Truth. Luckily, large cooling solutions like the Phantom Assassin are very affordable now. I don't personally trust liquid at all and will never use it in a rig I build or maintain
I have help/built custom liquid. Once you get over the shock of it and know what you are doing its not so scary but I also would never do it with a system you move around much if at all for obvious reasons. I currently have a AIO and its been working well for almost 2 years but I think I under speced it for having a Ryzen 9. Its my first AIO though so it was more of a experiment than anything.
If I upgrade it will go in my storage server where it will probably be overkill but that's ok.
Here's my issue. If an air cooler's fans fail (Which is easy to notice in most cases), the main cooler still runs and can at least cool enough to let you thermally throttle and not cook. If an AIO fails, and there's several potential fail points, you can end up with one or more failed parts. Air might not be quite as cool overall, but it's close enough that the added security is worth it to me.
I get that, with how I have it installed and the software with it I will know if it fails and my system stops cooling. I won't cook my system but I will be really damn annoyed to have to order a new one basically overnight if I want to use my main rig again anytime soon which might not be possible or I would need to switch to a phase-change+fan setup.
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