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Before we get into the list it is important you know the difference between liquid AIO coolers and air coolers. It might sound obvious but there are a lot of pros and cons to each. If you already know these then skip on to the start of the list below!

Liquid AIO Coolers
Liquid AIO coolers have become increasingly more popular in the past few years providing compact and efficient cooling to all types of processors. Thanks to their compact nature, they fit in almost all cases and can provide aesthetic touches to your setup.

How Do Liquid AIO Coolers Work?

Liquid coolers are made up of a few core parts, the cold plate, radiator. fans and the pipes. Put simply, as the processor heats up the liquid inside the head of the cooler heats up too. The liquid is then pushed through a pipe that flows up to the radiator.

The liquid then flows through the top half of the radiator and as it flows the fans cool the liquid down. The liquid then reaches the end of the radiator and flows back across the bottom half of the radiator towards the other pipe. Once it reaches the pipe it flows back down as cooled liquid towards the processor again to cool it.

Advantages of Liquid AIO Coolers

There are a few reasons you might want to pick up a liquid AIO cooler over an air cooler. As said previously, they are very compact making them easy to fit into your case. This can be important for those of you with smaller cases that still want efficient cooling.

Liquid coolers provide excellent temperatures that can outperform air coolers depending on the product you choose to get.

They also run significantly quieter than air coolers, there is little to no background noise with a liquid cooler. Unless of course, you have noisy case fans too!

Disadvantages of Liquid AIO Coolers

The main points against liquid AIO coolers are that they are expensive. Compared to air coolers they usually go for around 50-100 dollars/pounds more. This price difference can be a lot, especially when it is for only 2 or 6 degrees differences.

An obvious yet rarely occurring disadvantage is that when liquid coolers break it can cause leaking. However this is extremely rare and something you shouldn’t base your decision on.

Air Coolers

Air coolers are still highly popular due to their value to performance ratio. They tend to be much cheaper than liquid coolers and often rival their cooling temperatures.

If you aren’t bothered about aesthetics and just want pure performance for a good price then go for an air cooler. However, they are often larger so make sure you have space to house them before buying.

Advantages of Air Coolers

Air coolers have a much higher value to performance ratio than liquid coolers do. The Noctua NH-D15 (or any Noctua) provides excellent value for performance. It can match most liquid coolers at a fraction of the price. More on that later.

Air coolers are also very easy to setup and maintain. You plug them in and off they go there is no fuss around pipes and set up. Also, when air coolers fail the impact is not as detrimental to your performance or your hardware.

Disadvantages of Air Coolers
Generally speaking, air coolers are not as efficient as liquid coolers. They tend to have slightly higher temperatures but not by much.

Air coolers can also be large and bulky making them a nightmare to fit into some cases. They can also creep over the RAM (sometimes coined as ‘ram clearance’) slots which can cause problems installing ram.

They are loud. Depending on which air cooler you go for, they can increase the noise pollution of your setup.