Bah! Water cooling

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:47

God damn, I think I'll stick to air in the future, this is too much hassle.

Why oh why is my system taking ages to bleed. 95% distilled water and 5% zerex and with the pump in motion it makes the coolant all foamy and a opaque pinky milkshake colour.

Pump off:

Right colour but some big air pockets and loads of little bubbles.

Pump on = milkshake :/

How long is this going to take?

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:05

w3bbo said:
Bleeding your system like that is gonna take some time as by the looks of things your pump is sucking bubbles back into the loop from the res. Also your radiator being that way orientated is gonna cause some air traps (air rises - barbs at bottom - no where for air to go).

Try placing your case 'motherboard down' (side panel down) onto the table as this should prevent less bubbles from re-entering your loop and also help bleed the rad quicker as air will then escape from the rad to the res and be held there as the suction barb will be at the bottom for the pump.

Bleeding will take time m8, just gotta be patiant and try not to let your pump got overun with bubbles as this can overheat it if there is too much cavitation for long periods.

Ok, but I'll have to close the res then as the fill hole is on that side, so water will just come gushing out.

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:21

The DDC pump I'm using doesn't have settings.

Right, webbo, which way do you mean? So that I can look into the side and see the motherboard, or look inside and only see the motherboard tray?

I put it on its side and then back normal again and a lot of air is hissing from the rad now.

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 15:08

Marci said:
Lie case on it's back as you have in your last pic. Turn everything off (inc pump)

Pull res out the front as far as you can so you can tilt it so that it's cap is pointing roughly upwards. Open reservoir cap.

Remove top CD Blanker. Open bleed screw on end of radiator. Water level should slowly drop in res, and a trickle come out the bleed hole in radiator. When it does, tighten bleed screw back up (gently - don't overtighten it - it's only brass so will strip easily, hence we provide a spare). Rad is now bled.

Tricky bit - getting the case the right way up without air leaving res and heading back to rad... with cap back on res, tilt it the other way... up towards the radiator... so all air in res is uptowards front of the res... then SLOWLY pull the front of the case forward and down onto it's base so it's sitting properly. Hopefully waterlevel in res won't have dropped below the barbs.

Top it up, seal it up, fire it up. Leave it running for 48hrs - bubbles / foam will settle.

Did you MEASURE the water & zerex or guess it?? Looks to be guessed - ie: little too much zerex. 5% zerex shouldn't be enough to tinge the water that color...

Hi,

The Zerex was measured, I filled using 500ml each time. So measured 475ml distilled water and 25ml of zerex. Did this with a measuring jug and mixed it with a bit of spare tubing before filling up.

Thanks for the info, I will try this shortly. I have just tried some angles and a lot of the little bubbles have come out. Just got some massive gaps where no water is in now. Is this because of air or not enough water?

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 15:36

Thank you so much everyone, with a mixture of what you have all said, but especially Marci's idea has now got water everywhere in my loop with what appears to be no air.

I have however, got the waterlevel just a smidgen under the barb in the res so not going to run the pump.

So, just top up with more water yeah? Do you think I should just put some plan distilled in as the zerex appears too much?

Yet again, big thanks guys.

edit: Yes marci, no clamps although I wanted some. Stupid here bough some plastic clip clamps but forgot to get the right size (ie, wall thickness onto barb) and bough the size for tubing on its own. Doh!

Worst is, I ordered the right size

then thought I was wrong, canceled and ordered wrong ones. I'm an offical plank.

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 16:34

Oh dear lol,

topped up with distilled water so I had a lot of clearance above both barbs and same again (but no where near as bad) real ligh pink rushing water. Must be air somewhere.

So I unscrewed the rad bleed screw and heard a lot of air come rushing out, but i think some air came from other parts of the system so pushed water into res which was a tad open so lost some water through there.

bah! I'm sure I will get there in the end.

Mekrel · 8 Feb 2007 at 18:35

Yeah, I have

I got it sorted now for sure

I noticed a pattern emerging with the bubbled and their place within my system and got them to shift into the rad, where Marci's method worked wonders to get the last lot into my res.

I got abit of a trickle noise in my res at the moment, currently got it sat 45% upwards with the cap near off to let air escape, then going to drop abit more water in, should hopefully make the trickle go away!

Mekrel · 9 Feb 2007 at 20:11

Ok, anyone got any experiences with DangerDen 5.25" bayres? The acrylic one?

Problem is, it's fill port thread comes from a square piece of plastic and once the res is rammed full of water, the air can't get past this square and to the port to bleed.

My loop seems to be running fine, just I get tiny little bubbles get sucked back into the pump every now and then.

So, I've tried raising the res to an angle to get the air out like in Figure 2.

Figure 1 shows that on the right, where water comes from the rad, the big airbubble in the res breaks into smaller ones and they rush around the front of the centre acrylic seperator and break into smaller bubbles which then pass over the middle acrylic to where they originated. Yet one or two tiny tiny air pockets get sucked in.

Problem is, the res is virtually so full. I can fill it at an angle as water will just come back out and lying it flat is the same too and I get a large air bubble slap bang in the middle.

This res is CPAP!

Mekrel · 9 Feb 2007 at 21:58

I'm going to swap it out for a MCRES from Swiftech, not putting up with this piece of poor designed crap. I didn't really revise on resevoirs at all, as thought they all did the same thing.

Mekrel · 9 Feb 2007 at 23:05

Townlea said:
You have pretty much same spec as me and I never had as many problems as you

EDIT: forgot to add, not one single problem

I did what Gangster suggests, give that a try

I've already tried this though, i.e getting the air pocket to the fill port and filling into the air pocket, problem is air rises to the top and isn't going to shift and it stick to the top corner. Basically making it impossible to get air out of this thing. It's not bad, but I get the tiny bubble go into the pump.

Mekrel · 10 Feb 2007 at 10:55

weescott said:
I really doubt it has anything to do with the res. I had the 3 3/4" one. It's no doubt air the rad. tip the case a few times, start stop the pump, get the air to the top, fill up, repeat.

Can't be air in my rad I dont think as when I unscrew the air bleed screw on the rad, water comes out. But I'll give it a try

Mekrel · 10 Feb 2007 at 12:25

Well I made sure that the barbs for the rad were at the top by standing it on end, and that the res is highest part of system. Took rad out as pictured.

Ran pump a bit, shook like a mad man and some air did come out.

Bled res as much as I could, then blanced really carefully so I could put in water. Yet the res is a POS and if too flat air goes into middle and tilting it, you can fill up to the fill hole but after that the air goes past the fill hole into the corner.

Pump running, air breaks into small pockets.

Mekrel · 11 Feb 2007 at 20:27

Well, I've took it all apart and recleaned everything and leaving it to dry. I'm off to Holland Saturday

Well, the res might not be problematic for some but I think it's due to the fact my pump is a relatively short distance away from the res. So the sucking power will pull air down.

Yeah it's a rubber Grommet and was quite a pain to cut through the case with my Dremel, but did a bloody good job on it!

It is 7/16 tubing and the stuff is quite frankly amazing! You wont belive how much pulling and twisting I did to get the rad out of the case and the tubing didn't move an inch.

Clamp wise, I would google for Nylon plastic clamps, it will say ideal for 1/2" ID hose as trying to screw worm drives up when in the case can be a pain. They can also cut your hose. Nylon clamps look neat aswell

I painted the rims of the 117mm blow holes in black for now.

I really can't be arsed to order a MCRES from the US. Sick to the back teeth of the state of watecooling suppliers in the UK. Only one store had DangerDen 1/2" G1/4 barbs in, D-Tek Fuzion only just come to the uk and same with ApogeeGT.

Hopefully, some dutch sites will have it so I can order while I'm over there.