Soft/pvc tubing vs hard/rigid/acrylic tubing?

mjallan123

mjallan123

mjallan123

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27 Aug 2011
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I'm just away to start tubing up my system and had already bought some Primochill Advanced LRT, but I've been reading more and more horror stories from people claiming this tubing is leeching plasticiser into their loop.

The reason I got this tubing was to avoid this problem! It seems no soft tubing is safe.

I have also been looking at acrylic tubing which does look amazing but also looks like a lot of effort, plus people say it's quite fragile and if it broke with fluid in it then that would be...well yeah.

What I'd like to know from people who have personally dabbled in rigid tubing, is it worth it? How much effort does it take? And have you ever had your rigid tubing crack whilst using it?

Thanks guys!
 
Acrylic Vs Soft

Hi, ok this my experiece with both so far; I originally wanted to do my build ( resevoir -> cpu -> GPU -> rad -> resevoir ) with acrylic (Monsoon Hardline)as it does look beautifully tidy (parallel runs / right angles without couplings etc). By far the biggest headache with acrylic though, is the very small tolerances you have to work with when bending and cutting to the correct measurements, cut it slightly too short or get the bend wrong and its start again. You will defo need the pipe bending kit from Monsoon (about £60 - £70) and I very strongly reccommend watching pipe bending tutorials on YT. Also on a side note I wanted to use the Monsoon Chaingun fittings but with my CPU waterblock (XSPC Raystorm) the inlet and outlet holes are just, only just, too close together to allow the Chaingun rings to fit next to each other (they are quite chunky) so do check compatabilioty first. As with all watercooling, 75% of getting it right is in planning the layout so get rad inlets / outlets and resevoir position sorted to give you a) the tidiest / prettiest route and b) sensible access to be able to tighten down the couplings. Having said all that I actually ended up using flexible tubing (XSPC Highflex hose (7/16" ID 5/8" OD) as I was really struggling time - wise to get the acrylic right and wanted my pc back up and running. It was meant to be a temporary measure but 6 months or so later I haven't felt it necessary to have another go at the acrylic as the flexi looks good with Mayhems UV concentrate and so far has been totally problem - free. Installing flexi - tube is an absolute doddle compared to acrylic but acrylic definately has the potential to look lovely. As far as cracking goes, I had one bend break when I tried to re - heat it to correct a mistake, it's very unforgiving but if you get your bends right first time I can't see cracking being an issue. Hope that helps !
 
If nothing else, the Primochill Advanced LRT can be used for planning your layout. I find it very helpful to plan using tubing rather than drawings because there are always other ways you can orient your layout and 2D drawing is a limitation for me, I can manage wasting £5 to get a good layout. I went through 3 iterations before I settled on one for my current system.

I haven't used acrylic tubing before and have not been tempted to use it yet either, so I can't comment on that. Let us know what your experience was like, be sure to get some photos.
 
never had an issue with the primochill advanced stuff. The XSPC stuff is awful though and you can see the tubing degrade over time.
 
Ploppy2k3 said:
never had an issue with the primochill advanced stuff. The XSPC stuff is awful though and you can see the tubing degrade over time.
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What coolent you using? I'm using mayhems x1 concentrate mixed with distilled my tubing gone slightly cloudy with a white film on my fittings
 
red eye said:
What coolent you using? I'm using mayhems x1 concentrate mixed with distilled my tubing gone slightly cloudy with a white film on my fittings
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I've used distilled with Mayhems dye before and now using Mayhems pastel white.

I wouldn't be able to see the milky plasticiser in the pastel white but it would have been very visible I the distilled with blue dye before.
 
Noxvayl said:
it is impossible to effectively tell sarcasm from a serious post without context, and textual communication has no added layers of information to provide context
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The first part is correct, the second part is not, this is why sarcasm works in books. The context of my reply was so ridiculous that anybody who read it and the quote it was replying too should have known it was in jest, failure to realise that would be due to lack of reading/mental comprehension.
 
ubersonic said:
The first part is correct, the second part is not, this is why sarcasm works in books. The context of my reply was so ridiculous that anybody who read it and the quote it was replying too should have known it was in jest, failure to realise that would be due to lack of reading/mental comprehension.
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Sadly there are people with a lack of mental comprehension that would post something like that because they think it's true. i was just checking:cool:

Ploppy2k3 said:
I've used distilled with Mayhems dye before and now using Mayhems pastel white.

I wouldn't be able to see the milky plasticiser in the pastel white but it would have been very visible I the distilled with blue dye before.
Click to expand...

I must have a bad batch then
 
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