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.)
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.
> 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.
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).
> 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.
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.)