AIO Coolers with an Air cooling design / foot print

[QuadDragon]

AIO coolers are awesome. They have revolutionized cooling for Mainstream PCs.
How come no one has designed an AIO with the footprint of an Air cooler?
I realize that AIOs need cool air from the outside, however this is an easy issue to fix with an additional side fan or good ducting. With all the advances in Pumps and Radiators I feel like it would make a lot of sense to have an AIO that installs just like an Air Cooler and keeps the same footprint. Imagine what it could do for Mini ITX cases like the Dan A4.

 

[pendragon1]

AIO coolers are awesome. They have revolutionized cooling for Mainstream PCs.
How come no one has designed an AIO with the footprint of an Air cooler?
I realize that AIOs need cool air from the outside, however this is an easy issue to fix with an additional side fan or good ducting. With all the advances in Pumps and Radiators I feel like it would make a lot of sense to have an AIO that installs just like an Air Cooler and keeps the same footprint. Imagine what it could do for Mini ITX cases like the Dan A4.

cooler master makes a 92 aio that mounts like an air cooler and can swivel 90. still too tall I think, 118mm

http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/cpu-liquid-cooler/masterliquid-maker-92/

 

[vick1000]

Because they need a large radiator to be competitive with air coolers, much larger than the fin stacks on a tower cooler like the DH15.

 

[Nobu]

There's the corsair H5, which is about the size of a mitx board and fairly short, but it probably has about the same cooling capacity as a 120mm top-down noctua cooler (maybe a bit more) and is much larger.

 

[cyberguyz]

Putting everything associated with a liquid cooler on top oc the CPU is not only pointless, but way less efficient than your average air-only cooler. Consider why we use a liquid cooler: To take heat from the CPU and transport it away where it can be dissipated someplace other than the inside of the case where it is reused by the cooler's intake to dissipate more in a round & round we go manner. Using liquid to transport heat to the same location is less efficient than simply using a vapor chamber and short heatpipes to heat-dissipating fins. The whole idea has been tried a few times before and failed each time because it was stupidly expensive and didn't do any better than an air-only cooler.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

Putting everything associated with a liquid cooler on top oc the CPU is not only pointless, but way less efficient than your average air-only cooler. Consider why we use a liquid cooler: To take heat from the CPU and transport it away where it can be dissipated someplace other than the inside of the case where it is reused by the cooler's intake to dissipate more in a round & round we go manner. Using liquid to transport heat to the same location is less efficient than simply using a vapor chamber and short heatpipes to heat-dissipating fins. The whole idea has been tried a few times before and failed each time because it was stupidly expensive and didn't do any better than an air-only cooler.

This, and also note the other primary advantage of liquid cooling is to dissipate the heat from your CPU over a much larger area than possible with a regular heatsink/fan arrangement. You lose that performance-defining advantage if you're trying to fit it all in the same size as a regular cooler.

 

[Araxie]

This, and also note the other primary advantage of liquid cooling is to dissipate the heat from your CPU over a much larger area than possible with a regular heatsink/fan arrangement. You lose that performance-defining advantage if you're trying to fit it all in the same size as a regular cooler.

add better airflow, and better overall cooling performance on your case. my CPU it's a good 5C - 8C degrees hotter since moved to air cooling again and my GPU it's 4C - 5C degrees hotter as the whole airflow it's a mess in comparison.