One year on and my tubing and/or fluid is going green.

[Goose]

I put my first loop together last summer and just opened it up to blow out the dust. As you can see in the picture below there's a green tint to the tubing. Being new to this i've no idea if its the tubing or the fluid thats changed colour.

The tubing I used is Mayhems along with Mayhems Clear X1 fluid and all the rest of the components were purchased new and thoroughly cleaned/flushed before use.

My pump/res combo is an EK and that still looks OK which leads me to believe its the tubing rather than the fluid that's turned.

Is this anything to be concerned about?

Spoiler: Pic

 

[Goose]

Does look a little "acky" tbh, but it's hard as your whole picture looks a little bloomy. However, just drain it all over, get some good hot water in there and see if it flushes out... might be the water or it might be bits stuck to the tubing, it's hard ot say! Deffo needs flushing though no matter what!

Are you suggesting filling the loop with hot water and running it before draining? I might be wrong but i was under the impression that soft tubing doesn't like water above 50c?

 

[Goose]

Thanks for the replies guys.

FWIW the fluid in my res looks normal and my temps haven't changed either. I did use the Mayhems Blitz kit prior to filling the loop so i'm a little disappointed this has happened.

 

[Goose]

Is it a windowed case with direct sunlight ?

Not excusing the tubing, but it could be external bleaching from sunlight.

Its windowed yes but it doesn't get any sunlight.

Likely the tubing. Clear from experience tends to go cloudy quite quickly and after some time its quite easy to see the difference between new and used stuff.

One reason i use ZMT, would fit quite well in your build i think especially a neutral theme with clear which is what i use. Never had an issue, great stuff. Cheap too.

Thanks. I might take a look at ZMT tubing when i eventually drain my loop.

 

[Goose]

I’d be draining. Green often means something alive, it could gunk your blocks / pump etc and mean a horrible cleaning experience later on.

Could just be clouding, but it’s a clear fluid so I wouldn’t expect a green colour.

Did you use premix or concentrate?

It was premix.

 

[Goose]

@WantoN

I've taken another couple of pictures, this time of the reservoir. As you can see it doesn't look too bad but the O-Ring in the screw top has gone green. There's no visible gunk buildup that I can see, just the discoloration of the tubing and, presumable, all the O-Rings.

Could the colour change be the result of some sort of contamination or is it 100% something growing?

 

[Goose]

Honestly mate I can't say, watercooling is as much art as science. For me, I'd be quite sure that it's growing. You won't tend to find it where there's fast running water, hence why it's on areas of less flow; the o-rings and walls of the tubing. It could be that contimanation was the initial cause, but the issue is it looks like you've got growth.

My next step would be a full drain, dissasemble, clean, blitz and rebuild with new tubing. As before you could try adding biocide, but that matter is there, so even if you dislodge it it's going to end up somewhere. On the next build iif you've still got pre-mix, try adding a little more biocide.

Loops are never sterile, it's impossible with human hands building at home. Hence why we use organic inhibitors. But a clean start and some additional biocide should hopefully prevent it in future.

Thanks for info. I forgot to include the pictures in my last post so i'll add them here.

https://imgur.com/a/sMYMfnY

I emailed Mayhems about this and got the following response.

This can happen with the tube in a hot environment. Because the tubing doesn’t contain plasticizers it turns green over time. Tubing is a thow away item hence why its not priced high.

I dont think my loop has gotten all that hot and its only been a year. Plus it has changed the colour of the O-ring in my res.

 

[Goose]

Freezing resistance, biological and corrosion inhibitors. It's not much different to anti-freeze. I use XT1 Nuke and distilled water.

Do you mean the concentrate mixed in to distilled water?

 

[Goose]

According to an email from Mayhems...

40c is high any thing over 30 to 35c is high in a system, most water cooling computer parts are only rated to around 38c max temps. So yup 40c is high.

Youll need to clean your system and replace the tubing.

I'm considering breaking my loop down, selling it off and going back to air cooling. I was under the impression that anything under 50c for water temp is OK and for the 12 months i've been running this loop my water temp when gaming has been around 40c. Apparently thats no good and is the likely cause of my problems.

To keep the water temp to around 36c i need to have my fans running at about 1000rpm which is actually quite noisy sitting around one metre from the PC. Noise wise it isn't really much better than that of a GPU with a good air cooler.

This loop has turned in to massive, expensive disappointment and i dont think I really have the enthusiasm any more to try and find out how to improve it. I certainly dont have the funds for it anymore.

 

[Goose]

@pugheaven @WantoN

Thanks for the comments guys, i really appreciate it.

The problem is that my room actually remains quite cool, i dont have anything to actually measure the ambient temp but right now i'd be chilly if i was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Meanwhile my water temp is 28c with the system at idle and fans at 500rpm.

When i start gaming water temp will be around 35-37c with fans at 1000rpm which has to be at least 10c above ambient but more likely 15c or so.. My component temps are OK i guess but not great, my 5820k maxed out at 52c and my Vega 64 at 44c.

I've wondered if my fans are up to the job but they're Corsair ML120's which most people speak highly of. I dont know if its a flow issue because i dont have a flow sensor.

I just dont really know how troubleshoot a water loop.

 

[Goose]

@pastymuncher @WantoN @pc-guy

Thanks again for the comments. As I mentioned earlier i cant really do anything about this at the moment as I dont really have the time and cant be without my main system what with lockdown and all.

Once things have returned to normal and I have some time i'll flush and clean the system and let you know how i get on. To answer your question, Wanton, my radiators are both 360mm with one being 60mm thick and the other 30mm.

 

[Goose]

That's quite a lot of capacity. Is the thick rad push/0ull, whats your flow rate like?

I dont have a flow sensor but the pump RPM increases along with fan RPM. All 6 fans are pulling air in.

 

[Goose]

To ask a silly question, you have got fans on your rad or is it passive?

Yes, three ML120's on each rad.

 

[Goose]

Temps are ok mate as I say. I wouldn't be worried. Just clean it when you can spare some rig downtime. It's less than a days job.

I will do. I bought the thermometer @pastymuncher linked to and i've been quite surprised to find that the ambient temp is around 22c, it always feels much cooler than that.

Do you happen to know if the Blitz Kit kills algae?

 

[Goose]

@WantoN @pastymuncher

So ive started to break down my loop and after disassembling my cpu block i found this.

https://imgur.com/a/7qzRiOF

Does this look like algae or something else? I gave it a quick brush with a tooth brush which had no affect at all.

The other thing I discovered was a strong smell of vinegar. When I first bought the radiators i tried cleaning them with water and vinegar before giving up and using the mayhem blitz kit.

It seems obvious that the blitz kit didn't properly flush out the vinegar and I'm wondering if that may have contributed to my problem.

Any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Goose]

Is that blue/green a bit of liquid or is that actually on the block? It looks a bit like verdigris (copper staining/corrosion). You didn't run part 1 of mayhems blitz through the whole loop did you? Part 1 is only for radiators. Part 2 is what you run through the loop for up to 24 hours. I don't think it's biological and I am pretty sure it's not caused by the tubing. I apologise if you have told us before but what make and model radiators do you have?

No I didn’t run part one through the whole loop but maybe it hadn’t all flushed out when I assembled the loop and ran part two?

I just took my res apart and both o-rings are green, the bottom one had a fair amount of greenish black gunk on it. To me both rings look like they have been stained green. I haven’t tried cleaning them properly yet but rubbing them with kitchen towel has no affect.

Both radiators are Hardware Labs 360mm, an SR2 Extreme and a GTS.

 

[Goose]

I had a go with a toothbrush and the toothpaste I currently have and it didn’t make a bit of difference. I feel like such an idiot.

 

[Goose]

I’m going to have to shelve this for awhile. I suffer from a variety of physical and mental health illness and I really cant cope with this right now.

If my cpu block is only fit for the bin then I’ll probably just sell everything else if i can. I cant throw any more money at this by buying a new block.

 

[Goose]

@pastymuncher

Thanks very much for the advice.

If this has happened to my cpu block will it not also have happened to the insides of the radiators?

If it has and/or i cant remove the corrosion from the cpu block will they continue to corrode no matter what I do?

 

[Goose]

@WantoN

Thanks mate. Once i can muster some enthusiasm I’ll probably spend a week or so just flushing out the radiators. I guess I’ll just hook them up to the pump/res and keep replacing the water two or three times a day.

Will deionised water do? Distilled is actually quite expensive and given how much i intend on running through it’ll really add up.

The other thing i was wondering is whether or not I should check the PH level every time I change the water?