Redinton

Hello everyone,, Well, it all depends on the cooler's performance and RPM of the fan(s). If you want to maintain the same level of noise, then you'll most likely see very little (if at all) differences in performance. In the end, in both cases you're blowing thru a radiator, with a fan, and the medium in both cases is liquid - yes, heatpipes used in typical air coolers also contain a liquid (usually glycol). Water is no magic stuff - it's temp is also affected by ambient. If you run 95% of AIOs with low RPM fans, you'll get worse performance than in good air tower coolers. Why? Cause the rads in AIOs have very tightly poacked fins and they underperform with low airflow. AIOs good performance under load is at the cost of noise, cause you simply have to push a lot of air through their rads. So if you don't care about noise, you could crank up the fan(s) in your Noctua, Mugen or Dark Rock or whatever big tower you have and achieve the same performance as with AIOs, at the same noise level unfrotunately.