Is air-cooling catching up with water cooling ?

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[Tommy]

There was a time when water cooling was the best practical cooling solution you could get. I mean sure you could use stuff like liquid nitrogen or dry ice, but that generally wasn't a long-term cooling solution. You could also use a phase-cooling system but that would consume huge amounts of power. So for all practical purposes you either used water cooling or air cooling. It used to be that any water-cooling system was better than any air cooling system, but recent air-cooling designs (such as the Thermalright IFX-14) have been shown to be as good if not better than entry-level water-cooling systems.

So is air-cooling catching up with water cooling ? what will happen to water cooling if this happens ?

[Xtreview]

NO , this will not happen , Water will remain more efficient ,
You are right IFX-14 proved to be very efficient just like most thermal-right products ..
Currently, IFX- 14 has about 0.20 c/w witch is 0.20 c increase for each watt consumed , so a processor with 65 w will result in 0.20 x 65 = 13 c temperature rise above ambient temp . With a room temperature @ 25 c your processor will work @ 38 c witch is pretty good . Now let us pass to some overclock . A 4 Ghz processor (45 nm ) usually consumes about 90-110 w depending on voltage so temp will be 0.20x100 = 20 -22c above ambient witch result on 45,47c processor temp (assuming room temp @ 25 c) .
Here many budget water cooling systems are no able to provide such efficiency .Low end pomp , poor radiator , high restriction water block ... etc .
All those problem will just kill the water cooling .
Water cooling element has to be selected very accurately .
For example, D-tek fuzion (considered as the best water block high performance with low water restriction ) if coupled with good radiator such as PA 120.3 (also considered as the best radiator ) and Laing  5 pump (1200l) can be as good as 0.02 c/w.
Witch is 10 times better than the IFX - 14.
If @ 65 w processor temp with IFX- 14 was 38 c then with the D-tek it will be only 26.3c . @ 100-110 the processor temp will be 27-28c .Getting such high performance from D-tek is not easy . However, @ 0.08 or even lower is doable .
Moreover, the PA 120.3 can handle 400-500w of loads easily , so u can add your video card , north-south bridge to the loop and u will get an excellent temp === > higher overclock .

[princee18]

i too feel water cooling is better but still there are many downsides:
It is expensive, hard To Setup, any Mistakes that causes leakage will cost you highly........you can get burned hardware...........and it involves constant Maintainance.(such as filling up the water and checking the pumps)

[Xtreview]

i too feel water cooling is better but still there are many downsides:
It is expensive, hard To Setup, any Mistakes that causes leakage will cost you highly........you can get burned hardware...........and it involves constant Maintainance.(such as filling up the water and checking the pumps)

Any cooling solution can be dangerous if not applied correctly ,
Water cooling should safe enough if done correctly  (Just like air cooling). it is just a bit hardware to install (But some air cooler , High end , are also pretty hard to install .)

constant Maintainance

Air cooling require more Maintainance than water .