I don’t think I will ever be used to the idea of water being inside
my computer case ,… fans forever , change my mind.
Aios are individually tested to make sure that thay are completely sealed, and some big companies that make aios will actually replace all of the components that got damaged. But custom loops, now that’s were it gets a little interesting, do NOT ever do a custom water loops unless you are greatly experienced in building pcs. So aios are ok, custom loops, try to stay away from them. Hopefully that helps 
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AIO’s use a mixture of Distilled Water and Glycol coolants.
Distilled water is not conductive, as it does not contain sodium or magnesium molecules to initiate a spark.
Glycol is also, not conductive, as it does not have any free ions.
Actually, both are labeled as insulators.
Why this is? I dont know. when i researched it awhile back, I never looked too deep into the science. It actually came up randomly as information as I was looking into why type of insulators reactors were using.
3 am bored and surfacing the web behavior.
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Using inferior equipment is a choice.
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Hello tiger453 and welcome to the Newegg Gamer Community!
Here at ArsenalPC, we build and sell custom gaming PCs through Newegg and Amazon. Over the last 5 years since our current service and production manager took over the custom PC portion of our business, we have sold thousands of custom-built PCs using all-in-one liquid cooling solutions, and have zero reported leaks.
While some individuals might be able to report on their own personal experiences or give opinions, we have a bit broader picture and a fairly wide sample size to be able to say with confidence that you’re unlikely to ever have an issue with an AIO. Particularly when a competent, sealed solution from a company like Thermalright only costs a little more than a high-end tower cooler, the choice is easy.
The Peerless Assassin is unmatched in air cooling, but even that is easily bested by a 240mm Thermalright AIO. And, just to reiterate, in the thousands of watercooled PCs we’ve sold, we have zero reports of leaks. Not one or two, zero.
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Quick question for your expertise.
I have always went with the basis that if its 95w and above, a 360mm is needed on CPUs. Under, 240mm is fine.
Is there any advice to choosing the right size other then what fits in a case?
Do metals play a factor? has there been any notable issues with LCD screens on AIOs?
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I don’t quite like the “screen on an aio” so I probably won’t get one unless I am using it to display cpu and gpu temps, so I can’t say anything about that. I don’t think that the metal that is used for the radiator matters, but for the cpu side it does (I don’t know what to recommend though). I think that the only time you (if you are going with an aio) need a 360mm is if you have a x3d chip or a intel cpu that’s like the 14900k. I have a Ryzen 7 5700 and I’m cooling it with a 120mm aio (from thermalright) and I think that it’s cooling it pretty well, although the 5700 is a cpu with a tdp of 65w. (Which for a desktop cpu I think that just about the lowest it can get)
Way off.
A single 120mm radiator with standard thickness (25-30mm) is able to dissipate approximately 150W of heat. Granted, that would fully saturate the capabilities of that 120mm radiator. Additional radiator space adds a linear amount of cooling capability, and 360mm is roughly equivalent to 280mm (within a 2-3 degree margin Celsius.)
So, the highest-TDP product currently on the market for traditional consumer desktops (Non Threadripper) is almost an exact tie between the Core i9 14900K (253W) and Core Ultra 9 285K (250W). AMD isn’t even worth mentioning here, due to their highly efficient design the max boost TDP on a 9950X is only 230W.
Both can be cooled by a 240mm AIO with about 50W of headroom, as long as you’re sticking to Intel’s limits. If you want to enable longer or higher turbo boost behavior, then you’d want more (360mm / 280mm).
Another point is noise levels, and a 280mm cooler will be quieter than 360mm because two 140mm fans are quieter than three 120mm - although the noise level heavily depends on how much air is already moving through the PC case, and if there’s already enough airflow going into the radiator due to proper pressure leveling between intake and exhaust fans, then the radiator fans don’t have to work as hard.
We use 240mm AIO coolers in most of our builds, and 360mm AIO coolers in some of the oversized cases such as the Asus ROG Strix Helios and Asus ROG Strix Hyperion. We also use 360mm coolers in the Asus Prime AP202 as shown here.
Long story short, there isn’t a CPU on the market today outside Threadripper that can’t be properly cooled by a 240mm AIO. We stick to specs, not feelings. Some people FEEL that their CPU will run faster if it has a larger amount of thermal headroom, and that’s simply not true. If your CPU needs 253W of cooling to maintain max boost, and you throw 300W of cooling power at it… feelings are out of the equation.