As long as you have something that works for you, that’s all that matters. I have a 7900 XTX now, and I’m watercooling it only because I already had everything except the block. It runs cool on air.
And I agree, watercooling is almost never worth it. I love the hobby, so I stick with it, but I don’t generally recommend it. It is an incredible amount of work and money.
When I bought my reference 6800XT, the temps were horrible. The regular core temps weren’t too bad, high 70s to mid 80s, but hotspot was constantly in the low 100s. Mem temps were about the same.
I had good airflow, and a cool house. Checked all the torques on the board, everything seemed fine. I finally went watercooling, and the card cooled down so much it was unbelievable. I could run 3dMark on a constant loop, and never even crack 50 degrees. Fur mark for an hour, never above 44 degrees and this was on a single 360 rad.
However, temps crept up by 10 degrees over time. Paste pump out happened. Tried a different paste same thing happened a couple months later.
Finally tried Gelid GC Extreme, and it has stayed the course. I think the coolers on the reference cards are just bad, and when you add in thermal cycling, it’s a bad time. I found it especially suspect that the 7900 XTX reference boards had major vapor chamber problems. I wonder if there wasn’t a problem a while in the making.
I am in love with the KDE System Monitor widgets. They were, of all things, what truly cemented the Linux switch for me.
I used Aquasuite on Windows to control my watercooling, and it can set up a vast amount of widgets on your background for easy monitoring of temps and other values. It will not run on Linux.
The KDE widgets give me basically the same experience, although missing a few things. It’s enough that I’m happy with it, and I can check temperature and flow rates at a glance if something starts acting fucky.
I keep mine in the family area. More distractions, but it keeps me more available for everyone.