distilled water vs Coolant which is better whats the difference

I im already getting tubing but the res will still be clear unless theres a way to add colour, leds coloured film.

Does Overclockers sell Phobya Balancer 150 black nickel ???
 
is it possible to put LED on Res to make the fluid to look coloured, Im just worried the coloured my stain or cause issues
 
All you need is distilled or deionized with a silver coil or PT Nuke. I have a loop running like this for over 2 and half years and its still crystal clear.

I dont use any of that mayhems rubbish.
 
Mayhems rubbish?

I have been using Mayhems in a number of loops for a long time and Mayhems have never let me down. Tubing clouds due to the plasticizer in the tubing, regardless of whether you have DI or coolant. It isn't even much cheaper, especially considering its shelf life and being able to choose your pre-mixed fluid colour and opaqueness. You can say that DI water with anti corrosives and bio-cides work just as well but you can hardly call any of Mayhems fluids rubbish.

Mayhems fluids dont stain unless there is gunk in there too stain. Many other coolants do however stain the rubber tubing regardless of if plasticizer has built up or not. Some acrylic parts of my loop have been running for years and are as clear as the day i bought them.
 
2013 said:
is it possible to put LED on Res to make the fluid to look coloured, Im just worried the coloured my stain or cause issues
Click to expand...

Yes. It's what I did :)

You're best using a Monsoon Premium G 1/4 LED Stop Fitting if you can find one as you don't get the light leakage that you have with other types of G1/4 led fitting.
The pic above isn't using a Monsoon fitting and I had to resort to using black tape to hide most of the leakage.
 
Ive found someone that sells it but now i need to know what type of tubing i need i know the fittings are 1/4, I do remeber there was 2 size I could get which should I buy and is there a brand or type I should consider or size,
 
It's personal preference really.

I recommend 7/16 5/8 (16/11mm) as it's not skinny, but not too fat. 19/13mm (fat) can look really good with the right case/components though.

Just get the same size compression fittings as the tubing :)

Most here would recommend Primochill tubing, though I've personally had no issues with XSPC clouding.
 
Oh, you're going with acrylic tubing? My bad.

Yes, you'd need specific fittings for acrylic. Have you bought anything yet?
If not, check out the Primochill acrylic tubing and fittings range at OcUk. it is 'only' 13mm though... great stuff, but a bit skinny for my tastes.

Over to to you, Avenged :D
 
Oh, you're going with acrylic tubing? My bad.

I just came across it, so I was just wondering, but it looks like a lot of work for me, the cost will also pile on if i need to buy new fittings.

Ive got the res now, I endded up going with phobya silver nickel 250, silver fittings, I already have white tubing, but seeing as im going to be taking the pc apart i may aswell change the tubing.

all i relly need now is the coolant and maybe the tubing
 
Uncle Petey said:
Over to to you, Avenged :D
Click to expand...

Haha, thanks?


2013 said:
I just came across it, so I was just wondering, but it looks like a lot of work for me, the cost will also pile on if i need to buy new fittings.

Ive got the res now, I endded up going with phobya silver nickel 250, silver fittings, I already have white tubing, but seeing as im going to be taking the pc apart i may aswell change the tubing.

all i really need now is the coolant and maybe the tubing
Click to expand...


I like those phobya reservoirs, my current tube res has a fitting that i cant unscrew or it'l strip the thread (most likely), so i will probably grab one as a replacement.

Would change the tubing or if it is a bit on the long side, cut the ends and re-use it. You can get away with using the same tubing but for peace of mind and a bit more security, its not a bad idea to change it. Tubing wise, whatever size you go for, Primochill is my first choice for clear tubing and Masterkleer is my second.

Like Petey said, the size of the tubing is personal preference. I am a skinny tubing guy, as all my blocks are really close to each other and there are 5 blocks alone in one of my single GPU loop builds.

Acrylic tubing fascinated me when we started to get more brand choices last year, so i tested all the most popular Acrylic fittings to ease my fears of the tubing being not secure enough or particularly difficult to work with. Acrylic tubing does require its own fittings but now we have a fair choice of easy to use decent fittings of varying price tags.

I tried Primochills, Bitspower and EK HD fittings. Interestingly I found the cheapest ones from EK the easiest to use. These were 2.99 each and use two fat custom O-rings to tightly hold the hard tubing in and keep it water tight. Its design is similar to Bitspower ones in this way, and though may not have the same finish as the Bitspower ones, they do come in far far cheaper and need a fair bit more force to separate tubing from fitting. I found that the hard tubing was more difficult to remove from EK HD fittings than the rubber tubing on some compression's.

Primochill fittings sort of disappointed me. They look nice and came in a variety of colours which have a great finish but are a bit on the bulky side for my tastes. They are not true compression fittings, as they do not actually compress the tubing, instead it compresses an O-ring to the tubing from a screw on part of the fitting. They are a little easier to use, as they dont require a sanded edge of tubing but don't feel as secure and tbh i felt that i got more from the double custom o-ring EK HD fitting, which was also considerably cheaper.

If it is too expensive to make the full shift in fittings, you can do what i have done for some of my builds, buy acrylic hd fittings and tubing just to connect the blocks and components on display. Since acrylic is permanent solution to tubing which doesn't cloud, stain or ever need replacing, i felt that spending a bit of time and money on getting crystal clear, straight, block to block connections a worthwhile investment. My earliest use of acrylic tubing has been in a loop for over half a year and it is completely clear. Will also say that you can get away with a £15 heatgun and a £2 hacksaw and just use an edge of a table to do near perfect bends. You have a surprising amount of leeway with acrylic tubing when using rotary fittings as well, so it doesn't matter much if your tubing is slightly off angle or length (EK fittings seal the coolant several mm's from the end of the tubing, so perfect cuts are not needed either).
 
I may leave acrylic, for my next big build, I know very little about watercooling and nothing about acrylic, cutting or bending.

my major issue with acrylic is ive never used it, and the bending looks hard, I will also need to inverts a bit of money to try it out.

If I had a hand it would not be too bad.

ill give it a go when it becomes a bit more common.
 
Fair enough, watch youtube videos if you want a bit of a confidence boost. The thinnest walled acrylic is 10,12mm and is fairly easy to bend. Just use a heatgun (wear gloves!) and keep the gun or tubing constantly moving so you dont focus on one spot too long. You use a silicon inner bending tube to prevent the ID getting smaller, it makes it impossible to get kinks. Cutting wise, i now use a dremel but tbh 15 seconds with a hacksaw and a bit of sandpaper and its done.

I found you can get away with mostly straight connections with the right amount of spacers and rotary fittings. My project log build (located in my signature) only has one bent piece of acrylic out of all the block to block connections and i probably could have gotten away with just one 90 degree bend for the awkward Southbridge block.

Spend time cutting and planning the rubber tubing and it can end up just as neat!
 
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