A Couple Of Questions

Gavster · 26 Jun 2025 at 22:45

I have just drained my system and stripped down my EK Quantum Vector waterblock for my 4090FE and have a couple of questions.

First I have noticed what looks like copper at the top of one of the inlet/outlets, possibly the nickel plating being worn off. Is this a concern?

Secondly does anyone know how to clean the water staining from the acetal block cover?

I flushed it through with EK`s loop cleaner for 24 hours and then repeated flushing until the coolant was clear before draining. I have tried white vinegar and warm water with a toothbrush and a cotton bud and even filled the waterways with vinegar and water and left them for half an hour and even tried cleaning alcohol but the residue still remains.

hlennie · 27 Jun 2025 at 05:30

Could try lime scale remover diluted should soaking no good you need to use a toothbrush and protect your eyes

As to seeing the copper looks like its not flakeing so thats good just seems the coating was really thin and worn through. Block will be ok

Gavster · 27 Jun 2025 at 07:15

Thanks for that hlennie, I never thought about limescale remover, good call.
I did think the block would be ok but I wanted a second opinion, at first I thought it was just some staining but as the rest of the block came up nice with little effort and this remained so I then realised it wasn't staining.

Mcnumpty2323 · 27 Jun 2025 at 11:18

Pretty poor considering the cost of the ek block

What coolant was it?

And if nothing else clears the acrylic staining
Could try a mild abrasive
You can get plastic Polish
Somewhere in here i have a bottle i used to remove
Small scratches from an acrylic side panel
Very mild abrasive took a lot of elbow grease to use it
But that's better than starting
With too rough an abrasive then having to Polish
All the marks left by that out

Seen people use toothpaste to do it Instead
Though never tried

LuckyBenski · 27 Jun 2025 at 11:29

Toothpaste has relatively coarse abrasive pieces, it works at times but not nice when you'll see the end result.

There are varying degrees of abrasiveness in polish, T-cut has medium sized particles but they're quite hard. It's also quite oily so I'd clean with detergent after using. Some other polishes for acrylic are much less abrasive so more work, but less risky.

Mcnumpty2323 · 27 Jun 2025 at 11:38

Yeah the stuff i have is very soft
Not sure if you can get some sort of scale
For how abrasive a Polish is?
Sort of like the mohs scale for hardness idea
A graduated scale would certainly make life easier

Thanks for the toothpaste info
Probably best avoided then unless you want
To have to then Polish it again with something finer
Which i did think might be the case

Gavster · 27 Jun 2025 at 17:05

Mcnumpty2323 said:
Pretty poor considering the cost of the ek block

What coolant was it?

And if nothing else clears the acrylic staining
Could try a mild abrasive
You can get plastic Polish
Somewhere in here i have a bottle i used to remove
Small scratches from an acrylic side panel
Very mild abrasive took a lot of elbow grease to use it
But that's better than starting
With too rough an abrasive then having to Polish
All the marks left by that out

Seen people use toothpaste to do it Instead
Though never tried

Yes it's pretty poor for the cost but at the moment it's staying for the next phase.
The coolant was EK's Cryofuel which to be honest had been pretty good, after about a year the colour started to fade but the fins of the GPU although a bit discoloured were totally clear. I was expecting to be a bit of gunk between them.

newuser · 5 Jul 2025 at 10:44

Mcnumpty2323 said:
Yeah the stuff i have is very soft
Not sure if you can get some sort of scale
For how abrasive a Polish is?
Sort of like the mohs scale for hardness idea
A graduated scale would certainly make life easier

Bit late to the party, but I polish samples at work for metallography.
Polishing using graduated silicon carbide pads down to 1200 grit is common.
Then diamond paste or suspensions on a soft pad in steps such as 12, 9, 6 & 1 micron.
We do 60, 120, 600, 1200, 6 & 1 to get to a mirror finish but it's material dependent.

I tried and failed miserably to get some scratches off my phone screen.
Then I worked out that they'd put a screen protector on when I bought it...

Gavster · 5 Jul 2025 at 13:02

Thanks for your reply, so far nothing has touched it, I've tried warn water with vinegar, bathroom cleaner and loop cleaner.
When there is water on the plexi you can't see these marks so I'm just going to leave it be for now rather than risk damage with abrasives.
Now my problem lies with cleaning the TIM off the CPU water block as it seemed to have baked on and it's so far proving extremely hard to remove. Isopropyl (99%) and solvent have so far not touched it and I can't find my Akasa tim cleaner to give that a try.

LuckyBenski · 5 Jul 2025 at 19:10

Gavster said:
Now my problem lies with cleaning the TIM off the CPU water block as it seemed to have baked on and it's so far proving extremely hard to remove. Isopropyl (99%) and solvent have so far not touched it and I can't find my Akasa tim cleaner to give that a try.

I'd try acetone (nail polish remover generally has it in) but, do not let it get near any plastics or paint! Just dip a cotton bud in it and try that.

Gavster · 5 Jul 2025 at 19:39

I'll give that a try, at the moment it's being stubborn

newuser · 6 Jul 2025 at 09:59

Gavster said:
Thanks for your reply, so far nothing has touched it, I've tried warn water with vinegar, bathroom cleaner and loop cleaner.
When there is water on the plexi you can't see these marks so I'm just going to leave it be for now rather than risk damage with abrasives.
Now my problem lies with cleaning the TIM off the CPU water block as it seemed to have baked on and it's so far proving extremely hard to remove. Isopropyl (99%) and solvent have so far not touched it and I can't find my Akasa tim cleaner to give that a try.

I think leaving it be is the best move, getting the scratches out is going to be a long, tedious and expensive process if you need to buy supplies and it isn't the easiest area or material to work on.
I mounted my GPU horizontally, bought a solid CPU block and used EPDM so I don't have to worry about what my loop looks like. Long as the temps are good it can look as scruffy as it wants.

I use the Noctua cleaning wipes for getting TIM off and they've worked on everything I've tried. Isopropyl is my go to for anything else.