[formerly_proven]

They do OK in noise-normalized tests, which are good for comparing and still relatively easy to perform. They're inadequate for quiet operation though. In fact the huge coolers I am using currently are barely adequate for their respective components - they require clearly audible fan speeds to avoid unhealthily high temperatures under sustained load. Certainly not extremely quiet; I'm not really happy with it, and I have the best air coolers with some of the best fans and the best thermal compound on the market and I have very carefully tuned fan profiles. Water cooling would offer slightly better cooling performance, but it has other issues - mainly pump and motor noise - plus it's rather expensive (more than 10x the cost of air cooling).

You can of course make an extremely quiet SFF build, just not with an upper-midrange CPU and a highend GPU. With the same components you can make a decently quiet mid-tower desktop, like I have.

("Extremely quiet", "virtually noiseless" and so on are pet-peeve phrases of mine - I'm always assuming that marketing people are half-deaf because they keep referring to stuff emitting 20 dBa or more like this.)

[PragmaticPulp]

If your goal is as close to noiseless as possible, a big case with a lot of sound dampening material is the way to go.

However, the modern SFF experience is much better than you give it credit for. An AMD 5950X with a 240mm AIO in a mini-ITX case is easy these days and it keeps the CPU temperature in a reasonable range.

But if your goal is a no-compromise quietest build possible, obviously you don't want to get a small case.

> plus it's rather expensive (more than 10x the cost of air cooling).

I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers, but modern AIO water cooling isn't that expensive.

You can get a good 240mm AIO cooler for about 1.5X the price of a good air cooler: https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Radiator-Software-Control-Liq...

[formerly_proven]

> I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers, but modern AIO water cooling isn't that expensive.

I could have been more clear here, I meant a custom-loop, not an AIO since they're a sidegrade to a top-end air-cooler at best.

> However, the modern SFF experience is much better than you give it credit for. An AMD 5950X with a 240mm AIO in a mini-ITX case is easy these days and it keeps the CPU temperature in a reasonable range.

I don't see the contradiction - you can have a quiet SSF build, and you can have pretty powerful SFF builds (enthusiast GPUs might be a problem), but you can't really have both at the same time... at least not under load.

[frio]

The space is evolving. https://www.winterdesign.co/ -- this ultimately proved too expensive to produce in large quantities (due to the massive spike in the price of Aluminium), but it's a mini-ITX case with 2x280mm radiators.

I managed get one cheap-ish from the Kickstarter, and while it's got some flaws (and was a total bastard to build in -- it's a very small space to do a custom loop), it's everything promised on the tin; small, quiet, powerful (5600X and a 6800XT -- even when gaming the fans don't ramp above 40%, though admittedly that may change in summer).

[PragmaticPulp]

> I could have been more clear here, I meant a custom-loop, not an AIO since they're a sidegrade to a top-end air-cooler at best.

Custom loop and an AIO of the same size are going to perform the same. I don't understand why you're suggesting that water cooling costs "10X" as much as air cooling when that's clearly not true.

An AIO and a custom loop with the same size radiator will perform the same. I've done custom loops and I've done AIOs. There's nothing special about a custom loop other than you get to mix and match different components.

Also, the top-end air coolers like Noctua perform almost as well as liquid cooling these days.

> I don't see the contradiction - you can have a quiet SSF build, and you can have pretty powerful SFF builds (enthusiast GPUs might be a problem), but you can't really have both at the same time... at least not under load.

I'm telling you - I have a 5950X and a 240mm AIO in a SFF and it's quiet. I could move the same CPU and the same AIO to a big case with sound dampening and it might be marginally quieter, but not by a huge amount. The only real difference is when I'm running the GPU at full tilt during gaming, but it's undervolted and I can't hear it over the game anyway so I really don't care.

[formerly_proven]

> This isn't true.

I don't understand why you claim something is not true, then say the same thing with different words.