There really is no "cooling" edge to liquid vs Air coolers. I have spent a lot of time on research and review. There are pros and cons to both.
My first concern is always "noise" . which is mostly fans except liquid coolers have pumps and fans.
From what I have found is it's "just a choice".
 
Biggest reason I see to liquid is so much room is saved inside the PC and the radiator can be mounted away from the CPU. Also heavy air coolers can put stress on a cheap\inexpensive motherboard
So those are good.
Now water removes the heat faster than metal but also retains the heat longer than metal. so?   
I prefer air and make sure it is mounted properly and the boards are strong. I do not move my PC around except to lay it down now and then for maintenance. It is so, so quiet and definitely will never leak water.
 
Interesting, your post got me to look at all of this and I appreciate that. I did search for the quietest liquid cooler but I guess they aren't tested that way as much as air coolers....
Sure do envy the "lack of clutter" in the case for sure.......
 

With a higher clocked i9, you're pretty much forced to go with higher-end water-cooling.
You're correct that water-cooling doesn't necessarily mean "quieter"... precisely because you've got both fan and pump noise.
 
If you're doing something like rendering video, where you've got all 10+ cores running at 100% for several hours, there's no cooling solution that's going to keep that scenario whisper quiet.

My liquid cooler is not "water", its glycol - the same thing as automotive anti-freeze.
 
The liquid cooler I have is as quiet as the Noctua with two large fans that it replaced.  I don't do a lot of tracks, but I have loaded a sample project with over 100 tracks and if it ramped up I didn't hear it (and I wear hearing aids, so I can "hear").
 

Technically, none of the "water-coolers" are using water.  
It's just the common "street name".  
 
Assuming we're talking "over-spec'd" cooling for both "liquid" and "air" (where heat is efficiently dissipated)... and that we're comparing with the same fans on both:
At idle, a "liquid-cooler" will typically be louder than an air-cooler.
The pump noise may be relatively quiet, but it does exist... in addition to the fan noise.
Where the "liquid-cooler" gains ground is when temps get hotter... it's more efficient at dissipating heat, so the noise ramps up less (lower RPMs on the fans).
 
If you're rendering video... where you've got 10+ cores running at 100% load (temps naturally go up ~25 degrees) for several hours, you can't buy a cooling system that'll keep that process whisper quiet.