Why aren't watercooled GPUs more mainstream?

[BogdanBIV]

Why aren’t watercooled GPUs more mainstream? GPU watercoolers are usually shorter and take less backpanel brackets. Also most of the time GPUs produce more heat than CPUs.

I would have expected more people would opt for builtin watercoolers, resulting in less work for dis-/re-/assembling the GPU, making it safer (thermal pads and paste are applied correctly, screws are tightened just right). Also, prebuilt water-cooled GPUs still have their warranty. There would be many more options for prebuilt wc and the price premium would go down.

What am I missing?

I’ve been pondering this question by myself for a few years now, it must be something I don’t understand. It’s important for me as I’m anxious for doing the GPU dis-/re-/assembling myself.

In my country, in Eastern Europe, there are 6 water-cooled GPU cards vs 606 air cooled.

[MazeFrame]

@BogdanBIV

What am I missing?

Cost of air vs water.

Then again, with the insane costs of current GPUs and their equally insane heat load, I would expect a slow increase bringing in more high end water cooled cards.

[FunnyPossum]

Just another thing to break, I really don’t want liquid in my system!