Can water cooling sustain 100% utilization?

Question

Can a modern CPU like Core i7 sustain a full, ongoing utilization for, say, 24h straight with water cooling?

What effects would water cooling have in comparison to air cooling?

Answer 1

For 24 hours? Definitely, people run that all the time for burn in tests on overclocked CPUs. For weeks or months straight? I don't know. That's not something often done with consumer processors. You might start to run into problems if you wanted to go further than 24 hours.

You shouldn't have a problem running for 24 hours with a good (ie not the included one) air cooler either assuming the CPU is not overclocked or is moderately overclocked. If you are not overclocking I would say that there is no point to a watercooler over an air cooler.

There are 4 main options for CPU cooling these days:

1. the stock cooler, totally fine for non overclocked CPUs under typical usage, can support moderate overclocks
2. A Coolermaster 212 or similar, a cheap air cooler which can support a moderate OC for gaming etc or non-OC for prolonged periods.
3. A closed loop liquid cooler, eg Corsair H60 or H110. The best closed loop liquid coolers can support a high OC for prolonged usage, they are almost as good as custom liquid these days. They are a good option for someone who wants a strong OC or 24/7 usage without doing a custom loop.
4. A custom waterloop, the best of the best allowing very high OC's and long term usage, also allows you to add in GPU watercooling. These are a lot of work to set up and maintain.

There are a couple other categories like passive coolers and high end air coolers but they are more niche these days. And of course this topic is kind of opinion based.

Answer 2

A common myth is that water cooling cools better than a fan.

But the correct answer is: depends.

...on a lot of factors, and it mostly comes down to the quality of the assembly in general. Not just the part quality, but how well it's assembled. In general, water is very good at absorbing heat, but for that to happen, you need to have a heatsink that is properly mated with the CPU, just like you would need with a fan. Now, with water cooling, if you have proper cooling/cycling for the water itself on top of that, this shouldn't be a problem.

So, to sum up: Yes, provided that it is set up correctly.

Note1: Cooling paste is often underrated, and is vital to transfer the heat from the CPU to whatever cooling method you have. My laptop ran a lot cooler by just cleaning out the old cooling paste properly and applying a new layer recently. This is probably the first place you should look if you're having issues with overheating.

Note2: I realized that a friend of mine uses water cooling for his rendering farm, so I guess that's one more for "yes"