Unless he’s building a custom loop because he’s really into building custom pcs, then liquid cooling isn’t worth it.

A decent heat sink on the CPU and several fans blowing correctly in the case will do just as good. The only real drawback is that they’re not as quiet under high load.

As for AIOs, it’s been a while but I doubt rather a lot that they re on par as far as price goes, and you’re going to be better off buying better (read: noctua) fans.

More/larger fans also can be ran at lower rpm’s for the same cooling and get even quieter. (And have that much more under high load.)