When you buy and mount a new AIO liquid cooling (or if you buy a new PC that comes with one installed) you will find that it is quite noisy initially . You should not worry about this, because over time it will become quieter and in this article we are going to tell you why.
It is quite common to see complaints from users who have just installed a new AIO liquid cooling because of the noise they emit, and also with good reason because generally this noise can become quite annoying. However, when a few hours pass (we are talking about 2-3 hours of operation) the noise begins to reduce, and after about 24 hours of operation you will see that this sound level stabilizes at its lowest value. Why does this happen?
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The noise of AIO liquid cooling
Unlike air-cooled heatsinks where the only noise we hear is from the fans and it is always stable, in AIO liquid cooling there are two additional factors that can emit noise: the pump pushing the liquid through the closed circuit, and also the liquid itself moving through the interior. In fact, if the manufacturer has not been meticulous and there are burrs on the inside (especially in the joints between the tubes and the radiator), this noise can become somewhat high.
However, the sound level emitted by liquid cooling when you have just assembled it is much higher, and this is so because despite the fact that it is a closed circuit in which the liquid moves inside, they are never full. 100% and there are always air bubbles. When you mount the device on your PC, in all probability you have been moving its different components, causing the bubbles to be distributed throughout the circuit, and these are responsible for that additional noise that is emitted throughout the circuit, both when they are “colliding” with the different internal parts, especially when the pump is pushing air instead of coolant.
As the operating time passes, the bubbles always tend to settle in the highest part of the circuit (for this reason, among other things, we always recommend installing the radiators on the roof of the box) until all the air has accumulated in it. zone and stop “nagging.” Generally after 2-3 hours of operation, almost all the air has already settled in the upper zone, but it is not until about 24 hours of operation when everything has stabilized and the AIO liquid cooling emits the noise it should emit and no more.
Can this process be accelerated?
Yes, there are two ways to make the liquid cooling stabilize in about an hour, and it is really advisable to do it both for this and to verify that its performance is adequate.
The first way to do this is to configure the pump (if it is configurable) so that it works at maximum for a long time (one hour), so that it moves as much liquid as it can and thus accelerates the deposition of the bubbles in the Upper area. If the pump does not have configurable speed, you can always stress the processor with programs like Prime95 to force the system to work at its maximum, and at the same time you can check if the operating temperature of the processor is adequate and if the liquid cooling does its job well.
The second way is by cycling on and off, which although it is less recommended also works. Basically, almost all AIO liquid coolers are designed so that when the system is started, they run for a few seconds at their maximum to “start up” and that the liquid begins to flow through the circuit, also accelerating the bubbles to go to the top.
You must bear in mind one thing, and that is that if you have mounted the radiator on the floor of the box, it is likely that the pump will always continue to make the same noise, since as we have indicated before, air bubbles will always tend to settle in the highest part of the circuit, so if the pump is on top of the radiator the air pocket will be generated in the pump itself, causing it to make much more noise and, in fact, shortening its useful life considerably.
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