Watercooling Coolant/Fluid Roundup

[Squakingcow]

I would love to know what feser put into water to make it cool better than water alone? That is unless it is just plain distilled?

The feser ultra pure is just bog standard distilled/deionised with a fancy sticker and £10 added to the price tag and the 0.1 degree temp difference is easily within the margin of error for the tests.

The results for the fluidXP aren't exactly shocking after seeing how all the 'suspended' particles soon disappeared in rjkoneills build log, and presumably in skinnees tests these suspended particles went on to clog something in the water blocks which would account for the increase in temps. The old fluidXP also had a bit of a rep for gunking things up.

Edit: after reading the testing methodology it can't be that it gunked up the blocks, since the loop wasn't disassembled at the end of each coolant test, it must simply be that the fluidXP is too viscous and has poor thermal properties.

 

[Jokester]

Reading the post there shows that rjkoneill had a 5C drop after all the cloudy stuff dropped out and the fluid started running clear, so I'm guessing Skinnee tested it straight out the bottle. I would be more worried about where all that stuff disappeared to.

 

[3t3P]

PT nuke clouds toobin?!

 

[w3bbo]

I've never had an issue but then I only use 1 drop per 1 ltr.

 

[3t3P]

It's copper sulphate based right? Will it do anything to nickel coatings?

 

[rjk]

Reading the post there shows that rjkoneill had a 5C drop after all the cloudy stuff dropped out and the fluid started running clear, so I'm guessing Skinnee tested it straight out the bottle. I would be more worried about where all that stuff disappeared to.

correcto
nanofluid requires around 24 hours to 'bed in'
it looks insane straight out of the bottle and there are no particles in it, its just cloudy, from my testing, it seems that it reacts with the interior of the loop.

it it much thicker than water with a sort of 'thin oily' consistancy. the reason the tests are showing poor results for it is because it takes a long time to work properly. but the suspended particles do not break down the same way as a dye or additive and they certainly do not clog up blocks.
due to nanofluid being thicker than water, it needs the pump to be set higher too. i am guessing that the Swiftech MCP355/Laing DDC3.2 with XSPC V3 Top that was used in the test was not the best pump for the job
maybe a D5 vario with an adjustable pump speed would have been better.

im not fussed about defending nano fluid because it has worked well for me, it just appears that the testing is flawed.

PT nuke clouds toobin?!

yup, the numerous threads about it on this section all confirm it.
Example
the unrelenting fascination that we have for the God like combination of PT Nuke and Distilled is really quite hilarious.
it is always especially funny to see the threads that follow when a user is advised to use ptnuke and distilled, it generally involves said user Crying Alone as their £30 worth of tygon tubing inevitably turns into a murky mess.

For my next build, I plan on using holy water in my loop.
i simply don't trust anything else

It's copper sulphate based right? Will it do anything to nickel coatings?

no it wont. its to do with the material that tygon is made from. certain types dont do it. and you are only supposed to use a little of the PT Nuke.
handling PT Nuke is very dangerous, because of its unsurpassed, miraculous biocidical properties it could wound or even kill if used incorrectly.
it has built up quite a reputation and gained a cult following [who enjoy cloudy tubing] due to its wonderous capabilities.

 

[NathWraith]

the unrelenting fascination that we have for the God like combination of PT Nuke and Distilled is really quite hilarious.

Indeed. My theory is, if you are going to cool hundreds if not thousands of pounds of hardware you can at least spare £20 for a proper coolant rather than cheaping out with distilled water and PT nuke combo.

The distilled water and PT nuke combo does make me lol, the argument every distilled water and PT nuke user has is the fact that "every" coolant stains and clogs your blocks blah blah. Which is totally untrue, some coolants do yes, mainly feser 1 but quality coolants such as Fluid XP Ultra/Nano fluid and PC Pure and are excellant choices.

 

[xtremedetailz]

i fell foul to the pt nuke and silvercoil.... now my £30 worth of tygon is pants... in the bin it goes.

 

[w3bbo]

I've never had an issue but then I only use 1 drop per 1 ltr.

Huh?

Like I said, never had a problem myself.

The £20 for 'proper' coolant is utter tosh. Marketing rubbish tbh. It's simply water with additives, nothing more, nothing less. Be it water and UV dye with a little biocide mixed in makes no difference. It's the same that we do ourselves. Even Feser have proven that there mixing strategy is poor at best as some feser is ok, other batches are garbage.

If people cannot follow a simple instruction written on the side of a bottle (1 or 2 drops per ltr? iirc) then they really shouldn't be building pc's worth £1000's.

Imo is it is most likely a poorly cleaned radiator resulting in water soluble flux that is staining most peoples tubing and blaming the coolant is just passing the buck for a poorly setup system. If it was once clear but now going cloudy then I would blame the plasticiser of the tubing.

Do yourselves a favour, grab a pint pot, fill it with distilled then add a drop of PT nuke. Leave it to stand for a couple of weeks and see if it goes cloudy. I doubt very much that there is a chemical reaction between copper sulphate and pvc which would result in clouding of tubes. More likely a chemical reaction would be caused by Propylene or Ethylene glycol (used in most other coolants). I could have course be wrong on this but I have used both Tygon, masterkleer and xspc tubing and none have clouded. The one time I did have cloudy tubing was when I set up my first watercooled pc and assumed I didn't need to clean the rad.

 

[mmj_uk]

What's the obsession with preventing cloudy tubing? unless you have your PC in a shop window or have married your PC it's irrelevant. Cooling properties, lack of gunk and cost per litre is most important.

Indeed. My theory is, if you are going to cool hundreds if not thousands of pounds of hardware you can at least spare £20 for a proper coolant rather than cheaping out with distilled water and PT nuke combo.

So pay £10-15 extra per litre just to prevent clouding which is purely an aesthetic thing?

I suppose I'm just on a different page to the rest of you, all I care about with my PC is how it performs and not how it looks.

 

[JeffyB]

i fell foul to the pt nuke and silvercoil.... now my £30 worth of tygon is pants... in the bin it goes.

Most tygon (r3603 for example) contains plasticiser so will cloud/go yellow, some more rapidly than others. Some of these fluids do contain an anti scaling ingredient that is ment to prevent this, although i have yet to see anything to substantiate this. You would have saved yourself the money had you researched a bit more and found that tygon regularly clouds very quickly, sometimes in weeks and why a lot of people don't use it now.

 

[Squakingcow]

I've never used tygon with PT nuke but I ran my system for 2 years with clear XSPC tubing and it never clouded.

Also about fluid 'bedding in' (lol), it's much more likely that an air bubble got dislodged from one of your water blocks than any form of 'bedding in' effect, especially as I can see no possible way in which a fluid running around a loop will improve after a period of time will improve temps,apart from an air bubble (unlike TIM where it beds in because it takes time for the TIM to cure, a fluid will do no such thing).

With regards to pumps a DDC3.2 with an after market top is pretty much one of the most powerful single pumps you can get (a 3.25 is marginally better, but not a whole lot), without going insane and having an RD30, a D5 would certainly be a downgrade in terms of flow rates for the test.

Also the original FluidXP was known for being horrid stuff, clogging caused by the separation of the various additives and dies that were added to the stuff was very very common with it, so it's not exactly surprising that the new stuff has poor thermal qualities and isn't up to scratch.

 

[xtremedetailz]

Most tygon (r3603 for example) contains plasticiser so will cloud/go yellow, some more rapidly than others. Some of these fluids do contain an anti scaling ingredient that is ment to prevent this, although i have yet to see anything to substantiate this. You would have saved yourself the money had you researched a bit more and found that tygon regularly clouds very quickly, sometimes in weeks and why a lot of people don't use it now.

I have used tygon in all my previous rigs and never had issues using feser stuff but wanted to try what everyone was saying is better than feser (pt nuke, kill coil & distilled/de-ionised water).

Now the feser never clouded at all but the water/pt/killcoil did.

 

[rjk]

I've never used tygon with PT nuke but I ran my system for 2 years with clear XSPC tubing and it never clouded.

Also about fluid 'bedding in' (lol), it's much more likely that an air bubble got dislodged from one of your water blocks than any form of 'bedding in' effect, especially as I can see no possible way in which a fluid running around a loop will improve after a period of time will improve temps,apart from an air bubble (unlike TIM where it beds in because it takes time for the TIM to cure, a fluid will do no such thing).

With regards to pumps a DDC3.2 with an after market top is pretty much one of the most powerful single pumps you can get (a 3.25 is marginally better, but not a whole lot), without going insane and having an RD30, a D5 would certainly be a downgrade in terms of flow rates for the test.

Also the original FluidXP was known for being horrid stuff, clogging caused by the separation of the various additives and dies that were added to the stuff was very very common with it, so it's not exactly surprising that the new stuff has poor thermal qualities and isn't up to scratch.

fluid goes in the res and is cloudy

fluid goes clear after a few days and works better
the suspended cloudyness disappears

fluid level in res remains the same, therefore its not really likely that i had trapped air in the loop

quite surprised as my d5 on the 5th setting pushes fluid far faster than the 2x 18w ddc with EK tops that i had prior to that.

i just find it really odd how the fluid that has performed the best in all of my testing, is by far and away the worst in this test.

 

[RizlaKing]

Well while all of this is interesting i will be sticking with distilled\deionised and a killcoil a friend of mine who has been watercooling for many many years has only ever used that and he doesn't have any problems. I wouldn't expect anyone from OcUK to back the distilled water route they have a business to keep going which is done by sales so are going to be pushing what they sell as superior to normal water alls fair in pc's and business .