My pc just leaked in front of me. I caught it about 5 seconds after.

Curtis vincent

Curtis vincent

Curtis vincent

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So my pc just leaked everywhere. I managed to catch it and yank the power before anything could get damaged. Luckily it all ran straight off through the rad and on to my desk not parts. There’s two pipes that quite literally just bent in front of me and have become loose in their fittings. I’ve done watercooling for years and have never had this happen. I did upgrades at Chris and the loop has been running fine since. My first thought would be best but The pipes that leaked are near the exhaust radiator. I run a 360mm and 240mm on the bottom and have a 12900k and rtx 3080ti I’ve drained and removed the dodgy pipes now but am unsure how to prevent this happening again
 
eOYbtva
 
PETG tubing? I guess your coolant hit a high enough temp that the PETG tubes hit their glass transition temperature and lost rigidity.

To prevent it happening again, use acrylic or glass tubing, or use PETG and monitor your loop temperature, add extra fans/fan speed or whatever is needed to keep the temps down.
 
Yeah you must be right. It is PETG. I guess I just didn’t think it could be hot enough for it to bend like that. I’ll have to look up what the EK tubes transition temp is. I mean I have decent cooling though temps rarely ever got above 60/70 under full load. I run a little hotter normally beca I like it quiet
 
What Andy said.

Because of how hard tube goes in the fitting, it can overtime become lose with the temperature variation and the pressure that builds up in the system.

I've been running soft tube for more than 10 years, the only small leak I ever had was from a broken O-ring in one of my quick disconnects.
I would always use soft tube over hard tube.
 
Feel like this s
Drangueos said:
I would consider replacing your tubes for a different material, if on winter is that bad already, can you imagine on summer.
Click to expand...
thing is though I’ve used this tubing in various systems for years. Never had an issue. Could it just be that with a 12900k and 3080ti in my loop it got too much? Even then I’ve been using it for over a month no issues and haven’t been keeping an eye on temps at all
 
A 360+240 rads are maybe on the limit for your build, make sure you have a good airflow inside the case and not hot spots...
try having front + bottom as intake and back + top as exhaust.

an Overclocked 12900k can use around 400w and a 3080ti I would say about the same... so 800W only gpu and cpu...
It depends on your radiators... each 120 rad can dissipate from 150 to 250w usually.. depending on thickness and fan speed,

So if your radiators are not very thick and you are running your fans in quiet mode, you are not able to dissipate the 800W you need.
 
Yeah my immediate thoughts are that you are right. I think I need to just change the curves so that the fans are going a bit faster and have a temp limit so this doesn’t happen. Perhaps I should invest in a liquid temp sensor. Currently just going off of cpu and GpU temps
Drangueos said:
A 360+240 rads are maybe on the limit for your build, make sure you have a good airflow inside the case and not hot spots...
try having front + bottom as intake and back + top as exhaust.

an Overclocked 12900k can use around 400w and a 3080ti I would say about the same... so 800W only gpu and cpu...
It depends on your radiators... each 120 rad can dissipate from 150 to 250w usually.. depending on thickness and fan speed,

So if your radiators are not very thick and you are running your fans in quiet mode, you are not able to dissipate the 800W you need.
Click to expand...
 
Curtis vincent said:
Yeah my immediate thoughts are that you are right. I think I need to just change the curves so that the fans are going a bit faster and have a temp limit so this doesn’t happen. Perhaps I should invest in a liquid temp sensor. Currently just going off of cpu and GpU temps
Click to expand...

Coolant temperature sensor should be part of every water-cooling build.

Altering fan speed based on CPU or GPU temp is very dependent on the load at that moment.

Water temperature gives you a much more reliable indication of how efficient the system is.
Water temperature should let you tune your fans much more accurately with less ramping up and down and lower temperatures.

Personally I'm another no leaks soft tube user but I would 100% recommend an inline water temperature sensor.
 
Holst1981 said:
Coolant temperature sensor should be part of every water-cooling build.

Altering fan speed based on CPU or GPU temp is very dependent on the load at that moment.

Water temperature gives you a much more reliable indication of how efficient the system is.
Water temperature should let you tune your fans much more accurately with less ramping up and down and lower temperatures.

Personally I'm another no leaks soft tube user but I would 100% recommend an inline water temperature sensor.
Click to expand...
I’ve just ordered a temp sensor from ocuk that can go in a spare plug on my front Distro plate. Will see how that goes but may change to acrylic in future if I see any worrying signs again. I do have mostly straight runs
 
Curtis vincent said:
Okay lesson learned. Keep EK PETG under 60 degrees as that’s the point it becomes malleable
Click to expand...

If your water temps are getting that high then you seriously need to reconsider how you operate the loop. Most if not all water cooling components are only rated to 60 degrees C so you are risking everything failing. If your water temp is that high then your cpu (and gpu?) temp must be very high which kind of makes watercooling a waste of time. I have been using PETG tubing for a few years now with no problems at all so it's easy enough to use it within it's temp range. Your water temp is hotter than my boiler is set to deliver hot water at so is at the extreme range. A normal water cooling setup I would expect the water temp in the 35-45 degree C range. Mine is currently sat at 11.7 degrees C but I have outside air going through the rads so mine is always very cool. Like others have said, controlling the fan speed by water temp is a better idea and another reason why a temp sensor is a must in every loop. Mine is fitted in the bottom of my res and has a LCD display showing the temp. This way involves setting the fan speed manually but my water temp is so stable I can set the fan speed and leave it. If you want it all done automatically then something like a Aquaero and the relevant sensors will do it for you. Be warned though, the Aquaero system has a great many possible sensors and functions and can turn into a money pit if you get carried away.
 
Sidewinder11 said:
PETG flexing seems to be becoming a bigger problem recently. I guess with ampere cards pulling 400w plus, we need to rethink how much rad space is required.
Click to expand...

Or people not keeping an eye on their systems? Jay2cents seems to be the biggest influencer for PETG. I'm not saying it's bad but everyone seems to go that route from him because he made the videos of acrylic shattering. So people came to the conclusion, heat = fragile/shattered.

Holst1981 said:
Coolant temperature sensor should be part of every water-cooling build.

Altering fan speed based on CPU or GPU temp is very dependent on the load at that moment.

Water temperature gives you a much more reliable indication of how efficient the system is.
Water temperature should let you tune your fans much more accurately with less ramping up and down and lower temperatures.

Personally I'm another no leaks soft tube user but I would 100% recommend an inline water temperature sensor.
Click to expand...

I thought that was standard with everyone in this hobby? How else would they know what goes on with the system as you said.

Though, that must be very annoying with the fans spooling up and down everytime when the CPU and GPU flinches.
 
I've used PETG for years and never had issues before, never had a liquid temp sensor till now either. just relied on cpu and GPU temps. for now I'm just going to have the fans and pump running higher, all were on quiet mode before, which was probably an oversight being as I recently upgraded to 12900k and added a 3080ti to my loop. if I ever get any warning signs in future I'm thinking of just draining and going acrylic. luckily no harm done to my components and I'm back up and running now
 
I was sure on my first loop when I got the ekwb soft tubing near 10 years ago that it said max water temp 40c.

I did have a problem a few years back that had my fans stop and I got a leak because my temps got too high for the tubing and it somehow allowed the liquid to leak out. The only thing that could have caused this was the water temp getting too high. Every fitting in my loop had come the tiniest bit less tight.
 
PETG has lower temperature tolerance than soft tubes.

PETG can usually go up to around 60C, soft tubes around 80C.

Acrylic is the best at around 150C

When hard tube fails, the water usually goes everywhere as the fitting is compression only, where as soft tube usually balloon up before failure as it is usually fixed in place by the fittings.

The only time I have seen such failures are when the pump fails, usually radiator alone without fan assist will keep the temp at around 50-55C.

40-50 degrees is within the operating temp of average cooling loop cooling high end system under load. 50+ is when things start to get a bit sketchy.
 
I’m back up and running now. Got the fan curve set to not let temps get above 45 degrees. Been playing some games for hours and a bit of work and never got above 42 with the fans not being that high. I did notice I had to manually reset my pump curve in the bios because it literally wasn’t doing anything how it was. Makes wonder if that was the culprit leading to the spike in temps that caused the leak.
 
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