Six year streak ended in a very wet carpet

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

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Joined
31 May 2006
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West London
We'll I've been watercooling pc's since 2006 and never had a major Arrrrr! moment.
That is untill Friday night - Loop was fine or so I thought.
Had the usual minor issues with new loop layout, that are sorted during leak testing.
The Koolance res top needed an extra half twist to squish the O rings.
The phat boys needed more omph to get the 7/16 over than I expected.
Xspc Edge is to wide to have all four ram slots filled :(

But after a good 2 hours of gaming the tube on the Xspc Edge poped off the barb!
Que sound of 'glug glug glug' as the rad emptied all over my graphic's card, via the unattached tube.
The D5 was going a good job of soaking the inside of my case via the now open barb too.

I frantically pulled the power cable out the back of the case.
And cursed the acoustically isolated twin side panels slowing me from stopping any more water loss.

Wet carpet was the least of my conserns as I remove the pools of water on the top of my GTX 460 and Asus DX.
Half a roll of kitchen roll, and 36h of drying time later (and an unhappy wife with no facebook daily bonus)
I start the rebuild not knowing what survived this morning

I take the oppertunity to trim the block so I can use all my ripjaws.
Already redrilled the s775 holes as slots, so it fits s1155 :)
New TIM, cable ties over the barbs, wire up, plug in and cross fingers.

Flick the power switch - nothing, not even a pop or sizzle
check all the cables again an notice the power cord isn't pluged into the wall - Doh!
Try again and ...

postleak2.jpg


She lives, thank god - and off to church while the loop bleads.
It's even quieter now (D5 isn't held in bracket now) and now I have all my ram slots filled.
So silver lineing to every flood :cool:
 
Nothing like a disaster to force the changes you intended to but couldn't be bothered to make :)

Good to see a bit of waters not the end of the world all the time.
 
Glad everything is OK.

That's the reason when using barbs you should always use clips of some sort regardless of how tight you feel the fit is! :) Too many occasions I have had hose wanting to to pop off barb and random times for no apparent reason.
 
Was about 600ml of disilled water in the end - and always used cable ties before.
Not sure why I didn't this time - the phat boys do have a larger OD, but the barb edge isn't sharp.
The koolance and Dtek barbs I own have cut me (and really 'bite' the tube)

You live and learn - just really glad it wasn't an expensive lesson - just time and hassle
 
With my barbs I decided to use Koolance Clips. Despite the fact that getting the tubing over the barbs was incredibly difficult. Just extra peace of mind I suppose.

How quickly did you get to the power-cord from when the leaking started, because the card must have drank a lot of water in that time :)

The survival is impressive when you consider that even distilled water gets re-ionised extremely quickly when running in a loop :)
 
It was a few days in the loop - and also using the koolance clips (on the gpu)
And I pulled the plug within 2 sec's but it got well and truely flooded (the screen when crazy)
 
How old was the loop? 7/16 over 1/2 barbs become loose over time and if you've got a high restriction loop and a powerful pump it'll push them off those barbs :)
 
Jay85 said:
This is exactly why i dont use barbs, compression fittings all the way!
Click to expand...

Compression fittings are very expensive and only fit 7/16" or 1/2", not both.

Plastic barbs grip onto rubber tubing like nobodys business, the only problem is taking them off as they just won't budge.

Metal barbs with hose fastners are a pain to tighten but once tightened properly I've never had a leak.
 
do you run different hose in the same loop?
I just bought 5 meters in one go and from the amount I have left over I can't see me ever needing to buy new hose even if I completely change it at some point

depending on what compressions you get they are the same price by the time you add on clips or whatever... even if you don't the price difference of £2.50ish to £1.80... are we really saying that it's better to risk an event like this ^ to save £4?
 
Compression fitting have other issues - like unscrewing
Only usable with one dim of tube (unless you use koolance ones)
Are a lot more that £4 extra over a multi block loop (not that I use barbs due to price)
The nut can rust (usually made of mild steel)
But I fully accept they don't 'pop' off.

Up untill friday I always added a cable tie over the tube - costs next to nothing
Can be colour coded to the build (if that's your thing) and stops this kind of thing happening.

After moving to a custom loop (2007) I use thickwall 1/2 tube over 1/2 barbs (with cable ties)
But for a number of reasons I used the masterkleer 7/16 but this has a much thinner wall.
Which I now know behaves quite diffently when hot.
You need to remember my loop is semi-passive. It has NO fans on the rad, and cools both cpu and gpu.
This means much higher water temps that most other people (still 40c idle mid 50's load on both blocks)
It was silly to think I wouldn't need the tube anchored in some way as I don't use 45's/90's to remove some of the bending forces of the tube.
(I don't use angled fittings due to flow loss - as my D5 is at setting 1 - I water cool for near silence)

For the record I have four compression fittings in my loop - part of the two sets of Koolance VL4 QC's I own.
Koolance didn't make barbed VL4's at the time I got them.
 
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moogle said:
How old was the loop? 7/16 over 1/2 barbs become loose over time and if you've got a high restriction loop and a powerful pump it'll push them off those barbs :)
Click to expand...

Loop was two days old.
Ultra low restriction
D5 on setting 3 (at the time)

All I'm pointing out is: Bitspower Phat boys + 7/16 thinwall by itself isn't good enough.
Clips or cable ties are required
 
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