My watercooling disaster

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:09

I've finally ordered some new tubing to fix this (clearflex60) so now I can showcase my fail.

The scenario:

I mixed mayhems pastel grape red with light red to try and get a darker red pastel coolant (I did not think to use light red and then add some red dye, lol).

Then I changed my min and wanted purple coolant, so I added about 6 drops of mayhems blue dye, It's a large loop with a 1260 external rad.

My coolant was a nice purple colour and all was well

. Then after an argument with my younger brother, he decided to pour the rest of the 10ml mayhems blue dye bottle into the res while I was at work. I was pretty miffed because it's now uber dark purple. This happened only a day after I first filled the loop.

2 days later I noticed my tubing (primochill primoflex LRT) had started to go cloudy, by 5 days it was so clouded that the coolant looked mauve ratehr than purple. Then by 6~7 days i noticed that in the light the tubing was starting to glow green.

now 3 months later, I have started to take the disaster apart. By now the tubing has a genuinely NUCLEAR cartoony green glow in bright led lights:
The tubing with the coolant still in:

The coolant colour:

Tubing empty. This is clear tubing.

So yeah. looking good! I scraped the gunk out of a small cut off and the tubing itself is stained. No surprise there I guess.

Now for my block. My camera couldn't pick it up but there were a few bits of plasticy gunk wedged in the fins. I gave it a quick clean with ketchup an a toothbrush.

Is this corrosion?

Watercooling is all fun and games

Cleeecooo · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:17

Doesn't look like corrosion to me, just a bit of staining

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:23

With it being an EK block I was anticipating corrosion simply from use, lol :rolleyes:

.

Avathar77 · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:33

Is that an EK Nickel block?
If so I see similar signs(of nickel flaking) to my old block!

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:41

Yea, supreme HF acetal.

I was worried about the way it was looking kinda.. brown, which you can see in the first pic of it

Avathar77 · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:46

Seems like some staining as well but from the 2nd and 3rd pics it looks like it is starting the "Flaking issue"

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:51

I'm going to plumb it back in for now and see how it goes anyway.
The way I've done my loop means I can separate the tubing, drain the case and mess around, reattach the tubing and just refill the res as the pump refills the case. So any heat issues and I can pull it off pretty quick without the hassle of bleeding the rad etc.

Avathar77 · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:55

Yeah I saw your QDCs

But there will not be any temp issues with flaking or staining! Only cosmetic, although what happens to a pump with flaking nickel and ions in a loop is another matter.

spixelspixel · 13 Jul 2012 at 19:59

ek's nickel blocks remind me of my swiftech radiator

spixelspixel · 13 Jul 2012 at 20:04

Avathar77 said:
Yeah I saw your QDCs
But there will not be any temp issues with flaking or staining! Only cosmetic, although what happens to a pump with flaking nickel and ions in a loop is another matter.

He could get one of those koolance filters, put it before one of the quick disconnects so would be easy to check and clean.

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 20:05

that rad looks badass

Mayhems · 13 Jul 2012 at 20:42

lol that's a lot of dye and yes primochill isnt the best of tubing to get at the moment and we do not recommend it with any of our pastel coolants or Ice dragon cooling.

OptimaLnrg · 13 Jul 2012 at 21:06

surprisingly I just took a look at the black primochill primoflex LRT and the inside is fine.. no residue.

Ah well. Off to rinse.

Epic friday night!

OptimaLnrg · 17 Jul 2012 at 21:44

I have drained and refilled my loop mannny times now. 15 litres of distilled so far.

It's still coming out slightly stained. Pink though, not blue! @_@

cobbly123 · 17 Jul 2012 at 22:55

The mayhems dye is so strong. I ran 10ltrs of di through after running Aurora red, it looked clear but when i added pastal white after 2 days it had a pink tint

Mayhems · 18 Jul 2012 at 07:17

yeh its a bit strong !!!!!!! thats why we say run a tap though our system first for 15 min before then flushing with di. In testing i do this all the time.

OptimaLnrg · 18 Jul 2012 at 14:15

I ran tap water through for a while, pumping into the bath lol.

Atm I have some white paper behind my tube res as a background, last night it was clear. Left it pumping overnight and now there is a very faint pink tinge to it!

I plan to put pastel white in so I'll be needing it clear. I'm in no rush tbh because I can run my system on plain distilled in the meantime as long as I drain it every couple of days. I just propped the rad up against the wall and run it passive. I'm not stressing the cpu atm because I'm *supposed* to be doing a uni assignment, so cpu never goes over 35c.

I forgot to mention that when I drained the loop initially, after my OP, I saw lots of tiny shiny metally bits in the coolant. Since someone mentioned nickle flaking I bought an xspc raystorm cpu block, which has dropped my temps a couple of degrees and looks better ^_^. Cheaper too.. I may buy the ally bracket for it though..

rjk · 18 Jul 2012 at 14:23

that looks like staining although it is hard to tell from the pictures.

OptimaLnrg · 19 Jul 2012 at 23:06

Update
This morning I drained everything and there was still a very faint pink tinge to the distilled. I ran the tap through the rad again for a while, then ran the hot tap again for a while (until the end tanks were started to hurt my hand with the heat..) Then flushed the rad with distilled. Did the same with the pump and res.

Anyways I've been looking at my options and looking through some people's builds and tbh I've gone off the pastel look completely, it just looks like white tubing. And it's going to be ages before this system is fully flushed. I don't even think you'd notice the pink in the white because it's so faint now, but w/e.

I still have a few mayhems dyes here (bought a few to see the colours back when I was planning) So I just dropped 4 drops of blue non uv into the res. 2 drops at first was too faint (baring in mind it's a massive rad/loop). I've decided that this look is much better.

So I ordered 3 bottles of X1 clear. That way I can adjust the.. blueness.

As a side note, I've been running masterkleer tubing for the flushing and it hasn't leached at all. Not sure whether to reuse this or use the clearflex i have spare now. (clearflex has blue writing on it).

edit:

This is kinda the look I'm going for, minus the aluminium bracket for the raystorm which I also ordered (too many blue leds as it is.. and plexi is just tackyfest)

cobbly123 · 20 Jul 2012 at 01:15

Looking nice