Water cooling, genuinely worth the hassle and risk, or is air cooling good enough for almost everyone

[RatedDanny86]

Water cooling promises noticeably lower temperatures and quieter overall operation compared to traditional air cooling, particularly for high end, power hungry components pushed to their absolute limits, and custom loop setups in particular have become a genuine hobby in their own right for a lot of enthusiasts who enjoy the process of building and tuning a system as much as actually using it afterward.

Critics of water cooling point out the genuine added cost, added complexity, and the small but real risk of a leak causing serious damage to expensive components, arguing that modern high end air coolers have closed the performance gap enough that the added risk simply is not worth it for the vast majority of builders, particularly anyone who is not specifically pushing extreme overclocks or building in an unusually restrictive case. Do you think water cooling is genuinely worth the hassle and risk for most builders today, or has air cooling closed the gap enough to make it unnecessary for almost everyone outside of dedicated enthusiasts?