do get a slight advantage, but at greatly increased cost and maintenance. So as long as you don't REALLY want to show off with the visuals, it's not worth the hassle.
@@tarron3237 And the increased risk... I remember leaving a test running, going to a college class, and when I returned I had water dropping on my GPU... There is no benefit from it but showing off... It's like climbing a mountain, you just do it because you want it.
Yup, heatpipes conduct heat way better than water, while being much more reliable. The modern chips and air coolers seem to make water cooling almost completely useless. AIOs could give you a more silent setup and that's just about it.
I think this is not only watercooling but everything. Hardware, peripherals, etc. I do earn about the exact median salary in Germany, and let me tell you: I have almost no savings at all to spend on unnecessary stuff. Inflation is insane, and spending 800€ (which is basically 4 months of savings) on watercooling with little to no practical use is just nothing you do. Especially considering Inflation doesnt stop.
Just because Americans are slowing down that don't reflect PC tch world wide. The Tch industry in the UK + Netherlands Switzerland China and India are seeing a Boom.
Greed really is the culprit here. Various factors have affected the market in the last few years, but the biggest impact was undoubtedly corporate greed. As soon as Corsair entered the market with their absurdly overpriced kits, and EK followed suite by killing their competitively priced ranges, they destroyed the industry.
Sorry, this market was destined to collapse. Too niche, too many highly specialized parts sitting on warehouse shelves. For several GPU generations, you had similar board layout, not only within the same product family but across generations. Similar enough that I was able to use an Arctic aftermarket air cooler that was originally designed for GTX 900 series on a 2070 Super. The past couple of generations has seen far more variation in board layout. This means you need a lot more unique blocks. A better business model would be to manufacture parts to order. With stereoscopic scanning and additive machining processes, this could be highly profitable. That way you have no money tied up in stock that will be obsolete sooner rather than later. All you have to do is buy one example of every mid-high tier GPU for each generation, scan it, use ML to design the block in 5 minutes and hit 'Print' whenever you get an order. You would only need to sell a few blocks for each model to break even, something that could be easily done even in this economy.
You guys definitely don't understand economics. Greed may be a slight factor, but pricing is a science for companies, and the goal for every product ever is to find the point where you maximize profit. Maybe it's 1 dollar because you'll get a million sales, maybe it's 100 dollars where you get 500,000 sales. What a corporation does after its very initial release is entirely driven by it's customers. If people weren't buying this stuff, the price would go down. A sale for 35 dollars is better than not a sale.
That's the thing, Jay said it's a commodity, that's even worse, it is a commodity within a commodity. Having a PC is commodity , Having a PS5 is a commodity; Having a custom loop is a commodity inside a commodity. You can just use an AIO or an Air cooler.
@@DaftBoy06your right It’s not a necessity Having a pc as a whole is not necessity Easily could do by with a $200 laptops for just work and excel sheets (that would be kind of considered as a necessity to work for your job and make more money) anything above that isn’t
@@MrFaleh1129 actually a 4090 specifically is one of the most work usable GPUs there are. its 10% shy of server grade for 1/4th of the price, thats why specifically that was banned for sale in china.
Did you not watch the full video? He said that the cost of a complete custom loop is $1000-$1500, AIO's are cheap by comparison, almost as cheap as some of the Air Cooled options...
When you charge so much for all water-cooling parts less people water cool their pc and they increase their prices more they literally priced themselves out of the market
They act like they are having technology break throughs every year when realistically they haven't had any in decades and now people are just checked out completely with the pricing
PRECISELY! ANd now with ThermalRight selling 360mm AIO's for 50-60$, who the fk is gonna go custom loop route for 500$? When you can save 10x the price by just getting an AIO that is on par with best performing AIO's on the market?
Exactly. If you overprice your product, you will have a hard time selling, and need to increase the price to cover the loss. Actually you need to reduce price when that happens.
I’m a computer engineering student (senior yr). Back in the day the magic of the custom loop builds on RUclips are what got me into building my first computers as a young teenager and ultimately culminated in my career choice. I got into this way before it was a “cool” thing for all the (frankly) non-nerdy kids to do. More power to them, but back when I built my first rig it was kind of unheard of to build your own computer among people my age. I was a nerd (still am), and I loved it like a pig loves mud. I watched your videos, gamers nexus, and a few other OG channels to inform my first purchases and it’s really one of the more magical times in my life I can recall. Remembering my first graphics card- the GTX 1080 FE that I snagged on release day- and my i7 6700k on my desk in-box just itching for my build is a special thing. For me, the experience I’ve had is literally informing and has informed my future career path- (likely) to go on to work on big boy compute hardware. Those first builds were worth all the money in the world at the time in retrospect. But a few % performance difference isn’t. It’s just not the same as it used to be. The *only way* I can justify building a custom loop is to consider it as hardware integration experience on my resume. But by now I’ve built or designed ~5 loops and multiple more systems (for family friends etc). Having experience managing thermodynamics of computing hardware in compact spaces, designing custom loops, and with the shortfalls of current watercooling hardware is as important as ever now with the compute that will be spun up in coming years. But even then, it’s literally just not necessary for 99% of builds unless you have an in-home H100 farm to train your personal transformer network lmao. But now, knowing what I know (and having college loans), I can’t just shell out $1k for 1-5% faster compute. Oh well; I digress. Thanks for the videos my man. Keep them up (hopefully water cooling with some USA made Optimus stuff sometime). I guarantee there are plenty more like me who were/are inspired by content like yours that will go on to shape the future of the industry by being a part of it.
Lol, you bought a Skylake CPU. You know the performance difference between Haswell and Skylake was miniscule. And DDR3-1600 will ALWAYS outperform DDR4-2133. You think you've been doing this awhile? My first build was a 486 DX2-66. Didn't take long for me to overclock the crap out of it. Never needed a fan, let alone a custom loop. I pushed a Willamette 1.6 to over 2.5GHz on a stock cooler and ran it that way for years. Even my C2X doesn't need liquid cooling. It is pointless to go over 4.5GHz and a vintage CM air cooler can handle that just fine. But when you're talking about pumping over 300W through a CPU on a 10nm process, that's a bridge too far. That cannot run all day at 95C, no matter how many times intel lies to you. And the failures I predicted are now reality. An AIO didn't help there. The CPU will still run at 95C no matter what cooling solution you put on it because that is what it is programmed to do. This is also why I no longer buy intel CPUs. They're still based on the Pentium Pro. It is really just the 20th generation of Core 2. All the rebranding in the world won't change the fact they should have done a clean sheet design several years ago.
Blows my mind that I spent ~$4500 building my PC, and when I looked into water cooling it, it was like an additional $2k with a slew of headaches, especially when air cooling has improved dramatically. Seems weird to me adding this whole pump system was half the cost of a high end pc. It seems similar to me building a house for $600k and a plumber told me the piping of the house will cost me $300k. Like what, why would that be half the price of the whole housing unit.
My next build with a full watercooling loop and a 4090 is going to be around $5,000 since my current part list doesn't account for all the fittings and tubing and extra bits I'll need/want.
Depends where you live. Depends on where utilities are located in relation to the geographical location you live at. How remote it is etc… How much accesses to water to need in your home etc… I guess if you’re one of those weirdos that wants to live off the grid you can save some money.
I did a nice loop for about $800 Canadian. You can get kits for about $350 USD. Water cooling only costs about as much as you wsnt to spend. I'd rather have an AIO over an air cooler anyway. AIOs are cheap now.
@@MarkoVukovic0 if you live a mile away from the nearest sewer line waterline electrical line it might cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to get connected to the grid
They can't sell then for twenty if people didn't buy them for that. It's extremely basic economics. A things value is only as great as someone will pay for it
The whole problem with the completely unnecessary water cooling market is that, on top of it being unnecessary for great performance, it has been completely mis-managed.
I mean using that same argument all you need now adays is a used iphone to live a modern life and that may be provided by your work which you work from your parents home for.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Maybe, maybe that's why iphone is so popular and we have record amount of people living with their parents in late 20s early 30s, because buying a house is lifetime debt and iphone is closer to 2 years debt.
@@sepg5084 And that's how it should be, but I know people who put multiple months worth of their payment on a single phone and all they do is watch tiktok and make selfies with stupid filters.
@@fredrikstad01Did they really went konkurs? Sad, their prices were not competitive tho, compared to online shops like proshop or else that are considerably cheaper
It's not a recession, Intel killed themselves because they ignored the market. The A.I. bubble burst. EK failed due to bad management. Water cooling has always been a niche market and that market is suffering a correction.
Free money and easy markets ended and those who preferred growth to sustainability are suffering. Along with their hired employees. And businesses too small to have huge reserves.
VOTE TRUMP WE NEVER HAD A DEPRESSION WITH HIM. BIDEN IS DESTROYING THE ECONOMY, COMMUNIST KAMALA WILL DESTROY THE ECONOMY EVEN MORE GOVERNMENT PRICE GAUGING WILL DESTROY BUSINESSES
it is a recession. We've been in a recession for a while now. Markets are trending toward collapse, not safety. The money printer has been churning like mad and great pay from 3 years ago is barely making it today.
One thing Jay doesn't mention is advancements in tech and alternatives. Air coolers now are insane compared to back in the day, and soon we'll have passive cooling solutions that might not even need dedicated power.
In the last 3.5 yrs. my rent has more that doubled, my food costs have doubled, my gas/electricity has doubled. My day to day is more than twice what it was. I live in the same place, have the same family situation, and have the same job w/ significant pay RAISES. I really want a water cooled system, but can't afford it. I wonder why people can't afford things like watercooling?
@@joshuamason2594 dude 😎 it's s it seems that many people here don't know the actual price lists from cheapest air cooling or AIO all-in-one. Check the internet for one Hardware dealer. And he must have one Internet shop of course ☺️. I can see just you one one Brand. Arctic Cooling. The cheapest is available for 75€ Euros. If you live in the US 1 Euro has almost the same value as 1 Dollar . I bought myself one with ARGB Lights for splendid 85 Bucks! And you must choose which power or performance the AIO should have. Next , you must have one big PC tower 😜. And large enough too. Normally the wideness is always the same. The deepness is much more important. So there are number combos who described the AIO. 240 / 280/ 360 , and so on. They're equipped with fans. 2/3 at Max. And 3x 120mm or 2x 140mm. Attached on the radioator. Okay 👍. I hope I could give you some Intel. It's like one jungle. With hardware pieces of PCs. Greets The Radiator is the biggest and heaviest part. It's needed to cool down the warm water circulation. But you can imagine the radiator one regular car 🚗 has. Those with combustion, of course ☺️.
I feel like a big factor to it to is closed loop liquid coolers have just gotten so affordable and efficient that doing custom water cooling outside of aesthetic purposes is just a lot more feasible to most people. You now don't NEED to do custom water cooling to have it, Just go to the store and find one for you CPU and slap that baby in there. Sure that doesn't include GPU cooling but there's only a small percentage of people who'd even need to liquid cool their GPU
Most people really do not need to watercool their CPU at all. There is basically no point unless you are actually doing CPU intensive workloads. Most people are probably better off with undervolting their CPU as they run into a GPU bottleneck first. To run into a CPU bottleneck you really have to do productive workloads, in gaming it is kind of hard to run into a CPU bottleneck that really matters. (as long as your CPU does not slow down your GPU)
@@peterfischer2039 You forgot about other benefits. Closed loop liquid coolers are quieter, look better and take less space on the motherboard. Oh and the best one which is arctic freezer III is really affordable. I have 420 version and with my PC on the desk I rarely hear the fans, usually only if I focus on it.
Liquid cooling a GPU, your RAM, your fucking _motherboard_ are all stupid ideas. Your components do not run anywhere near hot enough for it to actually matter. The extra 2 frames you get in a game are not worth the effort and the voiding of your warranty.
Liquid cooling a GPU is far more important than the CPU. GPU's create around 300-400w of heat, which is confined in a tiny space and inefficient fan layout which just pushes hot air into the CPU which only produces around 150w of heat, plenty of space about it for large heatsinks which ejects heat out of a nearby fan. Watercooling GPU gives a far larger heatsink for the GPU which the heat is ejected straight out of the case, making the CPU air cooling more efficient. Yet there are NO AIO's for GPU's, only CPU, absolute madness.
I live in a high dust area and I do use dust filters (but you still need airflow) and the closed loop coolers are more viable for me as it is easier to clean dust from radiator fans then how it tends to collect on air coolers. It is more costly but the convenience is worth it to me. i don't eat out so I tend to have the extra cash.
The problem is 99 percent of companies out there saw how much the demand was for their products while everyone was sitting at home or the growth we say starting in late 2021 and they over inflated their business models due to that spike. They got accustomed to their high margins at that time as well. Those days are over and everything is crumbling because of their greed. They NEED to fall back down to reality and learn from their mistake. This industry and the gaming industry are on fire and I say let it burn. It will rise from the ashes renewed and better for it.
The company I used to work for fell victim to this mentality. They tried to upsize based on their covid profits and then after covid calmed down those profits went back down to how they were pre-covid. The company ended up losing money for 2 years straight and ended up having to close.
I’ve been a PC gamer my whole life and never used water cooling or RGB whatever. Just simple big a** fans with no lights and the case sitting on the floor under the table. Never understood why people wasted money on aesthetics that nobody sees.
Another issue is that you used to be able to get a midrange GPU, get a $30-40 UNIVERSAL gpu waterblock and use it on 2-3 sometimes 4 GPUs before the mounting holes changed and OC the shit out of it. Now I have to spend another 300+ for a full coverage block that ONLY works for that specific make and model GPU...WHY? that's enough to spend another few bucks and just get a flagship GPU with better performance and VRAM.
It was all the super custom cards! what you are describing is also when those just exploded on the market. I remember back to my 550ti I put an aftermarket air cooler on it, was massive compared to stock. That cooler was listed to work on just about anything on the market at that time (nvidia or amd). Not long after that though all brands made a million skus for each tier of card and basically that whole market segment died.
@@mromutt This is why Arctic quit making aftermarket air cooling solutions for GPUs. I mean, they gave the consumer what they wanted - more choices, but it came at a cost. Just goes to show you can't win for losing in this market.
I think the problem is kind of twofold here: RAM needs active cooling on GPUs now (along with many other components benefiting from it) in addition to the GPU die, and nobody makes reference cards anymore, so you end up really wanting a full cover block but they can't be produced at scale because every stupid manufacturer makes a different version of the same product that requires a different cold plate.
@@ganthrithor except once you watercool the GPU, ram cooling is simple, as so much heat is removed from the whole card, simple stick on heatsinks have both my 4070 super and 7900xtx running with lower than stock ram temps vs the oem coolers. its not difficult, don't let BS marketing make you think otherwise.
Long time PC builder here. Over the past 30 some years I would build a new PC for myself at least once every 12-18 months. Was always exciting to see all the packages arrive, take a picture of the packages and then the final PC build. I built my last system in April 2020 (Ryzen 7 3800x, RX5700XT) and then the prices skyrocketed, mainly the GPU prices. I have the money to build a new PC but it is the principle behind it and I refuse to support or spend cash on greedy manufacturers. If anything I realized that I really don't need a new PC as often as I was building them and my current system still works just fine. Maybe in a year or two or if some piece of hardware croaks then I will be forced to replace or build a new one. I have never built a water cooled system to date and really see no need for one.
Bro changes PC parts like he changes underwear. Built my first in 2015 and the second in 2020. The last part came in just as lockdowns were being established here in the states so I feel like I really lucked out between that and crypto crapping itself. Then yeah, prices exploded. Hey, remember that giant manhole cover we shot into space with a nuke?
Same had an i5 2500k till a few months ago, worked fine for yearsssss. Cruised past the 6600K then 9900K and when it was finally time 13/14th gen Intel was running too hot for my taste. My friend had tried AMD and was getting decent performance, so I tried it too after some research I found a combo upgrade special for an AMD R7 7700, B650 mobo with 16GB 5600 DDR5 for $500 and I will use this for years. Why not. Stock cooler -30CO +200Mhz 95W limit, 5.3Ghz SCB 5.1ACB with 8C16T! All I need! Avg 45-65W in games and temps do not go over 75C. When the games become more demanding and stress the CPU a bit more resulting in higher temps, I will get some average air cooler to keep the temps from climbing past 75C too often and call it a day. Maybe jam a 9800/9900X3D if it proves to be worth it. Other than that just a GPU upgrade at some point in time and 32GB 6000 RAM to complete the build. Next upgrade in 2030... I was lucky to get such a sweet deal with that special. After the special the price went back up to $700+ and in most games I have 80-90% of the fps of kits twice the price. AM5 upgrade path is nice and all, but overall the prices are too high, especially GPU prices. The price I paid for my 1070 back in 2017 gets me effectively the same performance today if I go and buy a card at the same price point. The inflation has eaten up all the performance gains. I think the 970-1070 jump was the best. If the prices remain as they are I will wait for a second hand 4070 after 5000 launches or try AMD as some friends have AMD GPUs and are happy with it. Benchmarks show good value, so why not. But new 4090 off the shelf? Hell no. Rather waste money on nice coffee.
I can't imagine building for 30 years and never trying water cooling. I think i gave it a shot with system #2. I agree it's completely unecessesary though. At the time I built it, it was during the super hot chip era. Now everything runs prettyy cool in comparison. I thought it was a fun project and looked amazing. It also made me pause before needlessly upgrading because it's time consuming to drain and and take apart the whole water cooling system.
Its not just watercooling. 10 years ago, it was unimaginable to think a CPU would cost HALF of a high end motherboard, but here we are. 1800+ for a top end GPU? 700+ for a top end CPU? HEDT was cheaper comparatively.... I vividly remember CPU blocks being about 70 bucks and GPU blocks would be around double that, now we see GPU blocks that cost a whopping 400$! 400$!!
You can thank youtubers promoting terrible generations of GPUs like the gtx 600, gtx 1000 and rtx 4000 series and other poorly priced/overpriced hardware over the years and the people that bought them.
It makes no sense, there has been no technology break throughs in custom loop parts but they keep increasing prices like it's happening every year and then they wonder why shit doesn't sell.
Not in and of itself.. but isn't it supposed to give you more thermal headroom for overclocking? And that's how you would see those frame gains from water if I'm right.
@@FellowshipOfTheAviatorZ why would you overclock already power hungry massive gpu? the only correct thing to do and many overclockers say is that people need to finally learn to undervolt
For me the benefit of water-cooling is two fold, noise, i.e. ability to make it silent and sff. I can cram more cooling into a small case with a custom loop than air cooling.@@deprydation
I have a mental list of PC tech companies who haven't done something bad at some point. Currently it's Noctua, Supermicro, Thermalright, ASMedia, VIA and MosChip... Let's see how long that list holds!
brother the price is not rising as much as the Federal Reserve prints money, that's actually what's making the dollar worthless, In simple terms, the more they print, the more dollars you need to buy anything. Just look at Germany post WW1, here's a quote from wikipedia: "A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 or 2×10^11 Marks by late 1923."
@@SilkBoyFighter Problem is not in inflation itself, it's unavoidable fact to allow for markets growth. Money are given to people and businesses, they are creating more and/or new goods, some fail, difference between given and what worked out becomes inflation. In general it allows for faster overall growth than when size of the economy and amount of money are at rough equilibrium. Current main problem is that most of the profits are eaten up by CEOs and huge investment firms, while income stagnates. This again can be balanced out by taxation which makes it less appealing to go over certain income levels and incentivizes re-investment into workers, and some investment market regulation to incentivize less irresponsible business strategies, but neither is done.
@@L1vv4n reason you never see laws that drastically reduces wealthy ppls income is due to 2 reasons, either it is bribes or fear that said wealthy individuals removes all that money out of the country entirely, just one of the reasons why we will always deal with the greed of humans until we have a singular currency & singular world government, and even then conflicts will arise over the fact that every country loses sovereignty
@@shadowmaster335 its not just about "income" there's way more under the hood "income" is one thing "credit" is another "gains" are another "capital" is another like its not just income. its the fact that Governments have 10000 different ways to not pay taxes if you're not the average person. That's a government flaw it exists on all levels and not just the US. And if they were taxed or the government pulled the rug from them. They'll take their stuff and they'll leave. A single world government would just be the world's single most corrupt government. Government is not a "Good guy"
Jay, two things have kept me from water-cooling. Replacing a dead fan takes less time than replacing a dead pump. Vacuuming heatsink fins is less work than draining a loop, cleaning a bunch of parts, and refilling the loop.
never had a dead pump, also its a case of prioritys. is it just cooling, some want aesthetics, some like myself want slience in a hot humid environment and didnt want a turbine next to me thats very audible with headphones on.
Thanks Jay. I've been a fan for a while, and you've always been a great source of inspiration and I appreciate your content. You were a huge reason I got into watercooling to begin with, and I couldn't be more grateful for your advice and experience.
@AceGamingCentral I have been building PCs as well since the late 90's, Noctua didn't pop on the scene until sometime in the mid 00's. They are excellent coolers though.
Watercooling has been dead for years. When is the last time you heard a watercooler review that wasn’t qualified by saying something like, “you could get the same performance from air cooling but.. this looks cool!”
@@yvels3685the only positive I see from it is breaking away from component temperature and just looking at liquid temperature. Just have all fans set to liquid temperature, it stops you having fans that are ramping up and down depending if something is more intensive or not. Yeah overall the temperatures may not be lower but it’s potentially to running your fans at 30% all the time. Again very expensive for the sense of that. Equally I find it more of a hobby just a damn expensive one.
Way back when I built my first tower, a friend tried to convince me to custom water cool. I didn’t want the cost but went with a Corsair H80 AIO. He had to look for leaks, and swap out his water a few times for various reasons - taking his system offline until he had time to work on it. I used mine every day, and despite the bad rap earlier AIOs got on reliability, it lasted about 8 years (I sold the system to a friend with it working, and a while later the pump finally quit). It never leaked. Upgraded my brother’s system with an H80i around that time, it had an “early” death which was still ~5 years. For the cost vs. custom loop, I could replace the AIO multiple times if I had to. My current system, my home server use H150i Pro’s, my brother’s is a H100i, and I had done a H60 on my dad’s PC to keep the noise down. Three of those are 9th gen Intel, built when that was new - save my brother’s which is 13th gen.
It's absolutely insane to think about how the bigwigs of these companies have been making a huge profit over their payout to employees and they don't want to take a pay cut and they'd rather watch their companies sink and will jump ship.
It's not their company. Executive teams are rarely there for the long haul, the majority of their salary is tied to stock performance. They don't care about the long term and they never will.
Not likely even mathematically possible for the bigwigs to float the company and save it by taking pay cuts. People love bringing up CEO pay discrepancy in large companies as though it's the reason employee pay/prices aren't at the levels they wish it was.
Every day, I realize I'm old... and it's depressing. My 1st water cooled system was a home built rig 25yrs ago, with copper plumbing pipe, an aquarium pump, an oil cooler radiator I picked up at a Murrays auto parts store. I attached to a 1lb solid block of copper I bought online, which I drilled water channels into with my buddy's standing drill press. I gerry rigged 3 used AT ( yes not ATX ) in series on the 5 volt channel to come up with monster 40AMP 15volt power supplier that I hooked up to a 250 watt Peltier cooler mounted on a copper heat spreader directly on the CPU. At boot, I was recording -10C and had to worry about water condensation on my motherboard circuitry. It was the most fun I've ever had with a PC... Today, I just spend a few extra dollars to get 16 core CPU. Currently a 5950X and slap a big air cooler on it. I can't find anything except artificial stress tests that push more than 25-50% CPU utilization. It's quiet, reliable... Computer has been running for 2 straight years never turned off except for rarest occasion. I can't imagine why anyone would put themselves thru the risk of pump failure, except for cosmetics... Have to admit they look cool, but there is absolutely no practical need for them
why 3 like that? I got 250w out of 12v lines of some AT psu's tweaked up a bit from the adjustment pot. the problems started being at the molex connectors (they weren't rated to go that high on the sticker but they did) . yeah it was fun but eh didn't get much more out of the computer with it haha should've just spent the money and effort on ram.
@@lasskinn474 the Peltier was rated at 18V, if I remember correctly and it was the closest way to push enough amps without overvolting it. Plus man did that monster power supply look cool, riveted together. spanned the length of the case front to back. And yes, it was all acrylic, long before you could go out and buy this stuff at Microcenter. I was the coolest nerd of all my friends in my own mind.
@@brutus6574 yeah the tinkering used to be cool and fun for it's own sake too, seeing what you could do what you could have. my first block was a piece of aluminum with 3 holes drilled to it, bought from some dude on a forum in 2000 for 5 bucks or so. i ran a pump from the balcony from a large container passively cooling. some people used lada heater cores. now it's just plunk a lot of money down.. i moved to tinkering with 3d printers a decade ago for the itch.
With a modern CPU, if the pump fails, the CPU will quickly shut down due to overtemp. Very unlikely to cause catastrophic failure. Still, I never have liquid cooled a PC and never will. As for your little setup, you would have been better served by simply attaching the Peltier cooler to your block of copper. That's if your story is even true. I have a hard time believing it because I was around in the '90s and the first online reference to using a Peltier cooler on a PC I ever saw was probably in 2004. Even then, they were prohibitively expensive. I only just read about the first mass production hybrid air/Peltier CPU cooler to hit the market this week. Because of cost reasons, the only way to launch an affordable Peltier CPU cooler in 2024 is to make it only big enough to handle light to moderate loads and use a fan and finstack to take care of the rest of the heat under heavy load. Also, I can only imagine how much power you'd burn to run a 25 year old Peltier cooler to cool a CPU and you don't mention doubling your power bill which is totally sus.
@@Lurch-Bot OMG you got me... it was 2000, not 1999. The Peltier cost me something like $80 at the time. I cracked the original Socket A Thunderbird with my jerry-rigged socket attachment and ended buying a 700mhz Duron chip that clocked up to just under 1.1 ghz. And yes, power consumption was 400 watts+ which is why I used it for a gaming machine a few times before disassembling it. Eventually I replaced it with an MSI K7D Dual Socket motherboard with a couple of Athlon XP 2000's, with the same water cooling system, 2 purchased water blocks and no peltier and continued to be the biggest nerd on the block. You read history. I lived it.
As the owner of a small business in PA that sells pit bike parts online, from our physical warehouse, with dudes that walk around all day filling boxes, I really like how you supported Performance-pcs. You rock.
This 100%, plus the hassle of it all, which is why I've seen a lot of people I know say screw it, and are just buying a laptop that fits their needs/budgets, and/or Steam Deck/Nintendo Switch for gaming.
GPUs are really the pain point for me. Everything else has reasonable mid range, not cheap, but reasonable. I look prices at something two levels down from the top and go yeah, I don't feel disgusted.
@@VatiWah Unless someone is making money with that GPU, then that's their own dumb fault, as you can always use a lower spec, or older GPU to a certain point to game on a desktop if you adjust your setting, or even a good AMD APU. I also find it sad so many people have FOMO of nothing having the latest, and greatest, but if this economy keeps getting worse, I think a lot of people are going to have a real wake up call, as to buying only what it takes to survive, vs. a want like a high end GPU for gaming, when what they already might have does what they need it to do.
@@VatiWah Not me and those I speak to. I still use a bog standard RTX 3080 and many people I know have not upgraded from their RTX 2080Ti's even GTX 1060's! They all like me think about the lower end RTX 4000 cards but simply cannot be bothered.
I've even ditched the AIO with the Noctua D15 Gen. 2. What's the point with an AIO that will randomly fail in 5-7 years when that metal heat sink will never, ever fail.
As others have already noted, high performance air coolers have become very affordable. This has necessarily meant that watercooling is going back to being niche. It was mainstream for a few years, but that era may be ending.
I've used air coolers since I started building my own PCs back in the 90s. While I've had several moments when I've thought "maybe this time, I'll try water cooling," I've just never done it. But, now, 30 years later, I'm pretty happy with the air cooling solutions we've been offered and I STILL can't rationalize a watercooling system.
it is way to expensive to do any water cooling at all. i would rather build a custom case with aesthetics from 3d printing than build water cooling which is unfortunate , but the off the wall pricing on fittings is outrageous and the reservoirs and pumps. its funny how the rads are pretty much the cheapest to buy let alone the tubbing.
I wanted to get into water cooling, but it's so dang expensive just to step into. Once you're in, it's not too much, but buying a new cooler for every graphics card is ridiculous to me. And blocks for the CPU depending on the cooler
This is the case with every industry I can think of, Im a mechanic and the cost of parts alone has increased at least 30%, availability is down, business is down, shipping has slowed and many companies are discontinuing common fleet parts because of operating costs. Throw in the green new deal looming and its a recipe for disaster. People are broke and its showing.
Politics is a massive part of this. If that green new deal actually goes through, good luck affording food by the time 2030 comes around! 'Course, certain people actually like the idea of bread lines, and have clearly stated as such in their interviews. Open your eyes people, the ones in charge for the last ~3.5 years and their supporters have caused this mess in the US.
Lol what looming threat? The Green New Deal has incredibly little support from Democrats and virtually none from Republicans. You can't blame a hypothetical policy for inflation when CEOs are actively bragging to shareholders about skyrocketing profits. Not to mention the Green New Deal has plans for how to replace every sector of manufacturing it's looking to cut out. It would actively give the US economy and US manufacturing a kick in the ass.
Watercooling always seemed like adding extra potential points of failure at a higher price, than air-cooling where only the fans can fail and is cheaper. Also, with ThermalRight making 360mm AIO's for 50-60$... going custom just doesn't seem justified at all anymore. My gigabyte eagle 3070ti never gets above 65C with it's beefy, 3fan air cooler, and it's pretty much whisper quiet so no reason to water cool that.
I don't usually leave comments on videos, but not only have I followed you for a long time, but I share your passion for liquid refrigeration. I built my first powerful PC when I lived in Venezuela in 2001, and I bought my entire system through FrozenCPU and I didn't mind paying import tariffs to my country because I could, but as you say, the economy has changed and the priorities have changed too. This is the first time I've heard a RUclipsr like you make a video reflecting on the industry and who seeks to support family businesses, because you know they are in danger of becoming extinct. BRAVO Jayz. You may not read this message but I feel like I needed to say it, just like you needed to make this video.
I know u as the "Wallmart of the tech industry" guy :D (not my words, i called himself like that! :D ) and nothing wrong with a nice visit into ur local wallmart. :) 1:15 and 17:41 - atleast hes one of the few who is still down to earth, knows the struggles of the "normal" person and whos aware that life is NOT on easy mode right now for most people. despite him being one of the biggest tech youtubers in the world. I really appreciate that and respect u a lot Jay. Also sharing private information about ur own health is something that many would never do. This makes u one of the most pleasing channels to watch. 👍 👍
Thats pretty much not a thing unless you drop your pc or something its very rare to have a higher quality aio go bad i wouldnt trust a 50$ aio but a 100$ i would
Its deionized water my guy. It doesnt carry an electrical current. I've tested loops that have leaked all over and have been absolutely fine afterwards. Its not as big of an issue as you might think.
The irony is that water cooling seems to go in cycles. My Dad did his apprenticeship at Swindon Railway Works, where the computer that just did payroll for the Great Western Railway was in the basement and heated the whole building as it was watercooled. Then mainframe computers got more efficient and became air-cooled. So what was interesting was that we hit a period of time when there was a combination of factors that led to highly expensive CPUs and graphics cards that were still inefficient that they produced a lot of heat, and it was cheaper to increase the performance by cooling more effectively than buying a more expensive CPU. What's happened is that the efficiency of CPUs and GPUs has increased and the price has dropped such that water cooling is no longer a cost-effective way of maximising bang per buck.
As they shrink the process size, CPUs become less efficient, not more efficient. A 486 was maybe 10-15% efficient. A modern CPU is 1% efficient, meaning 99% of the electrical power you put in gets turned to waste heat. As for performance per watt, you can't make that comparison on a like for like basis due to Moores law being an exponential function. We all have computers in our pockets that would put a '90s supercomputer to shame. But it is an unfair comparison because they are barely even the same technology. You can only do that comparison between hardware of the same generation. Back in the '90s, I had a gaming PC that would blow a mainframe from the '70s right out of the water. In the late '90s, I had a 386 based handheld PC (no, the handheld gaming PC is not a new concept, lol), something that would have literally been impossible a decade prior.
My current system is the first one I've built with water cooling, and I opted for an AIO setup-I absolutely love it. It was easy to install and looks significantly better than my old bulky air-cooled radiator setup. Plus, it serves as the air intake for the entire system, making everything super efficient, and my thermals have never been better. I understand the enthusiasm of those who prefer custom-builds, and I believe it's only a matter of time before a company takes advantage of the growing space in the industry for more affordable systems. Hang in there, enthusiasts!
The best part of this is that when a vacuum is created, and a need is wanted, someone will be willing to step in. I made a full Bykski loop in 2022, buying direct from the manufacturer via their Ali storefront. It was less than $400 all in for cpu block, gpu block, pump/res combo, 2 360mm rads, fittings, tubing, AND fans to keep it all cool. Granted, it would be more than that now, but not extremely so.
$400 can make a big difference in a build though... For example, you can make a bulid list for a decent AM5/7000 series pc for around 900 dollars, and that 400 is enough to go up to the next cpu and gpu, while doubling your RAM and storage...
Or you buy a thermalright phantom spirit for $40 and call it a day. Custom loops don't make sense except for those who already have absolute top end hardware and just want that extra 1% performance (and aesthetics)
@unholysaint1987 I'm already at a 7800x3d and 32GB of decent 6000MHz, so im good there. I did it more for aesthetics and noise reduction than anything. I can straight-up turn off my fans when I'm not gaming
Less reliable, high maintenance, horrendously expensive, and outright dangerous to your PC. Open loop is only makes any sense at all if the build itself is your real joy, there aren't many of us and money shortages hammer those niche markets.
Problem is most people watercooling have no clue how to make it reliable. Even the people in yt renown for their watercooling builds sometimes do really stupid things ;)
@@peterpain6625 Because it isn't reliable? Air cooling is. You need a standard to define what is reliable in anything, so even if you have the best watercooler the things Spastic say are facts. Don't be a moron Peter.
I'm a casual PC gamer and it was my dream to build my own PC. A friend of mine helped me picked out parts and I wanted to go all in but not too far where my budget would skyrocket. He told me water cooling wasn't even needed and said I'm wasting too much money on some fancy water tubes. Glad I listened.
@@darrelldarrell1447 you know you can build a computer without watercooling right? i have an all air system that i built. i used to have an aio and i decided to get an air cooler and guess what, my temps are the same.
VOTE TRUMP WE NEVER HAD A DEPRESSION WITH HIM. BIDEN IS DESTROYING THE ECONOMY, COMMUNIST KAMALA WILL DESTROY THE ECONOMY EVEN MORE GOVERNMENT PRICE GAUGING WILL DESTROY BUSINESSES
Me personally, I don’t want to entertain the idea of doing a water cooled system as I don’t want to deal with the headache of buying expensive components and do constant maintenance if something goes wrong for something that I would not see 80% of the time.
Eh. There are plenty of ways to do it decently on a budget and make it low maintenance. But if you don't want it for the fun or bling of it, don't need it for the performance - then it's not for you (at least at this point) and that is perfectly fine and sensible.
You do maintenance only if pour some colors on water, my computer has maybe 5/6 years now and i never had to touch it again, just getting out the dust of fans and radiators with an aircompressor every year because even when it stuck it performs really well, but get louder of what silence is.
@@Yo-ju1sr Good quality tubes and good quality coolant additive or premix will do fine. Colors aren't really an issue - as long as it's only colorant to a clear coolant. The issues start with fluids that have clouding or effect particles in them, and cheaper tubing that release plasticizer. If you clean out rads snd blocks well before assembly, use good tubing and use appropriate anti-growth / anti-galvanic-corrosion coolant - then there's not really much to maintain. Some tubes might color stain slightly over years, but if you don't plan to change the color (or don't use/add any) that's not really an issue. Also if you stick with soft tubing, building and any maintenance you want to do is a whole lot easier. Just give yourself lengths with enough slack to move things around without needing to disconnect them. Plus compression fittings for soft tubing are incredibly secure, and have fewer elements prone to induce leaks.
Built my system 4 yrs ago. Tore it down last week. Fully drained, cleaned, rebuilt and refilled. A very small amount of oxidization on the CPU and GPU blocks which somebody who doesn’t know wouldn’t see. In those 4 years, 0 leaks, 0 issues. Buy quality, build it properly and don’t use colored coolant :)
I struggle to believe that 'inflation' is the reason for all these price hikes on the heels of companies hitting record level profits. If your profits are statistically higher than they've ever been, that's not inflation, its greed (not even just tech, grocery stores and housing too). If they wanted to cash in on the increased spending from the consumers, they could have easily done special editions or limited runs that are more expensive than the average card, but offers a compelling reason to pick one up. The average card price stays the same so they maintain their expectations with the consumer, while offering something the whales can sink their teeth into. With regards to watercooling, its a struggle when doing it only really makes sense on top spec parts. At least here in Canada, that means $800 CPU, $2400 GPU, $400+ Motherboard, etc. Where before you have even looked at case, ram, storage, PSU, fans, and especially watercooling, you're talking 2-4 months of rent. Then you effectively add on another 1-2 months of rent to watercool it or buy a $100+ Noctua/BeQuiet double stack cooler and call it a day. The companies know that if you're considering watercooling seriously, you're already a pre-qualified customer that's spent $4000+ on your build (and they're charging what they've seen people pay).
There is also something else I don't understand, and want you or someone else to explain to me. It was mentioned in the video about the major company also losing contract with shipping, and can't ship products to sellers and buyers. But to me that makes no sense. Joblessness around the planet is the highest it's ever been in history. People are literally BEGGING for jobs and money.... How the heck are there not millions of truckers and suppliers able to take the contract? To me, it sounds less like a lack of jobs or drivers to supply the supply train... But more like there is a Monopoly on supply lines for all these cities, countries, and companies, and someone higher up is just denying people supplies... For some unknown reason. Cause there are truckers wanting to supply, there are stories wanting those supplies, and there are companies making those supplies. all the stuff is there... So WHAT is stopping the supplies from going from the companies, to the truckers/shippers? Can companies not just hire their own people to ship their stuff? Are companies in control of Truckers and artifically shorting supplies to cause a crisis on purpose by out right denying companies the right to use their shipping services? Are stores the issue, not stocking up and going out of business, and thus the companies have no buyers/sellers to supply to? It can't be a job shortage cause people are begging for jobs and would 100% fill all shipping jobs instantly for the money to buy food for themselves and family. So what the heck?
I can answer your question. It is unusually simple at its core. The richest people in the world are all collaborating to save money. Your are absolutely correct onthrtr being a monoply on supply lines. It's called labor inequality. According a report I recentlg read, 80% of all goods is produced by the southern half of the world, but they only make around 27-37 percent of the revenue it generates. Yet we are expected to pay high prices for what was dirt cheap labor. The only term I can ascribe to the whole thing is financial monarchy. The rich are no longer partaking in captilism. It has become a globalized shadow economy. The value of labor in the south is peanuts but we have to pay several times more money for the same goods compared to the south. The longer the south is poor, the longer we will face artifically inflated prices due to their insistent cost cutting. They are expected to do anything and everything to make as much money as quickly as possible for investors and shareholders. Shareholders are the root of all these problems. They keep accruing more and more money with absolutely no regard to the well being of their consumers. It has gotten to the point that customer support has become but a joke. Everything is being built in more and more flawed ways to extract as much cash out of the people who buy it. It is increasingly becoming a quantity over quality market.
@@josephlh1690 That doesn't explain anything. Why can't Company A, ship resources with Trucker A, to Shop A? Where in this line is the chain broken and impossible. If there is a Monopoly controlling products, where in the chain is it broken? Cause if it's items out of the country cost little but we the people are not buying them cause they are expensive, the the Shop A would be the braking point. No one buying the product, they not making money, they have no reason to request more supplies, truckers get less supply jobs, company isn't selling product and makes no money. But that's a VERY EASY fix... Put a VERY HIGH TAX on Importing goods, like Trump did in his first term, forcing american companies to save money by moving back into america, to negate the import tax effecting them, and giving jobs to american, at actual affordable prices, that they can buy from working the jobs making the item. Cause as seen with Mc Donalds. You try and set the prices too high, and you lose money and lose shareholder's trust in you and get a lawsuit in the works. We've already seen most Woke companies failing and dying. Disney is literally killing themselves and pissing their shareholders off enough that there are rumors they going to sue them soon for failing their duty to make money and not lose money with their choices.
I think you're confusing gross profits with net profits. EKWB is failing because they put too much money into stock they're never going to sell. It is a niche market. Even more so in 2024 because it offers little to no performance benefit these days. Even 20 years ago, it wasn't really necessary. I OC'd my first gen P4 1.6 to over 2.5GHz with the stock cooler and it was fine to let that 180nm die run at 95C all day long, for years. Not so much with intel's current lineup.
@@Jirodyne Putting taxes on imports would push them to cut jobs. They have too many incentives to leave Americans to dry. It would be better to push totsl sanctions on countries that offer tax havens to these businesses. The sanctions should be removed so long as the countries agree to tax these businesses. It would force the companies to reconsider their money ssving habits. As to why company A can't ship resources to Trucker A than to Shop A, there is nothing technically stopping them from being able to do so. They just don't have enough motivation to do it. Half of the jobs that Americans have are practically funded by shareholders. This puts big companies in a bind. They risk losing considerable financial capital if they hire more supply chain workers. They have to please their shareholders. Failure to do so inevitably will lead to job cuts to compensate for losses. It is a f***ed up state of affairs. Consumers don't have any major alternatives here. The products available to us are limited by design. These companies could afford to lower prices for us, were it not for their investors holding them hostage. Import taxes would not work. Not anymore. American labor has become too costly. We are for all intents and purposes, overpaid at the global level. Our goal needs to be ensuring that the lowest paid workers in the world get paid more money then they do now. If you make it more expensive to have work done outside of our country, it would pressure the businesses and their share holders to evaluate reducing prices here and raising them elsewhere or hiring more American workers. An import tax would lead to inflation. If it weren't for the fact that our export numbers were so low, then it would work better. That is not the case now. We lack a lot of crucial supplies locally, making it perilous to simply raise the cost of key sectors. We are too expendable. There just aren't many options to handle the influence they wield. We have no leverage here. Without leverage, we have everything to lose. They will find ways to maintain consumer spending without doing what is right. Another solution would be to make laws that would lock investors into their contributions. Make it difficult for them to pull money out once they put it in. If they aren't able to easily pull funds, they would have to be more considerate with the support they provide. In this scenario, it would provide the big businesses with better leverage over them, potentially allowing for more job growth without posing as much of a risk were they to lower prices for us.
Game companies carry most of the blame: What no one has expressed anywhere is how everyone is completely happy if the gaming industry had not been taken over by corporate behemoths chasing profit margins while reducing the flow of new games to a trickle... None of the games that are coming out are pushing the boundaries. It does not increase profits to massively improve visuals over last gen... If a person still had a reason to push hardware to its limits they would sell enough of this stuff to make money without resorting to "whale milking"
Keep in mind that game visuals have reached a point where there really isn't much further they can go toward more photo-realism. You could increase the resolution (like from 4K to 8K), but people can't even see a detail difference. And then we still have people playing Minecraft, a game where they didn't even care about high-def graphics or photo-realism...
This is also true. It seems games releasing today look only as good, or maybe 5% better than 5 years ago. But take 50% more computing power to run well. New components are being used to avoid optimization rather than push computational boundaries.
Companies selling products. At insane mark up's. Is the problem. They routinely charge 3-4-500% markup. It is out of hand. Homes are priced out of buyers because they charge a million on three hundred thousand home. Food is the same. A 16oz can of red bull. Can run you five bucks. Only costs less than a dollar to bring to market. The problem isn't inflation. It is usurery and greed.
I do liquid cooling not because of visuals or aesthetics but to run a completely silent pc that doesn't sound like a jet taking off when temps get high.
@@CD-vb9fi I am also fan of quiet PC's and thats where water cooling is complete no-go for me. I got semi passive PC, that is something you can not do even with custo loop. The pump is alway on sadly. Yes udner load it is quieter, but at light load there is no replacement for 0 moving parts.
@@B1u35ky No it is not. Right now you can get semi passive, that is really the best of both worlds. Full performace when neaded, and complete silence when you not under full load. Also right now in cooling capacity we are not limited by coolers, but actually by silicon heat transfer capability.
I got black box. It does not have glass panel. I like it that way... Maybe next I go for white box, still no glass... I don't need any extra lights in my room. I got much more powerful lights for that.
Open loop pricing isnt appealing to me, but the real reason I don't do it is because I'm too lazy to maintain it. I would like to believe that most people, even people who have the means to go all out open loop, are the same.
It's both equally for me. Why would I spend crazy money on the loop itself just the loop and then crazy amount of work for maintenance regularly when with air cooling I can take my pc sorta apart once every 6 months and turn my air compressor on and be done cleaning it in 20 mins.
if you properly clean the parts before installing (lemon acid and distilled water rinse) and use distilled water + aquacomputer dp ultra clear + EPDM tubing with high quality no aluminium parts, the loop is basically service free. you can run it for years without fallout, fogging or other buildup.
1: cost 2: Cost 3: COST If I have to drop like $3,000 on a computer, I’m not in a good mood to drop another $800 to make it pretty. Especially since OC barely exists anymore and air coolers are so good. Water cool is completely aesthetics now. I’d spend $200 on a loop, not $200 on the block alone!
As an enthusiast of value water cooling (as in cheaper Chinese brands like Bykski) I've often heard people say "How can you buy that? It's made by people who are being paid peanuts." It turns out that EK aren't paying some of their staff at all so that argument went down like a lead balloon. I've always been amazed at how popular EK has been...I genuinely can't believe people will pay that much for cooling when there are products out there (especially in the last 18 months) that cost a quarter of the amount, offer the same performance, and look great.
A lot of that is centralization of demand...more people than ever are into computers (especially with ease of access going WAAAY up) and consoles having fewer and fewer single player experiences pushing more and more people to PC. Its been bloating prices for awhile.
I've wanted to dip in this new affordable watercooling stuff. I was thinking about building a CPU only loop with a Bykski block and a 360mm Alphacool rad. I've had a hard time deciding on a pump, I'd still like a reliable and fairly quiet pump but I'm not sure if getting something like a D5 is worth the cost or not. Have any recommendations?
@@dot_boi I have had 2 non-D5 pumps die on me in the last few years, so I bit the bullet and got a D5 and yes, it is absolutely worth it. I would say it is the most important part of the loop to spend a bit more on. It has proved reliable so far, but it also has a much higher flow rate and is silent. I got the Bykski CP-NWD5-X-CT60-V3.
@@JordanNeenan I'll second Bykski. I went with one of their GPU blocks. I would have gone with a CPU block, but they didn't have an all black one in stock. So I did Heatkiller instead. As long as AM6 doesn't screw up mounting options too much, I'll be set for years to come. My fittings are all Koolance, Barrow (Dasmode rebrands) and Richer for some of the male-male adapters. But when I upgrade my GPU, it'll probably be another Bykski.
Sadly. Every time a company hears the words "Enthusiast". All they seem to respond with is every excuse to raise prices. And I'm sick of it.
I specifically avoid anything with the words "gamer" and "gaming" attached to it for this exact reason.
I've been doing the same thing for a long long time. And have tought my kids that as well. Never flat out trust somebody trying to sell you something.
they did the same shit as they started to put "gaming" to every single product. And most of the time it was just adding RGB lights.
yeah they hear "willing to pay more for a jankier product"
"Oh they're enthusiastic about what we make? Let's do everything we can to make them lose interest then."
The problem with watercooling is unlike before, overclocking with watercooling provides very little value.
It's now just pure luxury product, which effectively eliminates 99% of the market.
enough people find value in the way it looks. Shallow, I know, but that's the way it is.
In my case it is sound dissipation and aesthetics.
Overclocking in general is really quite dead now. If you supply better cooling the CPU/GPU just automagically runs faster to maintain the same temps. You can maybe change some biases for the clock/voltage/power balance, but thats about it. And then you might gain 10%.
Long gone are the days of overclocking by 50%+ on big air or a full custom loop.
Id disagree good cooling is a requirement for intel.
@@vertigo_one exactly, that's a huge part of the equation
My problem with watercooling is that all the stuff is too expensive. You can buy mother board and cpu and good noctua for the price of custom loop. Should be that expensive for what it is
You can buy something as good or better than the noctua for even less, buy noctua fans and replace the stock fans on whatever CPU cooler you got, get the same or EVEN better temps than the noctua heatsink, and still have spent less than you would have for just buying a noctua CPU cooler.
It's been a long time since it last made sense honestly. I never did it for performance, only silence and if you plan to keep the same system, the only additional cost after building it is once you plan to upgrade the GPU to get another block. Of course once a year at most maintenance but even then, if you are using good tubing and liquid in the loop then you could get away doing it only once you want to upgrade the system.
Exactly. I mean, i would always buy a waterblock for a new GPU. But i don't need rgb and such. Also i graphics cards became so expensive that i just stopped buying new ones.
The biggest problem is that it's has no tangible performance benefit. It has always been a thing for rich people to show off their build. Nowadays people just buy 4090 and shove in a shoe box and call it a day
Alphacool is a great price/quality company, I'm gonna buy from them for my loop.
I did my last water-cool build back in 2011. Ever since I've used aircooling. Over the decade, I've seen aircooling advance substantially to the point that the only remaining reason to get watercooling is noise. And the noise with these modern day cases is NOT that bad.
I remember when you could hear the computer reading from the hard drive. You'd hear 'thunk, thunk... thunk-thunk-thunkthunk... thunk thunk' and you'd know that Windows is still loading things. It's when the hard drive noises stopped that you started to worry
fun fact: the pumps also make noise
@@imkiyori Much easier to insulate though. A fan needs to be exposed to air and pass through a bunch of turbulence inducing fins, so you can't insulate them. Pumps can be partially insulated. My pump for example is sitting in a small compartment of my case that i've padded with foam, and as a result is essentially inaudible.
In the covid years I plunged to watercool with an external rad.
Yeah the hardware is cooler and also the noise is down but at what cost?
Big gpu coolers are providing good cooling at very acceptable noise/sound and as said good cpu coolers are doing the same for 30$
I probably wont watercool again in the.
Yep. A properly setup case airflow with the right amount of quality fans in the right spots should be pretty much silent. I never hear my TT P6 build and it's right on the wall next to me...
The prices needs to crash really hard.
Correct
*points at thermalright* they are selling 360mm AIO's for 50-60$ now
Until I can build a custom loop for 100$ (40% higher cost than going ThermalRight AIO) with a 360mm rad I'll never go custom loop route.
I'm thinking the same, especially for Nvidia who probably still think they can sell stuff to us at scalper prices.
What's crazy is how you can barely save anything by building it yourself nowadays
@@corpingtons Yeah, and it happened because the Chinese laid out long term goals and plans to achieve those goals and US companies made decisions to boost their annual bonuses.
American corporate/British corporate culter is just toxic in every way. I love capitalism but the dominant Western version of capitalism is toxic as hell.
1. Cost
2. Some of the parts being out of stock. Literally whenever I try to look into watercooling half the parts are on backorder.
I built my first loop 6 years ago and it was easy to find anything I wanted...But I just built my new system last month and like you said, everything was on backorder! I ended up having to buy a waterblock for my 4080 super on Ebay, because the only one I found on a regular site was a $350 Heatkiller block which i'm not paying for...
Yeah, it kinda sucks. I'm currently building a loop for my 9900K/1070 Ti build, trying to do it as cheap as possible. But i still need a few things and it's already gotten quite pricey. Finding the right parts is a hassle for sure, living in Scandinavia doesn't make it any easier. Small population = Small demand = Little-to-no stock :/
I used to buy directly from EK but with the current situation, that's not an option i'd wanna use, so it's a bit of a bummer.
I feel #2! Especially specific colors!
1. My $50 amazon ID Cooling frostflow 240 has been cooling my 13600k since release. Does just fine, temps never go that high unless the cpu itself just keeps cranking itself which it doesnt need to in most games i play, its quieter too.
It was actually EK trying to solve your second point that killed it. They ended up with millions of dollars in inventory that they couldn't sell causing them in turn to have no liquid cash with which to pay their employees and suppliers.
Air coolers are quite competitive these days. And some of the best ones cost 30$.
You cant buy a shitty water cooler for $30...
You could maybe used, but then you take the gamble if the dang thing is gonna even work, and/or not leak on ya.
Hey I mean, technically thermalright sells a 36$ 120 MM AIO. So yes, you can buy a shitty water cooler for 30$ (ignoring the 6$)
@@CommodoreFan64 lol true.
But I feel buying a used water cooler is like buying a used SSD...the unprotected sex of PC building! Haha
@@AnEyeRacky 😂 true, I was just saying it's possible, just not a great idea.
Best one like Noctua absolutely don't come cheap at all for air coolers.
Jay: "Is this the END of Watercooling?"
Sponsor ad: _is for a watercooler_
Not even close to the same thing. Aio isnt a cutstom loop especially in price.
Yeah but still it’s watercooling?
See Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
OK, so i'm not nuts, this is my thought as well. Major clickbait
Jay has to earn those 6 figure advertising contracts from the mfgs somehow…, 100k plus ching ching
#1 reason why I don't watercool: Don't need to.
It's not a necessary investment if you're primarily a casual gamer. A budget-friendly air cooler like the Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 EVO, priced at around $20, will efficiently handle your cooling needs. Additionally, with prices continually rising, it makes more sense to avoid overspending on premium options unless you have the disposable income to invest in aesthetics or high-end features.
@@VarriskKhanaar you don’t need a good gpu either or a computer at all really. So that’s not really saying anything
@@B1u35kysilly take
@@B1u35ky that makes no sense. why pay extra for not getting that much perf
@@Tonyuss Because I can?
Maybe people are just tired of being ripped off,and are deciding that they don't need the latest and greatest no matter the price?
i wish this was the case but i kinda doubt it
I think that's becoming tech as a whole. Modern smartphone does roughly the same thing as the one 5 gens past, but at a fraction of the price. Diminishing returns on the value of CPU cycles, video cards, etc. compared to past versions. I used to do a new PC every 2-3 years, now I'm on year 9 of this PC.
@@HeyApples Nah, old ones go flat too quick after I update them for some reason...
I doubt it because everything is more expensive.
no thatisn't it. there are always new suckers
It really is a shame that prices have become so inflated, because as an enthusiast, you cannot enjoy your own hobby, nor encourage others to engage in your hobby with you. When I first got into PCs around 2016, prices were a little expensive for teenage me, but nothing ludicrous. But when I was finally able to afford a PC for myself around 2021-2022, I realised prices had increased around 4 times, and it really put a damper on my passion for the hobby.
Nah man, just get a midrange board, an Ryzen 5 7600X, a graphics card you can afford, ddr5 ram and CPU cooler. Piece it all together over time. Get a case with fans pre-built and a PSU that is enough for your build. It's all attainable.
I spent 3 years learning to build PC's while I saved money, built an $8000 pc, made the switch to mouse and keyboard because its impossible to compete on pc with controller, spent 4000 hours on aim trainers. Then I realized every single competitive game I enjoy is overrun by controller players cheating their buns off (i mean aimlock wallhack etc) because they cant compete without learning mouse and key. Or they cant afford good hardware, or their internet sucks, or maybe they are just scum? But talk about putting a damper on my passion for the hobby. $8k pc to basically just play Baldurs gate and skyrim because cheaters.
Also dont ever buy up to the next latest generation. Thats financially dumb. Wait 2-3 generations to get the boost you're looking for.
welcome to what it's like to live in Australia
@@overused6632that's just not true.... Almost anyone could have a great PC before 2020
When you can get an air cooler for less than $40 that keeps a 7950X3D at full tilt below 80C, it is absolutely no wonder boutique products are struggling.
I can maintain temps under 40C full throttle with custom watercooling. Why let your system overheat off air cooling and shorten the life of your 2 most expensive parts?
@@tommycarl2353 The related question is: what do you define as "overheating" and how much would that shorten the life of the parts? I would submit that saving at least the cost of the CPU or more just by not putting in fancy water loops means it doesn't really matter because it's still cheaper to just replace the CPU if it ever goes bad. That said, which CPU are you saying stays under 40C at full load? These details are important considering the changes to thermal targets in recent processors.
@@tommycarl2353 80c doesn't shorten the life significantly. And no modern components are damaged by thermals unless you do something stupid to them. They have been engineered to function for years at up to 90-95c and even then will protect themselves from damage by throttling as a last resort. 40c is nice, you get a few more mhz, and any cooling system capable of 40c is probably also going to be quiet. But damage from heat is not a thing. Pretty much everything is perfectly comfortable at 80c.
@@Erowens98 You are correct. People worry a bit much about the heat. People running those old AMD, CPUs have had them overclocked and running for a decade like that, at over 80c... 🙂
@@tommycarl2353 Considering how many custom loops I've seen benchmarked, color me very skeptical of
greed is their downfall, watercooling isnt worth anymore.
Agreed when air cooling with the right case, CPU coolers, thermal paste, and fans for 1/2 the cost, or even less is within a few degrees of water cooling both AIO, & custom loops, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
Plus with air cooling every couple of months I have to what take my PC outside on my porch, and blow it out with my powered air duster, and maybe replace the thermal paste every year, or so, which is so much less hassle that water cooling, and worrying about something going wrong in the middle of the night, or a loop getting gunked up.
it's not worth for the average gamer, but it's increasingly more common in workstations and data warehouses.
Almost felt as though it happened over night.
Corsair entered the market with their kits starting in excess of $500. EK's $140 kits, which were just as effective at cooling, all vanished and were not restocked. Instead EK opted to only sell 'premium' priced kits to match Corsair. Greed really was the cause of the water cooling demise.
@@CommodoreFan64 You really do not have to replace thermal paste. If you used a good paste, you should never realistically need to touch it again. Old, poorly designed thermal pastes are responsible for that becoming a thing. My 2600k build from 13 years ago only got repasted once about 5 years ago as a test... Temperatures did not improve after all those years of use and using the same paste. Repasting was pointless.
Isn't worth what? Worth IT?
The resell value of these custom builds is also so poor, because once the parts get outdated, enthusiasts are not interested anymore and no sensible buyer is willing to spend the price premium for the custom loop anymore. I've seen dozens of high-end water cooled builds with insane prices sitting on FB marketplace and other websites for months. So it makes sense that less and less people are willing to invest considering the fact that you can't even sell it afterawrds.
I think it's the risk that stops people.
For example my GF wants to save for a new GPU for my build.
We looked at prices and were shocked how expensive things have become.
And used market is a coin flip. You dunno if a GPU was used for crypto mining and is in bad shape these days, lol.
I am someone who takes advantage of that obscure market. I bought my current Liquid Devil 6800 XT in 2023 secondhand for $416, even over a year later nothing comes close to the bang for buck I snagged with this GPU. I have water cooled for a long time, but I'm also a cheap bastard who doesn't mind sitting back a few hardware generations, and I bet it would surprise people how often water cooling has saved me money after that initial painful investment so long ago. I'm still running the original Laing D5 vario pump and Swiftech MCR radiator I bought 20 years ago in 2004, and it's been very cheap to keep adapting them to new platforms. Hell, I ran a Danger Den TDX CPU block until 2019 until I finally got tired of adapters and grabbed a $52 Bykski AM4 CPU block, and that block was less than half the cost of any air cooler that could hope to compete with the performance/silence.
The issue is not that the parts are outdated.
The issue of those PCs is, that there is not one person who is willing to blow multiple thousands on a used PC.
People who buy used stuff are looking for a bargain. If you spend 3-5k on a PC, you don't even look at that stuff. You either build it yourself or you get a custom prebuilt. Like, why should anyone spend 3k on a used PC with custom watercooling when they can get a new one for 500-1000 more? You're already in a "money doesn't matter" situation with your PC so 1000 more isn't an issue.
I put the money in the case itself for my custom build, knowing that I'd swap out the parts in 3-5 years for something newer/better. I may not even do a watercooling loop the next time.
What the fuck is a resale value on old computer parts anyway, who needs outdated crap
As a former Micro Center tech, I had the opportunity to build a few water cooled systems. The biggest reason why I haven't built my own is mainly the cost and the time to maintain the loop.
Plus you get 90% of the advantages and 0% of the disadvantages with an AIO. The only thing you miss out on is aesthetics, and aesthetics aren’t worth the maintenance and risk factors.
imagine paying a pro to build a custom loop and it's just some rando that has also never done it building it. lol
@@mukiex4413 no aio performs as good as a custom loop
@@jamesbyrd3740you pay for the warranty
If you fuck it up you pay the price, if they fuck it up, they still need to give me a working computer.
@@jamesbyrd3740 You say this like its some weird thing. You're paying a pro knowing if he fucks it up the companies gonna pay for it.
99% of us don’t need water cooling. It’s way too expensive for the tiny benefits it gives. The juice isn’t worth the financial squeeze.
nobody does, even with a 7800x3d and a 4090
Also, I don't need extra chores. While the maintenance isn't terrible, it's still a pain and easily avoidable because of how well air coolers work. Even in the SFF space your CPU/GPU can stay relatively cool with small coolers.
@@butterynugs7629 yup modern top-end gaming cpus use low wattage
Run a 4080 with a ryzen 7 7700x. Youll need as much cooling as you can get lol@dieglhix
@@lostin.psychosis7080 I have a 4090 and 5800x3d (higher tdp), no watercooling needed. The 4090 is powerlimited to 70% anyways and loses 1% performance
Water cooling used to be fun now it cost a fortune.I just did a simple AIO ,micro ATX ,A3 case, 7900X. Now just staying with functional.
Same - not sure if it’s the cost or just getting older. 😑
The problem is it's so much harder to get high performance parts that aren't bloated with useless or unwanted features. Like I don't want LCD screens and pointless RGB with proprietary drivers and launchers.
The only stuff without those things are entry level or low performance save for one or two brands.
Bloat as an excuse to charge more is a huge problem
In the case of RGB just don't attach the RGB headers to anything.
uhhh it sounds like you are talking about AIO as most of the custom loop stuff is quite "lite" in such features. and story is pretty much similar with components. you got even high end gpus (e.g. 4080,4090) that can come with no rgb and just fans as a "feature". you got motherboards that are really bloat free and minimalist design, even for x/z chipsets. you got non rgb ram, even at high speeds....etc...
@@lon3wolf642 But you still have to pay for having the RGBs on everything.
@@rangersmith4652 True but not a massive premium nowadays.
@@Uzishan Corsair is huge in the custom loops but they are the biggest offender. Extremely bloated software and proprietary headers
As someone who has never done a custom loop, I have to say the price is definitely the issue. I'm far from scared to attempt my first custom loop. But any time I'm pricing out my next build, I would much rather put that money into raw performance of the parts themselves, because overclocking isn't what it used to be either. I'd rather run a Noctua cooler, with higher end hardware, instead of having this awesome custom loop on average hardware because half my budget went into the loop... Just doesn't make sense to me. While pricing my new build, I'm definitely trying to go AIO, but even that doesn't make much sense these days given the overclocking situation
Former watercooler (custom loop and AIO) here. Unfortunately growing up and not having the time to do maintenance did me in on custom loops & my one experience with premium AIO which failed immediately after warranty expired led me to digging up my ancient NH-D15 which I had saved through all those years.. went to Noctuas website and got free mounting hardware for modern boards... And still running the D15 ever since which I bought in 2014
What stops me from building a custom water cooling system is that an AIO costs $200 and a single part of a custom water loop is $200. That's a no brainer. The AIO works perfectly. At least 10x the cost for something that does the exact same job? No thanks. If I had infinite money, I wouldn't do it just on principle. Fuck greedy companies.
When 90% of the worldwide PC users don't even own an Intel i9 with RTX 4090 which means that water cooling is practically redundant on mid tier builds.
99.999 per cent.
That's actually a very good point. Making some of the performance affecting pieces of hardware super expensive.. ok wait.. it's really just the GPUs, right?
Anyway, making GPUs as expensive as they are, people are more likely to spend their money on a better GPU than on optional stuff like a custom loop
the point is people were choosing to do it because they had excess income but now they don't.
it's redundant on high-end PCs as well. I have RTX 4090 and Ryzen 9 7900X cooled with beQuiet Black Rock Pro 4 and a Lian Li Lancool 216RX case with default coolers. No overheat, temps around 70-80 degrees celsius while gaming.
IMO water cooling is not just an expensive gimmick, it's dangerous for the components and requires time for maintenance. Why would I spend $$$ for a thing that adds problems?
Kinda. I mean im one of those "mid tier" build. My custom loop keeps my gpu and cpu pinned.. all the time.. i have a 5800x3d and a 6800xt.
I was done with water cooling when the pump died and I realized there is no way to fix it without buying another one. Air cooler stops working, pop out the fans and replace, done.
Yeah I got done with desktops when my 4th motherboard died out of warranty... And being disabled I can't move them you I just have an alienwear 4090 laptop instead and have been much happier.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Fourth motherboard died out of warranty? I built my first PC in 2003. Built my first gaming PC in Oct 2008. Built my second gaming PC in Feb 2014.
None of my mobos have died. What are you doing to your systems?
@@bricaaron3978anecdotal, but ime quality has tanked. No PC either myself or my friends have built in the last 5 years has been without one part that required rma. I had defective ram, friend had a dead cpu, another a bad psu, 2 have had bad motherboards.
Also, back to water cooling, yeah prices are too high, and on top of this many places have shipping prices that are just insane.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough bro your PSU is busted and killed those mobos.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough laptops are much worse for that, replacement boards can cost nearly as much as replacing the entire laptop.
The tech industry is suffering from the same issue that is bringing down manufacturing in general in this country. Higher prices and extremely lower quality. Higher profit margins have become the norm everywhere and it's starting to show when people refuse to pay higher prices for crappier equipment that is no even a necessity. It's a lot easier to just not buy because you don't NEED to upgrade. Until we bring quality and consistency in conjunction with lower prices, this is going to continue.
As a watercooler as from the early 2000's, using fish tank pumps and car radiators, I've realized long ago that besides some niche uses, watercooling is a complete waste of money and just for the show off.
Back then, air coolers were a POS, but nowadays you can get heatpipes for cheap that replace the advantage of having a fluid moving the heat. That day, watercoolers stopped making sense to me.
same same. when you get older you realize it doesn't get better by watercooling it and having components that you'd get more out of by doing it is very rare.
The cost to performance ratio is just very bad. You do get a slight advantage, but at greatly increased cost and maintenance. So as long as you don't REALLY want to show off with the visuals, it's not worth the hassle.
@@tarron3237 And the increased risk... I remember leaving a test running, going to a college class, and when I returned I had water dropping on my GPU...
There is no benefit from it but showing off... It's like climbing a mountain, you just do it because you want it.
Yup, heatpipes conduct heat way better than water, while being much more reliable. The modern chips and air coolers seem to make water cooling almost completely useless. AIOs could give you a more silent setup and that's just about it.
I don't think it's poor management, it's just pure greed! $_$
short-sighted greed. Which could be called poor management I guess.
Yeah; they're making these poor choices because they care about getting money faster, instead of satisfying their customers
I went back to air cooling years ago and never looked back. There's practically zero reason to liquid cool
I'm into low TDP chips. 15W or even 5W is best. ARM is your friend, INTC less so.
@@raylopez99arm for desktop 🤮
Very low noise, I miss that.
I'd say there's zero practical reason to liquid cool... We do it for the sake of it really.
Except the noise!😊
I had my first all-in-one CPU cooler leak in my system, it’s a miracle nothing was destroyed. I’ll never use water cooling again.
i never trusted the tech. my friend also had one leak and never went back to it again.
That's cool but he's not talking about aios.
Pretty much I've only had issues with AIO water coolers.
I think this is not only watercooling but everything. Hardware, peripherals, etc.
I do earn about the exact median salary in Germany, and let me tell you: I have almost no savings at all to spend on unnecessary stuff. Inflation is insane, and spending 800€ (which is basically 4 months of savings) on watercooling with little to no practical use is just nothing you do.
Especially considering Inflation doesnt stop.
Just because Americans are slowing down that don't reflect PC tch world wide. The Tch industry in the UK + Netherlands Switzerland China and India are seeing a Boom.
Greed really is the culprit here. Various factors have affected the market in the last few years, but the biggest impact was undoubtedly corporate greed.
As soon as Corsair entered the market with their absurdly overpriced kits, and EK followed suite by killing their competitively priced ranges, they destroyed the industry.
trade wars with china are the culprit here and a russian war.
not the only market Corsair has done that too
Sorry, this market was destined to collapse. Too niche, too many highly specialized parts sitting on warehouse shelves. For several GPU generations, you had similar board layout, not only within the same product family but across generations. Similar enough that I was able to use an Arctic aftermarket air cooler that was originally designed for GTX 900 series on a 2070 Super.
The past couple of generations has seen far more variation in board layout. This means you need a lot more unique blocks.
A better business model would be to manufacture parts to order. With stereoscopic scanning and additive machining processes, this could be highly profitable. That way you have no money tied up in stock that will be obsolete sooner rather than later. All you have to do is buy one example of every mid-high tier GPU for each generation, scan it, use ML to design the block in 5 minutes and hit 'Print' whenever you get an order. You would only need to sell a few blocks for each model to break even, something that could be easily done even in this economy.
You guys definitely don't understand economics. Greed may be a slight factor, but pricing is a science for companies, and the goal for every product ever is to find the point where you maximize profit. Maybe it's 1 dollar because you'll get a million sales, maybe it's 100 dollars where you get 500,000 sales.
What a corporation does after its very initial release is entirely driven by it's customers. If people weren't buying this stuff, the price would go down. A sale for 35 dollars is better than not a sale.
@@Lurch-BotI'd like to see nVidia and AMD sell reference PCBs with no cooler attached with a standardized layout to allow easy waterblock use.
Water Cooling is not an industry. It's a market within an Industry.
That's the thing, Jay said it's a commodity, that's even worse, it is a commodity within a commodity.
Having a PC is commodity , Having a PS5 is a commodity;
Having a custom loop is a commodity inside a commodity. You can just use an AIO or an Air cooler.
@@DaftBoy06your right
It’s not a necessity
Having a pc as a whole is not necessity
Easily could do by with a $200 laptops for just work and excel sheets (that would be kind of considered as a necessity to work for your job and make more money) anything above that isn’t
@@MrFaleh1129 PC's certainly are a necessity for people who dont just web browse and use excel for work LOL. What are you talking about?
@@orangejumpsuit6905 yah definetly need that 4090 for "homework"
@@MrFaleh1129 actually a 4090 specifically is one of the most work usable GPUs there are. its 10% shy of server grade for 1/4th of the price, thats why specifically that was banned for sale in china.
As a modder, I've had the slowest year i've ever had for both builds and mods, its been a hard year to navigate and I appreciate this rant.
Video: “Is this the end of watercooling?”
Sponsor: **“THE NEW AIO FROM…”**
Jay is wild for that 💀
Video about custom loot, it different
Gotta pay the bills...
Did you not watch the full video? He said that the cost of a complete custom loop is $1000-$1500, AIO's are cheap by comparison, almost as cheap as some of the Air Cooled options...
Custom loop and aio are different
When you charge so much for all water-cooling parts less people water cool their pc and they increase their prices more they literally priced themselves out of the market
They act like they are having technology break throughs every year when realistically they haven't had any in decades and now people are just checked out completely with the pricing
PRECISELY!
ANd now with ThermalRight selling 360mm AIO's for 50-60$, who the fk is gonna go custom loop route for 500$? When you can save 10x the price by just getting an AIO that is on par with best performing AIO's on the market?
@@vkmicrov an cpu AIO and a gpu AIO that takes hard tubing and its over
Exactly. If you overprice your product, you will have a hard time selling, and need to increase the price to cover the loss.
Actually you need to reduce price when that happens.
I’m a computer engineering student (senior yr). Back in the day the magic of the custom loop builds on RUclips are what got me into building my first computers as a young teenager and ultimately culminated in my career choice. I got into this way before it was a “cool” thing for all the (frankly) non-nerdy kids to do. More power to them, but back when I built my first rig it was kind of unheard of to build your own computer among people my age. I was a nerd (still am), and I loved it like a pig loves mud. I watched your videos, gamers nexus, and a few other OG channels to inform my first purchases and it’s really one of the more magical times in my life I can recall. Remembering my first graphics card- the GTX 1080 FE that I snagged on release day- and my i7 6700k on my desk in-box just itching for my build is a special thing. For me, the experience I’ve had is literally informing and has informed my future career path- (likely) to go on to work on big boy compute hardware. Those first builds were worth all the money in the world at the time in retrospect. But a few % performance difference isn’t. It’s just not the same as it used to be.
The *only way* I can justify building a custom loop is to consider it as hardware integration experience on my resume. But by now I’ve built or designed ~5 loops and multiple more systems (for family friends etc). Having experience managing thermodynamics of computing hardware in compact spaces, designing custom loops, and with the shortfalls of current watercooling hardware is as important as ever now with the compute that will be spun up in coming years. But even then, it’s literally just not necessary for 99% of builds unless you have an in-home H100 farm to train your personal transformer network lmao. But now, knowing what I know (and having college loans), I can’t just shell out $1k for 1-5% faster compute.
Oh well; I digress. Thanks for the videos my man. Keep them up (hopefully water cooling with some USA made Optimus stuff sometime). I guarantee there are plenty more like me who were/are inspired by content like yours that will go on to shape the future of the industry by being a part of it.
Lol, you bought a Skylake CPU. You know the performance difference between Haswell and Skylake was miniscule. And DDR3-1600 will ALWAYS outperform DDR4-2133. You think you've been doing this awhile? My first build was a 486 DX2-66. Didn't take long for me to overclock the crap out of it. Never needed a fan, let alone a custom loop. I pushed a Willamette 1.6 to over 2.5GHz on a stock cooler and ran it that way for years. Even my C2X doesn't need liquid cooling. It is pointless to go over 4.5GHz and a vintage CM air cooler can handle that just fine.
But when you're talking about pumping over 300W through a CPU on a 10nm process, that's a bridge too far. That cannot run all day at 95C, no matter how many times intel lies to you. And the failures I predicted are now reality. An AIO didn't help there. The CPU will still run at 95C no matter what cooling solution you put on it because that is what it is programmed to do. This is also why I no longer buy intel CPUs. They're still based on the Pentium Pro. It is really just the 20th generation of Core 2. All the rebranding in the world won't change the fact they should have done a clean sheet design several years ago.
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
Blows my mind that I spent ~$4500 building my PC, and when I looked into water cooling it, it was like an additional $2k with a slew of headaches, especially when air cooling has improved dramatically. Seems weird to me adding this whole pump system was half the cost of a high end pc. It seems similar to me building a house for $600k and a plumber told me the piping of the house will cost me $300k. Like what, why would that be half the price of the whole housing unit.
My next build with a full watercooling loop and a 4090 is going to be around $5,000 since my current part list doesn't account for all the fittings and tubing and extra bits I'll need/want.
Depends where you live. Depends on where utilities are located in relation to the geographical location you live at. How remote it is etc… How much accesses to water to need in your home etc… I guess if you’re one of those weirdos that wants to live off the grid you can save some money.
I did a nice loop for about $800 Canadian. You can get kits for about $350 USD. Water cooling only costs about as much as you wsnt to spend.
I'd rather have an AIO over an air cooler anyway. AIOs are cheap now.
@@namenotfound8747 what has the location of utilities got to do with the cost of the plumbing? I think you missed the point of the analogy.
@@MarkoVukovic0 if you live a mile away from the nearest sewer line waterline electrical line it might cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to get connected to the grid
The problem is components costed them $1-2 and they resell them to you $20-30 each.
Basically
That is how all business's operate though, think a 6 dollar coffee costs more than 50 to 80 cents to actually make?
They can't sell then for twenty if people didn't buy them for that. It's extremely basic economics. A things value is only as great as someone will pay for it
The whole problem with the completely unnecessary water cooling market is that, on top of it being unnecessary for great performance, it has been completely mis-managed.
I mean using that same argument all you need now adays is a used iphone to live a modern life and that may be provided by your work which you work from your parents home for.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Maybe, maybe that's why iphone is so popular and we have record amount of people living with their parents in late 20s early 30s, because buying a house is lifetime debt and iphone is closer to 2 years debt.
@@PREDATEURLT i bought a phone and didn't have to go to debt, and it has served the purpose that i need it for. Brand loyalty is nonsense
@@sepg5084 And that's how it should be, but I know people who put multiple months worth of their payment on a single phone and all they do is watch tiktok and make selfies with stupid filters.
The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
One of Norway's two (who specializes in it) watercooling shops literally filed for bankruptcy last night😥😥
its cold there anyway !=]
@@Radostin-us7uq throw your PC into a fjord LOL
Åhh? Hvilket firma var det? 😮
@@Latsaaben Digital Impuls☹️
@@fredrikstad01Did they really went konkurs? Sad, their prices were not competitive tho, compared to online shops like proshop or else that are considerably cheaper
My Problem with watercooling is, I don't want any liquid near my System.
Almost all water cooling isnt just "water" its deionized so it dosnt carry a current.
@@deatheffect575 it was a joke-
@@inspirix95 it wasnt...
😂@@glianonimi602
@@deatheffect575still that’s unnecessary complexity and stress
It's not a recession, Intel killed themselves because they ignored the market. The A.I. bubble burst. EK failed due to bad management. Water cooling has always been a niche market and that market is suffering a correction.
+ recession
Free money and easy markets ended and those who preferred growth to sustainability are suffering. Along with their hired employees.
And businesses too small to have huge reserves.
VOTE TRUMP WE NEVER HAD A DEPRESSION WITH HIM. BIDEN IS DESTROYING THE ECONOMY, COMMUNIST KAMALA WILL DESTROY THE ECONOMY EVEN MORE
GOVERNMENT PRICE GAUGING WILL DESTROY BUSINESSES
if someone thinks this isn't a recession in our economy at all, then they really are falling asleep in some way about everything going on.
it is a recession. We've been in a recession for a while now. Markets are trending toward collapse, not safety. The money printer has been churning like mad and great pay from 3 years ago is barely making it today.
One thing Jay doesn't mention is advancements in tech and alternatives. Air coolers now are insane compared to back in the day, and soon we'll have passive cooling solutions that might not even need dedicated power.
In the last 3.5 yrs. my rent has more that doubled, my food costs have doubled, my gas/electricity has doubled. My day to day is more than twice what it was. I live in the same place, have the same family situation, and have the same job w/ significant pay RAISES. I really want a water cooled system, but can't afford it. I wonder why people can't afford things like watercooling?
@@joshuamason2594
dude 😎 it's s it seems that many people here don't know the actual price lists from cheapest air cooling or AIO all-in-one.
Check the internet for one Hardware dealer. And he must have one Internet shop of course ☺️. I can see just you one one Brand. Arctic Cooling. The cheapest is available for 75€ Euros.
If you live in the US 1 Euro has almost the same value as 1 Dollar . I bought myself one with ARGB Lights for splendid 85 Bucks! And you must choose which power or performance the AIO should have. Next , you must have one big PC tower 😜. And large enough too. Normally the wideness is always the same. The deepness is much more important. So there are number combos who described the AIO. 240 / 280/ 360 , and so on. They're equipped with fans. 2/3 at Max. And 3x 120mm or 2x 140mm. Attached on the radioator. Okay 👍. I hope I could give you some Intel. It's like one jungle. With hardware pieces of PCs.
Greets
The Radiator is the biggest and heaviest part. It's needed to cool down the warm water circulation. But you can imagine the radiator one regular car 🚗 has. Those with combustion, of course ☺️.
I feel like a big factor to it to is closed loop liquid coolers have just gotten so affordable and efficient that doing custom water cooling outside of aesthetic purposes is just a lot more feasible to most people. You now don't NEED to do custom water cooling to have it, Just go to the store and find one for you CPU and slap that baby in there. Sure that doesn't include GPU cooling but there's only a small percentage of people who'd even need to liquid cool their GPU
Most people really do not need to watercool their CPU at all.
There is basically no point unless you are actually doing CPU intensive workloads.
Most people are probably better off with undervolting their CPU as they run into a GPU bottleneck first.
To run into a CPU bottleneck you really have to do productive workloads, in gaming it is kind of hard to run into a CPU bottleneck that really matters. (as long as your CPU does not slow down your GPU)
@@peterfischer2039 You forgot about other benefits. Closed loop liquid coolers are quieter, look better and take less space on the motherboard. Oh and the best one which is arctic freezer III is really affordable. I have 420 version and with my PC on the desk I rarely hear the fans, usually only if I focus on it.
Liquid cooling a GPU, your RAM, your fucking _motherboard_ are all stupid ideas. Your components do not run anywhere near hot enough for it to actually matter. The extra 2 frames you get in a game are not worth the effort and the voiding of your warranty.
Liquid cooling a GPU is far more important than the CPU. GPU's create around 300-400w of heat, which is confined in a tiny space and inefficient fan layout which just pushes hot air into the CPU which only produces around 150w of heat, plenty of space about it for large heatsinks which ejects heat out of a nearby fan. Watercooling GPU gives a far larger heatsink for the GPU which the heat is ejected straight out of the case, making the CPU air cooling more efficient. Yet there are NO AIO's for GPU's, only CPU, absolute madness.
I live in a high dust area and I do use dust filters (but you still need airflow) and the closed loop coolers are more viable for me as it is easier to clean dust from radiator fans then how it tends to collect on air coolers. It is more costly but the convenience is worth it to me. i don't eat out so I tend to have the extra cash.
The problem is 99 percent of companies out there saw how much the demand was for their products while everyone was sitting at home or the growth we say starting in late 2021 and they over inflated their business models due to that spike. They got accustomed to their high margins at that time as well. Those days are over and everything is crumbling because of their greed. They NEED to fall back down to reality and learn from their mistake. This industry and the gaming industry are on fire and I say let it burn. It will rise from the ashes renewed and better for it.
Yeah and I couldn't believe that they expected that spike to stay that way forever. Anyone could see it was a temporary demand.
The company I used to work for fell victim to this mentality. They tried to upsize based on their covid profits and then after covid calmed down those profits went back down to how they were pre-covid. The company ended up losing money for 2 years straight and ended up having to close.
I’ve been a PC gamer my whole life and never used water cooling or RGB whatever.
Just simple big a** fans with no lights and the case sitting on the floor under the table.
Never understood why people wasted money on aesthetics that nobody sees.
Careful, you're gonna get called a boomer like the rest of us for having takes this based.
Another issue is that you used to be able to get a midrange GPU, get a $30-40 UNIVERSAL gpu waterblock and use it on 2-3 sometimes 4 GPUs before the mounting holes changed and OC the shit out of it. Now I have to spend another 300+ for a full coverage block that ONLY works for that specific make and model GPU...WHY? that's enough to spend another few bucks and just get a flagship GPU with better performance and VRAM.
It was all the super custom cards! what you are describing is also when those just exploded on the market. I remember back to my 550ti I put an aftermarket air cooler on it, was massive compared to stock. That cooler was listed to work on just about anything on the market at that time (nvidia or amd). Not long after that though all brands made a million skus for each tier of card and basically that whole market segment died.
This comment is 100% on spot
@@mromutt This is why Arctic quit making aftermarket air cooling solutions for GPUs. I mean, they gave the consumer what they wanted - more choices, but it came at a cost. Just goes to show you can't win for losing in this market.
I think the problem is kind of twofold here: RAM needs active cooling on GPUs now (along with many other components benefiting from it) in addition to the GPU die, and nobody makes reference cards anymore, so you end up really wanting a full cover block but they can't be produced at scale because every stupid manufacturer makes a different version of the same product that requires a different cold plate.
@@ganthrithor except once you watercool the GPU, ram cooling is simple, as so much heat is removed from the whole card, simple stick on heatsinks have both my 4070 super and 7900xtx running with lower than stock ram temps vs the oem coolers. its not difficult, don't let BS marketing make you think otherwise.
Long time PC builder here. Over the past 30 some years I would build a new PC for myself at least once every 12-18 months. Was always exciting to see all the packages arrive, take a picture of the packages and then the final PC build. I built my last system in April 2020 (Ryzen 7 3800x, RX5700XT) and then the prices skyrocketed, mainly the GPU prices. I have the money to build a new PC but it is the principle behind it and I refuse to support or spend cash on greedy manufacturers. If anything I realized that I really don't need a new PC as often as I was building them and my current system still works just fine. Maybe in a year or two or if some piece of hardware croaks then I will be forced to replace or build a new one.
I have never built a water cooled system to date and really see no need for one.
👌
Scalpers drove up the prices, then the manufactures saw that people are dumb enough to pay em and decided to cut the scalpers right out of the loop!
Bro changes PC parts like he changes underwear. Built my first in 2015 and the second in 2020. The last part came in just as lockdowns were being established here in the states so I feel like I really lucked out between that and crypto crapping itself.
Then yeah, prices exploded. Hey, remember that giant manhole cover we shot into space with a nuke?
Same had an i5 2500k till a few months ago, worked fine for yearsssss. Cruised past the 6600K then 9900K and when it was finally time 13/14th gen Intel was running too hot for my taste. My friend had tried AMD and was getting decent performance, so I tried it too after some research I found a combo upgrade special for an AMD R7 7700, B650 mobo with 16GB 5600 DDR5 for $500 and I will use this for years. Why not. Stock cooler -30CO +200Mhz 95W limit, 5.3Ghz SCB 5.1ACB with 8C16T! All I need! Avg 45-65W in games and temps do not go over 75C. When the games become more demanding and stress the CPU a bit more resulting in higher temps, I will get some average air cooler to keep the temps from climbing past 75C too often and call it a day. Maybe jam a 9800/9900X3D if it proves to be worth it. Other than that just a GPU upgrade at some point in time and 32GB 6000 RAM to complete the build. Next upgrade in 2030... I was lucky to get such a sweet deal with that special. After the special the price went back up to $700+ and in most games I have 80-90% of the fps of kits twice the price. AM5 upgrade path is nice and all, but overall the prices are too high, especially GPU prices. The price I paid for my 1070 back in 2017 gets me effectively the same performance today if I go and buy a card at the same price point. The inflation has eaten up all the performance gains. I think the 970-1070 jump was the best. If the prices remain as they are I will wait for a second hand 4070 after 5000 launches or try AMD as some friends have AMD GPUs and are happy with it. Benchmarks show good value, so why not. But new 4090 off the shelf? Hell no. Rather waste money on nice coffee.
I can't imagine building for 30 years and never trying water cooling. I think i gave it a shot with system #2. I agree it's completely unecessesary though. At the time I built it, it was during the super hot chip era. Now everything runs prettyy cool in comparison. I thought it was a fun project and looked amazing. It also made me pause before needlessly upgrading because it's time consuming to drain and and take apart the whole water cooling system.
Its not just watercooling. 10 years ago, it was unimaginable to think a CPU would cost HALF of a high end motherboard, but here we are.
1800+ for a top end GPU? 700+ for a top end CPU? HEDT was cheaper comparatively.... I vividly remember CPU blocks being about 70 bucks and GPU blocks would be around double that, now we see GPU blocks that cost a whopping 400$! 400$!!
You can thank youtubers promoting terrible generations of GPUs like the gtx 600, gtx 1000 and rtx 4000 series and other poorly priced/overpriced hardware over the years and the people that bought them.
It makes no sense, there has been no technology break throughs in custom loop parts but they keep increasing prices like it's happening every year and then they wonder why shit doesn't sell.
$400-$500 for a mid range motherboard.
Charging $400 for some metal and plastic. Seriously.
Seriously
Watercooling is still growing for servers and workstations where heat density is high. It just makes less sense for consumer products.
Once I found out that putting a 4090 on water doesn’t really net more frames, it just isn’t worth the cost
You have to use a chiller or LN2 in order to get anything more from a 4090. 😂
Not in and of itself.. but isn't it supposed to give you more thermal headroom for overclocking? And that's how you would see those frame gains from water if I'm right.
@@FellowshipOfTheAviatorZ why would you overclock already power hungry massive gpu? the only correct thing to do and many overclockers say is that people need to finally learn to undervolt
Water cooling has been an aesthetic choice for me for quite some time now lol.
For me the benefit of water-cooling is two fold, noise, i.e. ability to make it silent and sff. I can cram more cooling into a small case with a custom loop than air cooling.@@deprydation
EKWB is not the only company doing dirty deeds behind closed doors. Just wait til the other names drop.
I'm already boycotting Intel, Asus, and EK, but I'm always looking to build the list!
@@jabronilifestyle not NGREEDIA?
Yeah, my older setup from a year or 4-5 ago does not feel like a bad deal now. These 'troubles' now keep me from a new setup, i'm waiting them out!
I have a mental list of PC tech companies who haven't done something bad at some point. Currently it's Noctua, Supermicro, Thermalright, ASMedia, VIA and MosChip... Let's see how long that list holds!
Deepcool alpha cool
The problem of modern economics, is that when something, for any reasons raises its prices, it will never go down again.
brother the price is not rising as much as the Federal Reserve prints money, that's actually what's making the dollar worthless,
In simple terms, the more they print, the more dollars you need to buy anything.
Just look at Germany post WW1, here's a quote from wikipedia:
"A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 or 2×10^11 Marks by late 1923."
@@SilkBoyFighter Problem is not in inflation itself, it's unavoidable fact to allow for markets growth. Money are given to people and businesses, they are creating more and/or new goods, some fail, difference between given and what worked out becomes inflation. In general it allows for faster overall growth than when size of the economy and amount of money are at rough equilibrium.
Current main problem is that most of the profits are eaten up by CEOs and huge investment firms, while income stagnates. This again can be balanced out by taxation which makes it less appealing to go over certain income levels and incentivizes re-investment into workers, and some investment market regulation to incentivize less irresponsible business strategies, but neither is done.
@@L1vv4n reason you never see laws that drastically reduces wealthy ppls income is due to 2 reasons, either it is bribes or fear that said wealthy individuals removes all that money out of the country entirely, just one of the reasons why we will always deal with the greed of humans until we have a singular currency & singular world government, and even then conflicts will arise over the fact that every country loses sovereignty
@@shadowmaster335a single world economy would literally be the worst thing ever, no government should control the planet
@@shadowmaster335 its not just about "income" there's way more under the hood "income" is one thing "credit" is another "gains" are another "capital" is another like its not just income. its the fact that Governments have 10000 different ways to not pay taxes if you're not the average person.
That's a government flaw it exists on all levels and not just the US. And if they were taxed or the government pulled the rug from them. They'll take their stuff and they'll leave. A single world government would just be the world's single most corrupt government. Government is not a "Good guy"
I'm a hotrod guy and a mechanic, I too prefer to support local and the mom+pop guys! I only shop amazon if I can't fing it locally at a decent price
with how expensive everything is nowadays, its no wonder people either cant afford it or cant risk it
Chinese products
Dont forget the overall work with watercooling. Its cheaper an easier to get a AIO or completely stay with air cooling.
Jay, two things have kept me from water-cooling.
Replacing a dead fan takes less time than replacing a dead pump.
Vacuuming heatsink fins is less work than draining a loop, cleaning a bunch of parts, and refilling the loop.
never had a dead pump, also its a case of prioritys. is it just cooling, some want aesthetics, some like myself want slience in a hot humid environment and didnt want a turbine next to me thats very audible with headphones on.
6:45 Tell us Steve is prepared to end someone without telling use Steve is about to end someone.
Several someones from the sound of it.
Thanks, Steve
Thanks Jay. I've been a fan for a while, and you've always been a great source of inspiration and I appreciate your content. You were a huge reason I got into watercooling to begin with, and I couldn't be more grateful for your advice and experience.
I won't ever stop air cooling until CPU heat levels leave me no choice. In 25 years, Noctua coolers have never let me down.
25 years even thought Noctua have only been in the domestic market since 2005...
@@AceGamingCentral He's from the future)
Love Noctua stuff, much prefer it now to AIO's:)
I use them in all my builds, and they’ve never let me down.
@AceGamingCentral I have been building PCs as well since the late 90's, Noctua didn't pop on the scene until sometime in the mid 00's. They are excellent coolers though.
Watercooling has been dead for years. When is the last time you heard a watercooler review that wasn’t qualified by saying something like, “you could get the same performance from air cooling but.. this looks cool!”
well considering that "water cooling" is actually water+fans cooling.. lol
I've been saying that all along.
@@Lurch-Bot so say we all
@@yvels3685the only positive I see from it is breaking away from component temperature and just looking at liquid temperature. Just have all fans set to liquid temperature, it stops you having fans that are ramping up and down depending if something is more intensive or not.
Yeah overall the temperatures may not be lower but it’s potentially to running your fans at 30% all the time. Again very expensive for the sense of that. Equally I find it more of a hobby just a damn expensive one.
18:18 i am poor jay, i am poor...
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
Way back when I built my first tower, a friend tried to convince me to custom water cool.
I didn’t want the cost but went with a Corsair H80 AIO.
He had to look for leaks, and swap out his water a few times for various reasons - taking his system offline until he had time to work on it.
I used mine every day, and despite the bad rap earlier AIOs got on reliability, it lasted about 8 years (I sold the system to a friend with it working, and a while later the pump finally quit). It never leaked.
Upgraded my brother’s system with an H80i around that time, it had an “early” death which was still ~5 years.
For the cost vs. custom loop, I could replace the AIO multiple times if I had to.
My current system, my home server use H150i Pro’s, my brother’s is a H100i, and I had done a H60 on my dad’s PC to keep the noise down. Three of those are 9th gen Intel, built when that was new - save my brother’s which is 13th gen.
It's absolutely insane to think about how the bigwigs of these companies have been making a huge profit over their payout to employees and they don't want to take a pay cut and they'd rather watch their companies sink and will jump ship.
It's not their company. Executive teams are rarely there for the long haul, the majority of their salary is tied to stock performance. They don't care about the long term and they never will.
Not likely even mathematically possible for the bigwigs to float the company and save it by taking pay cuts.
People love bringing up CEO pay discrepancy in large companies as though it's the reason employee pay/prices aren't at the levels they wish it was.
Every day, I realize I'm old... and it's depressing. My 1st water cooled system was a home built rig 25yrs ago, with copper plumbing pipe, an aquarium pump, an oil cooler radiator I picked up at a Murrays auto parts store. I attached to a 1lb solid block of copper I bought online, which I drilled water channels into with my buddy's standing drill press. I gerry rigged 3 used AT ( yes not ATX ) in series on the 5 volt channel to come up with monster 40AMP 15volt power supplier that I hooked up to a 250 watt Peltier cooler mounted on a copper heat spreader directly on the CPU. At boot, I was recording -10C and had to worry about water condensation on my motherboard circuitry. It was the most fun I've ever had with a PC...
Today, I just spend a few extra dollars to get 16 core CPU. Currently a 5950X and slap a big air cooler on it. I can't find anything except artificial stress tests that push more than 25-50% CPU utilization. It's quiet, reliable... Computer has been running for 2 straight years never turned off except for rarest occasion. I can't imagine why anyone would put themselves thru the risk of pump failure, except for cosmetics... Have to admit they look cool, but there is absolutely no practical need for them
why 3 like that? I got 250w out of 12v lines of some AT psu's tweaked up a bit from the adjustment pot. the problems started being at the molex connectors (they weren't rated to go that high on the sticker but they did) . yeah it was fun but eh didn't get much more out of the computer with it haha should've just spent the money and effort on ram.
@@lasskinn474 the Peltier was rated at 18V, if I remember correctly and it was the closest way to push enough amps without overvolting it. Plus man did that monster power supply look cool, riveted together. spanned the length of the case front to back. And yes, it was all acrylic, long before you could go out and buy this stuff at Microcenter. I was the coolest nerd of all my friends in my own mind.
@@brutus6574 yeah the tinkering used to be cool and fun for it's own sake too, seeing what you could do what you could have.
my first block was a piece of aluminum with 3 holes drilled to it, bought from some dude on a forum in 2000 for 5 bucks or so. i ran a pump from the balcony from a large container passively cooling. some people used lada heater cores.
now it's just plunk a lot of money down.. i moved to tinkering with 3d printers a decade ago for the itch.
With a modern CPU, if the pump fails, the CPU will quickly shut down due to overtemp. Very unlikely to cause catastrophic failure. Still, I never have liquid cooled a PC and never will.
As for your little setup, you would have been better served by simply attaching the Peltier cooler to your block of copper. That's if your story is even true. I have a hard time believing it because I was around in the '90s and the first online reference to using a Peltier cooler on a PC I ever saw was probably in 2004. Even then, they were prohibitively expensive. I only just read about the first mass production hybrid air/Peltier CPU cooler to hit the market this week. Because of cost reasons, the only way to launch an affordable Peltier CPU cooler in 2024 is to make it only big enough to handle light to moderate loads and use a fan and finstack to take care of the rest of the heat under heavy load.
Also, I can only imagine how much power you'd burn to run a 25 year old Peltier cooler to cool a CPU and you don't mention doubling your power bill which is totally sus.
@@Lurch-Bot OMG you got me... it was 2000, not 1999. The Peltier cost me something like $80 at the time. I cracked the original Socket A Thunderbird with my jerry-rigged socket attachment and ended buying a 700mhz Duron chip that clocked up to just under 1.1 ghz. And yes, power consumption was 400 watts+ which is why I used it for a gaming machine a few times before disassembling it. Eventually I replaced it with an MSI K7D Dual Socket motherboard with a couple of Athlon XP 2000's, with the same water cooling system, 2 purchased water blocks and no peltier and continued to be the biggest nerd on the block. You read history. I lived it.
As the owner of a small business in PA that sells pit bike parts online, from our physical warehouse, with dudes that walk around all day filling boxes, I really like how you supported Performance-pcs. You rock.
Same as GPU's. The prices have to come down. Water cooling kit like GPU's are over priced and simply not worth it.
This 100%, plus the hassle of it all, which is why I've seen a lot of people I know say screw it, and are just buying a laptop that fits their needs/budgets, and/or Steam Deck/Nintendo Switch for gaming.
GPUs are really the pain point for me. Everything else has reasonable mid range, not cheap, but reasonable. I look prices at something two levels down from the top and go yeah, I don't feel disgusted.
difference is.. people are actually buying overpriced GPU.
@@VatiWah Unless someone is making money with that GPU, then that's their own dumb fault, as you can always use a lower spec, or older GPU to a certain point to game on a desktop if you adjust your setting, or even a good AMD APU. I also find it sad so many people have FOMO of nothing having the latest, and greatest, but if this economy keeps getting worse, I think a lot of people are going to have a real wake up call, as to buying only what it takes to survive, vs. a want like a high end GPU for gaming, when what they already might have does what they need it to do.
@@VatiWah Not me and those I speak to. I still use a bog standard RTX 3080 and many people I know have not upgraded from their RTX 2080Ti's even GTX 1060's! They all like me think about the lower end RTX 4000 cards but simply cannot be bothered.
Beyond a AIO I'd never go near water cooling
I've even ditched the AIO with the Noctua D15 Gen. 2. What's the point with an AIO that will randomly fail in 5-7 years when that metal heat sink will never, ever fail.
Non AIO Water cooling adds far too much extra cost to a new build. I’d rather spend that money on performance parts, and put up with fan noise.
You especially shouldn't buy those.
Same here.
@@VarriskKhanaar fair point
As others have already noted, high performance air coolers have become very affordable. This has necessarily meant that watercooling is going back to being niche. It was mainstream for a few years, but that era may be ending.
Totally. I found a Noctua NH15 refurb from them directly for 70 eur. Not going to throw hundreds of eur on a custom loop again.
I've used air coolers since I started building my own PCs back in the 90s. While I've had several moments when I've thought "maybe this time, I'll try water cooling," I've just never done it. But, now, 30 years later, I'm pretty happy with the air cooling solutions we've been offered and I STILL can't rationalize a watercooling system.
it is way to expensive to do any water cooling at all. i would rather build a custom case with aesthetics from 3d printing than build water cooling which is unfortunate , but the off the wall pricing on fittings is outrageous and the reservoirs and pumps. its funny how the rads are pretty much the cheapest to buy let alone the tubbing.
I wanted to get into water cooling, but it's so dang expensive just to step into. Once you're in, it's not too much, but buying a new cooler for every graphics card is ridiculous to me. And blocks for the CPU depending on the cooler
No mercy they got what was coming to them for being so greedy.
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
This is the case with every industry I can think of, Im a mechanic and the cost of parts alone has increased at least 30%, availability is down, business is down, shipping has slowed and many companies are discontinuing common fleet parts because of operating costs. Throw in the green new deal looming and its a recipe for disaster. People are broke and its showing.
Politics is a massive part of this. If that green new deal actually goes through, good luck affording food by the time 2030 comes around! 'Course, certain people actually like the idea of bread lines, and have clearly stated as such in their interviews. Open your eyes people, the ones in charge for the last ~3.5 years and their supporters have caused this mess in the US.
Lol what looming threat? The Green New Deal has incredibly little support from Democrats and virtually none from Republicans. You can't blame a hypothetical policy for inflation when CEOs are actively bragging to shareholders about skyrocketing profits. Not to mention the Green New Deal has plans for how to replace every sector of manufacturing it's looking to cut out. It would actively give the US economy and US manufacturing a kick in the ass.
And Elon/Tesla making deals behind the scenes with Trump to undercut the auto industry had NOTHING to do with that.
Watercooling always seemed like adding extra potential points of failure at a higher price, than air-cooling where only the fans can fail and is cheaper.
Also, with ThermalRight making 360mm AIO's for 50-60$... going custom just doesn't seem justified at all anymore.
My gigabyte eagle 3070ti never gets above 65C with it's beefy, 3fan air cooler, and it's pretty much whisper quiet so no reason to water cool that.
Thermalright Peerless Assassin ended the point of watercooling
I got the Thermalright Frozen Infinity 240. i tried calling it a day with the Phantom Spirit, but the AIO still gave me better temps.
I don't usually leave comments on videos, but not only have I followed you for a long time, but I share your passion for liquid refrigeration. I built my first powerful PC when I lived in Venezuela in 2001, and I bought my entire system through FrozenCPU and I didn't mind paying import tariffs to my country because I could, but as you say, the economy has changed and the priorities have changed too. This is the first time I've heard a RUclipsr like you make a video reflecting on the industry and who seeks to support family businesses, because you know they are in danger of becoming extinct. BRAVO Jayz. You may not read this message but I feel like I needed to say it, just like you needed to make this video.
I know u as the "Wallmart of the tech industry" guy :D
(not my words, i called himself like that! :D ) and nothing wrong with a nice visit into ur local wallmart. :)
1:15 and 17:41 - atleast hes one of the few who is still down to earth, knows the struggles of the "normal" person and whos aware that life is NOT on easy mode right now for most people.
despite him being one of the biggest tech youtubers in the world. I really appreciate that and respect u a lot Jay. Also sharing private information about ur own health is something that many would never do.
This makes u one of the most pleasing channels to watch. 👍 👍
I'm just afraid the water would spill, destroying all my components
Thats pretty much not a thing unless you drop your pc or something its very rare to have a higher quality aio go bad i wouldnt trust a 50$ aio but a 100$ i would
Its deionized water my guy. It doesnt carry an electrical current. I've tested loops that have leaked all over and have been absolutely fine afterwards. Its not as big of an issue as you might think.
@@BigIanMMA really i didnt know that makes sense more peace of mind
@@BigIanMMA Whut?? I didn't know that. This definitely changes my perspective on it 😮
Got an aio for the first time in 2020. No issues
The irony is that water cooling seems to go in cycles. My Dad did his apprenticeship at Swindon Railway Works, where the computer that just did payroll for the Great Western Railway was in the basement and heated the whole building as it was watercooled. Then mainframe computers got more efficient and became air-cooled. So what was interesting was that we hit a period of time when there was a combination of factors that led to highly expensive CPUs and graphics cards that were still inefficient that they produced a lot of heat, and it was cheaper to increase the performance by cooling more effectively than buying a more expensive CPU. What's happened is that the efficiency of CPUs and GPUs has increased and the price has dropped such that water cooling is no longer a cost-effective way of maximising bang per buck.
As they shrink the process size, CPUs become less efficient, not more efficient. A 486 was maybe 10-15% efficient. A modern CPU is 1% efficient, meaning 99% of the electrical power you put in gets turned to waste heat. As for performance per watt, you can't make that comparison on a like for like basis due to Moores law being an exponential function. We all have computers in our pockets that would put a '90s supercomputer to shame. But it is an unfair comparison because they are barely even the same technology. You can only do that comparison between hardware of the same generation. Back in the '90s, I had a gaming PC that would blow a mainframe from the '70s right out of the water. In the late '90s, I had a 386 based handheld PC (no, the handheld gaming PC is not a new concept, lol), something that would have literally been impossible a decade prior.
My current system is the first one I've built with water cooling, and I opted for an AIO setup-I absolutely love it. It was easy to install and looks significantly better than my old bulky air-cooled radiator setup. Plus, it serves as the air intake for the entire system, making everything super efficient, and my thermals have never been better. I understand the enthusiasm of those who prefer custom-builds, and I believe it's only a matter of time before a company takes advantage of the growing space in the industry for more affordable systems. Hang in there, enthusiasts!
The best part of this is that when a vacuum is created, and a need is wanted, someone will be willing to step in. I made a full Bykski loop in 2022, buying direct from the manufacturer via their Ali storefront. It was less than $400 all in for cpu block, gpu block, pump/res combo, 2 360mm rads, fittings, tubing, AND fans to keep it all cool. Granted, it would be more than that now, but not extremely so.
$400 can make a big difference in a build though... For example, you can make a bulid list for a decent AM5/7000 series pc for around 900 dollars, and that 400 is enough to go up to the next cpu and gpu, while doubling your RAM and storage...
Or you buy a thermalright phantom spirit for $40 and call it a day. Custom loops don't make sense except for those who already have absolute top end hardware and just want that extra 1% performance (and aesthetics)
@unholysaint1987 I'm already at a 7800x3d and 32GB of decent 6000MHz, so im good there. I did it more for aesthetics and noise reduction than anything. I can straight-up turn off my fans when I'm not gaming
wah? 400 is still heck of a lot of money for a cooling solution.
Believe me that's because the Chinese brands takes over in this market .
like Barrow , Bikski & IceManCooler .
Less reliable, high maintenance, horrendously expensive, and outright dangerous to your PC. Open loop is only makes any sense at all if the build itself is your real joy, there aren't many of us and money shortages hammer those niche markets.
Right. I'll bet if a survey was taken, maybe 4 % of builders would be shown to use a custom loop.
Problem is most people watercooling have no clue how to make it reliable. Even the people in yt renown for their watercooling builds sometimes do really stupid things ;)
Some comments are outright dangerous. As reliable as air, really low maintenance. Zero danger.
@@peterpain6625 Because it isn't reliable? Air cooling is. You need a standard to define what is reliable in anything, so even if you have the best watercooler the things Spastic say are facts. Don't be a moron Peter.
Slightly less relable maybe, expensive yep, very small chance for danger to my PC. I think you're exaggarating a lot.
I'm a casual PC gamer and it was my dream to build my own PC. A friend of mine helped me picked out parts and I wanted to go all in but not too far where my budget would skyrocket. He told me water cooling wasn't even needed and said I'm wasting too much money on some fancy water tubes. Glad I listened.
RIP watercooling, there's really no benefit for the insane cost of it. I hate that because I love how it looks.
Then go buy a computer from best buy lol.
Thats how it is with most enthusiast stuff.
The market is also way too small especially these days with AIOs
@@darrelldarrell1447 Dropped $2k on my custom rig I put together myself, watercooling still wasn't something I could justify.
@@darrelldarrell1447 you know you can build a computer without watercooling right? i have an all air system that i built. i used to have an aio and i decided to get an air cooler and guess what, my temps are the same.
VOTE TRUMP WE NEVER HAD A DEPRESSION WITH HIM. BIDEN IS DESTROYING THE ECONOMY, COMMUNIST KAMALA WILL DESTROY THE ECONOMY EVEN MORE
GOVERNMENT PRICE GAUGING WILL DESTROY BUSINESSES
Me personally, I don’t want to entertain the idea of doing a water cooled system as I don’t want to deal with the headache of buying expensive components and do constant maintenance if something goes wrong for something that I would not see 80% of the time.
it's like buying a harley. sure, it looks great, but once you own it, you realize it's a 100 bucks here, 100 bucks there, 100 bucks everywhere.
Eh. There are plenty of ways to do it decently on a budget and make it low maintenance. But if you don't want it for the fun or bling of it, don't need it for the performance - then it's not for you (at least at this point) and that is perfectly fine and sensible.
You do maintenance only if pour some colors on water, my computer has maybe 5/6 years now and i never had to touch it again, just getting out the dust of fans and radiators with an aircompressor every year because even when it stuck it performs really well, but get louder of what silence is.
@@Yo-ju1sr Good quality tubes and good quality coolant additive or premix will do fine. Colors aren't really an issue - as long as it's only colorant to a clear coolant. The issues start with fluids that have clouding or effect particles in them, and cheaper tubing that release plasticizer. If you clean out rads snd blocks well before assembly, use good tubing and use appropriate anti-growth / anti-galvanic-corrosion coolant - then there's not really much to maintain. Some tubes might color stain slightly over years, but if you don't plan to change the color (or don't use/add any) that's not really an issue.
Also if you stick with soft tubing, building and any maintenance you want to do is a whole lot easier. Just give yourself lengths with enough slack to move things around without needing to disconnect them. Plus compression fittings for soft tubing are incredibly secure, and have fewer elements prone to induce leaks.
Built my system 4 yrs ago. Tore it down last week. Fully drained, cleaned, rebuilt and refilled. A very small amount of oxidization on the CPU and GPU blocks which somebody who doesn’t know wouldn’t see.
In those 4 years, 0 leaks, 0 issues.
Buy quality, build it properly and don’t use colored coolant :)
I struggle to believe that 'inflation' is the reason for all these price hikes on the heels of companies hitting record level profits. If your profits are statistically higher than they've ever been, that's not inflation, its greed (not even just tech, grocery stores and housing too).
If they wanted to cash in on the increased spending from the consumers, they could have easily done special editions or limited runs that are more expensive than the average card, but offers a compelling reason to pick one up. The average card price stays the same so they maintain their expectations with the consumer, while offering something the whales can sink their teeth into.
With regards to watercooling, its a struggle when doing it only really makes sense on top spec parts. At least here in Canada, that means $800 CPU, $2400 GPU, $400+ Motherboard, etc. Where before you have even looked at case, ram, storage, PSU, fans, and especially watercooling, you're talking 2-4 months of rent. Then you effectively add on another 1-2 months of rent to watercool it or buy a $100+ Noctua/BeQuiet double stack cooler and call it a day. The companies know that if you're considering watercooling seriously, you're already a pre-qualified customer that's spent $4000+ on your build (and they're charging what they've seen people pay).
There is also something else I don't understand, and want you or someone else to explain to me. It was mentioned in the video about the major company also losing contract with shipping, and can't ship products to sellers and buyers.
But to me that makes no sense. Joblessness around the planet is the highest it's ever been in history. People are literally BEGGING for jobs and money.... How the heck are there not millions of truckers and suppliers able to take the contract?
To me, it sounds less like a lack of jobs or drivers to supply the supply train... But more like there is a Monopoly on supply lines for all these cities, countries, and companies, and someone higher up is just denying people supplies... For some unknown reason. Cause there are truckers wanting to supply, there are stories wanting those supplies, and there are companies making those supplies. all the stuff is there... So WHAT is stopping the supplies from going from the companies, to the truckers/shippers? Can companies not just hire their own people to ship their stuff? Are companies in control of Truckers and artifically shorting supplies to cause a crisis on purpose by out right denying companies the right to use their shipping services? Are stores the issue, not stocking up and going out of business, and thus the companies have no buyers/sellers to supply to?
It can't be a job shortage cause people are begging for jobs and would 100% fill all shipping jobs instantly for the money to buy food for themselves and family. So what the heck?
I can answer your question. It is unusually simple at its core. The richest people in the world are all collaborating to save money. Your are absolutely correct onthrtr being a monoply on supply lines. It's called labor inequality. According a report I recentlg read, 80% of all goods is produced by the southern half of the world, but they only make around 27-37 percent of the revenue it generates. Yet we are expected to pay high prices for what was dirt cheap labor. The only term I can ascribe to the whole thing is financial monarchy. The rich are no longer partaking in captilism. It has become a globalized shadow economy. The value of labor in the south is peanuts but we have to pay several times more money for the same goods compared to the south. The longer the south is poor, the longer we will face artifically inflated prices due to their insistent cost cutting. They are expected to do anything and everything to make as much money as quickly as possible for investors and shareholders. Shareholders are the root of all these problems. They keep accruing more and more money with absolutely no regard to the well being of their consumers. It has gotten to the point that customer support has become but a joke. Everything is being built in more and more flawed ways to extract as much cash out of the people who buy it. It is increasingly becoming a quantity over quality market.
@@josephlh1690 That doesn't explain anything. Why can't Company A, ship resources with Trucker A, to Shop A? Where in this line is the chain broken and impossible. If there is a Monopoly controlling products, where in the chain is it broken?
Cause if it's items out of the country cost little but we the people are not buying them cause they are expensive, the the Shop A would be the braking point. No one buying the product, they not making money, they have no reason to request more supplies, truckers get less supply jobs, company isn't selling product and makes no money.
But that's a VERY EASY fix... Put a VERY HIGH TAX on Importing goods, like Trump did in his first term, forcing american companies to save money by moving back into america, to negate the import tax effecting them, and giving jobs to american, at actual affordable prices, that they can buy from working the jobs making the item. Cause as seen with Mc Donalds. You try and set the prices too high, and you lose money and lose shareholder's trust in you and get a lawsuit in the works.
We've already seen most Woke companies failing and dying. Disney is literally killing themselves and pissing their shareholders off enough that there are rumors they going to sue them soon for failing their duty to make money and not lose money with their choices.
I think you're confusing gross profits with net profits. EKWB is failing because they put too much money into stock they're never going to sell. It is a niche market. Even more so in 2024 because it offers little to no performance benefit these days. Even 20 years ago, it wasn't really necessary. I OC'd my first gen P4 1.6 to over 2.5GHz with the stock cooler and it was fine to let that 180nm die run at 95C all day long, for years. Not so much with intel's current lineup.
@@Jirodyne Putting taxes on imports would push them to cut jobs. They have too many incentives to leave Americans to dry. It would be better to push totsl sanctions on countries that offer tax havens to these businesses. The sanctions should be removed so long as the countries agree to tax these businesses. It would force the companies to reconsider their money ssving habits.
As to why company A can't ship resources to Trucker A than to Shop A, there is nothing technically stopping them from being able to do so. They just don't have enough motivation to do it. Half of the jobs that Americans have are practically funded by shareholders. This puts big companies in a bind. They risk losing considerable financial capital if they hire more supply chain workers. They have to please their shareholders. Failure to do so inevitably will lead to job cuts to compensate for losses. It is a f***ed up state of affairs. Consumers don't have any major alternatives here. The products available to us are limited by design. These companies could afford to lower prices for us, were it not for their investors holding them hostage.
Import taxes would not work. Not anymore. American labor has become too costly. We are for all intents and purposes, overpaid at the global level. Our goal needs to be ensuring that the lowest paid workers in the world get paid more money then they do now. If you make it more expensive to have work done outside of our country, it would pressure the businesses and their share holders to evaluate reducing prices here and raising them elsewhere or hiring more American workers.
An import tax would lead to inflation. If it weren't for the fact that our export numbers were so low, then it would work better. That is not the case now. We lack a lot of crucial supplies locally, making it perilous to simply raise the cost of key sectors. We are too expendable. There just aren't many options to handle the influence they wield. We have no leverage here. Without leverage, we have everything to lose. They will find ways to maintain consumer spending without doing what is right.
Another solution would be to make laws that would lock investors into their contributions. Make it difficult for them to pull money out once they put it in. If they aren't able to easily pull funds, they would have to be more considerate with the support they provide. In this scenario, it would provide the big businesses with better leverage over them, potentially allowing for more job growth without posing as much of a risk were they to lower prices for us.
Game companies carry most of the blame: What no one has expressed anywhere is how everyone is completely happy if the gaming industry had not been taken over by corporate behemoths chasing profit margins while reducing the flow of new games to a trickle... None of the games that are coming out are pushing the boundaries. It does not increase profits to massively improve visuals over last gen... If a person still had a reason to push hardware to its limits they would sell enough of this stuff to make money without resorting to "whale milking"
Keep in mind that game visuals have reached a point where there really isn't much further they can go toward more photo-realism. You could increase the resolution (like from 4K to 8K), but people can't even see a detail difference.
And then we still have people playing Minecraft, a game where they didn't even care about high-def graphics or photo-realism...
This is also true. It seems games releasing today look only as good, or maybe 5% better than 5 years ago. But take 50% more computing power to run well. New components are being used to avoid optimization rather than push computational boundaries.
@@dannyb9223 Could still put the extra computing power towards stuff like more advanced physical or AI modeling.
Companies selling products. At insane mark up's. Is the problem. They routinely charge 3-4-500% markup. It is out of hand. Homes are priced out of buyers because they charge a million on three hundred thousand home. Food is the same. A 16oz can of red bull. Can run you five bucks. Only costs less than a dollar to bring to market. The problem isn't inflation. It is usurery and greed.
I do liquid cooling not because of visuals or aesthetics but to run a completely silent pc that doesn't sound like a jet taking off when temps get high.
Yep, I am the same as you. I water-cool for the "quiet" not for overclocking or performance.
@@CD-vb9fi I am also fan of quiet PC's and thats where water cooling is complete no-go for me. I got semi passive PC, that is something you can not do even with custo loop. The pump is alway on sadly. Yes udner load it is quieter, but at light load there is no replacement for 0 moving parts.
@@TheRelativy passive cooling requires sacrificing performance BIG TIME watercooling gets more or equal performance and is quieter
And here my quiet air cooled pc is staying cool and quiet without the worry of water leaks and pumps burning out:)
@@B1u35ky No it is not. Right now you can get semi passive, that is really the best of both worlds. Full performace when neaded, and complete silence when you not under full load. Also right now in cooling capacity we are not limited by coolers, but actually by silicon heat transfer capability.
For me it's maintenance. I love tinkering and building. But I know once it's running I'd neglect it and cause way too much work for myself.
I went back to air cooling and none of my friends stopped talking to me.
People forget that when you play games online, nobody can see your PC lol
Quite true...and the same goes for RGB.
@@insignia406 The same here. Being a senior citizen and a builder for 20 years, I really never became fascinated with flashing colored lights.
I got black box. It does not have glass panel. I like it that way... Maybe next I go for white box, still no glass... I don't need any extra lights in my room. I got much more powerful lights for that.
yeah but i can see my pc and i want it to be a majestic discoball of speeed so i will abuse the RGB all i want.
Open loop pricing isnt appealing to me, but the real reason I don't do it is because I'm too lazy to maintain it. I would like to believe that most people, even people who have the means to go all out open loop, are the same.
It doesn’t take much to maintain if you build the right loop
It's both equally for me. Why would I spend crazy money on the loop itself just the loop and then crazy amount of work for maintenance regularly when with air cooling I can take my pc sorta apart once every 6 months and turn my air compressor on and be done cleaning it in 20 mins.
if you properly clean the parts before installing (lemon acid and distilled water rinse) and use distilled water + aquacomputer dp ultra clear + EPDM tubing with high quality no aluminium parts, the loop is basically service free. you can run it for years without fallout, fogging or other buildup.
It's barely any effort to maintain
@@No-One.321 I built my last a year ago and haven’t had to do any maintenance yet and probably won’t for a year or two, other than dust
love water-cooling,ultra-quiet, and the satisfaction and challenge of making something unique.
Finally, a positive comment! 👍
One of the several reasons why I did a custom loop for my first ever pc build!
1: cost
2: Cost
3: COST
If I have to drop like $3,000 on a computer, I’m not in a good mood to drop another $800 to make it pretty. Especially since OC barely exists anymore and air coolers are so good. Water cool is completely aesthetics now. I’d spend $200 on a loop, not $200 on the block alone!
As an enthusiast of value water cooling (as in cheaper Chinese brands like Bykski) I've often heard people say "How can you buy that? It's made by people who are being paid peanuts." It turns out that EK aren't paying some of their staff at all so that argument went down like a lead balloon. I've always been amazed at how popular EK has been...I genuinely can't believe people will pay that much for cooling when there are products out there (especially in the last 18 months) that cost a quarter of the amount, offer the same performance, and look great.
A lot of that is centralization of demand...more people than ever are into computers (especially with ease of access going WAAAY up) and consoles having fewer and fewer single player experiences pushing more and more people to PC. Its been bloating prices for awhile.
I've wanted to dip in this new affordable watercooling stuff. I was thinking about building a CPU only loop with a Bykski block and a 360mm Alphacool rad. I've had a hard time deciding on a pump, I'd still like a reliable and fairly quiet pump but I'm not sure if getting something like a D5 is worth the cost or not. Have any recommendations?
@@dot_boi I have had 2 non-D5 pumps die on me in the last few years, so I bit the bullet and got a D5 and yes, it is absolutely worth it. I would say it is the most important part of the loop to spend a bit more on. It has proved reliable so far, but it also has a much higher flow rate and is silent. I got the Bykski CP-NWD5-X-CT60-V3.
@@dot_boi Don't sleep on Koolance. They make some good kit.
@@JordanNeenan I'll second Bykski. I went with one of their GPU blocks. I would have gone with a CPU block, but they didn't have an all black one in stock. So I did Heatkiller instead. As long as AM6 doesn't screw up mounting options too much, I'll be set for years to come. My fittings are all Koolance, Barrow (Dasmode rebrands) and Richer for some of the male-male adapters. But when I upgrade my GPU, it'll probably be another Bykski.