Leakage

Tenatious · 27 Feb 2015 at 20:15

Hey,

So I built my PC about two years ago with water cooling in it and left it running with no issues until about 10 months ago when I took the water cooling loop apart to clean it and change the coolant.

Put it all back together and it was running absolutely fine with no issues.

I left my PC in my old workplace office for a month with it not being used and then came back to it last week to find that some of the coolant appeared to have leaked inside the case.

What is really odd is that I can't find the leak anywhere! It doesn't appear to be leaking. The system boots up fine with no coolant leaking out and yet at the bottom of the case is some dried red liquid and the floor of the office was very red where it looks to have leaked out of the bottom of the case.

How is this possible? Think I'm going insane but definitely can't find a leak anywhere. What's the best thing to do?

I've got it on and running at the moment and all seems to be fine.

Is the fact it was probably really cold in the office with no heating on and it not being used something that could have caused this?

murah · 28 Feb 2015 at 19:23

put some kitchen roll around all the fittings, if it got really cold its possible that it leaked due to frost build up but your talking over -10c

iB CoMpL3XiTy · 28 Feb 2015 at 22:15

Could anyone have tampered with the PC?

If there was fluid on the floor of the PC and not on the components (mobo, GPU ETC..) then it would seem most likely that the leak came from a fitting / connection near the bottom of the case, hard to say without seeing a picture of the loop though.

I would personally check all the fittings and tubing, then leak test (without power to any of the components) and shake the PC about abit, see if you can cause a leak that way, maybe moving the PC to the office caused a very slow leak?

Disco_P · 1 Mar 2015 at 00:34

Is there any indication of where about it could have leaked from? e.g. dried coolant is under a particular part of the loop or marks where it has run down the edge of the case.

It could be a very very slow leak. I'd wrap up the fittings in kitchen roll as said and leave it for as long as possible. You could even use the PC, but I am working off the info that it has only leaked when turned off.

Tenatious · 1 Mar 2015 at 19:18

Finally worked out what had happened. A tiny hairline crack had occurred in the corner of the radiator at the top of the case. Not entirely sure why this suddenly happened.

Anyway, it was dripping out of this crack very very slowly directly downwards which happened to miss all the components and it was then landing in the fan and getting splashed around the bottom of the case hence why the whole bottom of the case and side of the PSU were getting covered.

I've taken the whole loop out now.

Not sure if I'll bother putting another one back in. The WC is a bit redundant for me now as I no longer have it OC'ed.