Honestly I don't think it ever will. Cpu efficiency and thermals will get better, negating the need for water cooling. It'll always be an enthusiast thing.

>>54610913
Nigga, learn to spell.

>>54610942
bitch lean critical thinking skills

>>54610932
Yeah, this. Intel themselves came out and said that their future CPUs will focus on efficiency and GPUs have been gong this way as well.
In the near future a high-end overclocked PC might require no more than 300w of power, and since power in = heat out, we'll see traditional cooling methods take back the enthusiast space, although companies like Noctua are doing very well to compete, at least with CLCs.
Needless to say, the age of "muscle car" PCs is over, I already look at E-ATX cases as a relic of the past.

>>54610913
I doubt it ever will, its an enthusiast thing. Watercooling is high maintenance (excluding closed loop systems) for no extra benefit. For a fraction of the price of a quality water cooler setup you can buy a far more effective fan w/ heatsink CPU cooler which will outperform a watercooling setup. The only reason to buy a water cooled setup is "because it looks cool"

>>54611092
your only saying that because you can't aford a 2011 mobo and cpu and also can't pay for CLC

and besides enthusiast will do it anyway because they always look cooler despite the problems with water cooler (aka leaks, moister etc)

but then again people have said this for years so i'm not surprised /g/ brings it up yet again.

>>54612782
Dude, an i7-6950X, a $1500 CPU, has a TDP of 140W. A 212 Evo can easily handle 140W.

If anything the older motherboards would use processors with higher TDB, as the guy you are replying to mentions.

>>54611092
This sounds reasonable. It's getting more and more expensive to develop games that take advantage of all the horsepower of the highest end cards, and lower and mid range hardware is getting more and more capable for gaming. So instead of spending more and more money on diminishing returns both for game development and graphics hardware, things will probably plateau for a while as the price to performance ratio and performance per watt ratio gets better. Hardware refreshes will increasingly be about adding features more than raw performance, although performance will inevitably still improve.

Although you never know when some technological advancement completely changes the trends you're seeing in an industry. So something could happen in the next five years that makes my comment sound retarded in hindsight.

>>54612830
>A 212 Evo can easily handle 140W.
barely, and there isn't any OC headroom. I had one on my 5820k before getting my H110i GTX CLC.