Small problem with my water cooled system - Swiftech Corrosion Issues!

[WJA96]

OK - my gaming system was running a trifle warm - but it's the summer and I didn't think too much of it, and then my pump (Swiftech MCP-655) started screeching. Not a little - a lot!

So I stripped it all down and the entire system is full of black and white granules. Can you guess where they are coming from? The Swiftech Apogee GTX CPU block is the culprit.

I think I'd have to say avoid this particular unit unless it has the copper top. I should have listened to the various people who said these would corrode, but I didn't think Swiftech would put out anything so spectacularly poor.

The radiator and pump were both full of the little specs of corroded material and I reckon the pump is trashed, and the radiator's probably not much better. The all-copper and acrylic EK 8800GTX GPU blocks are also fine, as is the reservoir, but I'm truly gobsmacked that such a shocking design could have been sold at all.

In the fourth picture you can see the anodizing has been eaten through, and on the fifth picture it looks very much like some of the copper fins have also disappeared.

 

[WJA96]

I think it may be because I've been using this machine to fold for the last 7 months solid - 60C core temperatures (3.8GHz) running 24/7 can't have helped.

 

[WJA96]

Maybe.

Tho I'm still going to put it down to a shoddy design and terrible workmanship. Going for anodized aluminium is bad enough, but failing to ensure that it's done well enough to avoid the above is criminal for a company like Swiftech.


Still, atleast they offer a copper top for only another 20 of your fine British pounds.

I've sent them an e-mail - let's see what their response is. As they are US based, I doubt I'll get a single digit salute, but who knows?

 

[WJA96]

This should be interesting as it looks very much lik ethey are giving a single-digit salute to anyone who hasn't used HydrX in their loop. I am using Deionized, distilled and microbiologically filtered Ice Water with Algaecide, so who knows if they'll accept that as a valid product to use.

Given the warnings on other US products I would have thought that this would have had 'USE HYDRX' all over the front in big letters - just avoid getting sued by US customers.

I think I'll contact my UK source as well.

 

[WJA96]

Swiftech should be ashamed of themselves tbh.

I agree. Their default position seems to be that it's calcium build-up because their MIL-spec plating can't have been breached. Well, I beg to differ.

I would seriously think of stripping down your whole loop m8 because those missing fins could be anywhere. Also you would likely find that your water has been turned into a mild acid (much like battery acid but on a lesser scale) so I wouldn't be surprised if your radaitor is showing similar symtoms like you said, although it is hard to check so best just throw it away. Your pump 'should' be fine unless any 'floaters' have damaged the impeller, just give it a damn good rinse out but the pump is relatively easy to check over.

The pump is trashed. 'Bits' of corrosion got in behind the magnetic impeller and half the ceramic is missing off the top of the little nubbin the magnetic impeller sits on. Hence the squealing noises that alerted me to the problem. I have also decided that for the sake of another £60 it's not worth trying to salvage the radiator as no matter how much I flush it, it still keeps shedding more 'bits'.

Hopefully this hasn't put you off watercooling and swiftech deserve to lose a lot of custom over this as a company such as swiftech, widely recommended in the watercooling scene should have WITHDRAWN the GTX upon first signs of them being faulty ( a year or so ago?). Shame on them tbh!

No fear of me being put off watercooling. But it is now my mission to make sure as many people as possible know that Swiftech is synonymous with galvanic corrosion and that they should be avoided if at all possible. With their attitude to custiomer service, would you want anything of theirs - even if it didn't have any aluminium in it?

Shame you didn't see my post on the subject a while ago :

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=11076804&postcount=13

or chose to ignore me

Well, I actually bought the block in November of last year, so it was a little bit late to take the warning, but I'm the sort of person who won't usually buy 2 of anything, and I like to test everything myself. In this case, I tested it to an untimely destruction and it took out the pump and RAD as well unfortunately. Luckily, both had seen a long and fruitful lives before this, so I'm not too broken up about those.

 

[WJA96]

Did you decide to look because of mine or were you going to look anyway? Let me know if you get any joy out of Swiftech; I didn't bother to complain. Yet.

It was running warm, and I had a quick look at the tubing, and it looked fine, but today it started squealing, so I stripped it down. I wish I'd stripped it down before to be honest, but you live and learn.

 

[WJA96]

Mine is way beyond a new top. The rubber seal is corroded into the top. If I try to remove it, it will not reseat, so it's fubared basically.

 

[WJA96]

Nasty stuff. Wasn't expecting it to ever get that bad despite all the stories I had heard.
Will be interesting to see what Swiftech say if they reply.

Indeed. Actually - the more you dig around, the more corroded blocks are appearing. According to posts in Xtreme, the Japanese distributor has had a significant proportion of his stock returned for corrosion and he'll now only replace it with GTX-Cu or another brand of block.

Excuse to get a better block though I guess!

I've never needed an excuse before have I?

EK Supreme I think. Slovenian Acetal and Copper. BTW - has anyone else noticed that Swiftech's block/packaging don't have a country of origin on them? I thought that was illegal for resale in the UK?

 

[WJA96]

OK - Swiftech has very generously offered to replace the top with another aluminium one. Just the top, as apparently all I need to do is clean the base and it'll be fine. I've declined that offer as the retailer who sold me the block has offered to let me buy a new pump, block and radiator at cost, which is a reasonable offer as it wasn't the retailer's fault.

I've given the unit to a friend of mine who is Professor of Metallurgy and he's not entirely convinced it was actually plated at all, he thinks it's just been coloured black, but he has the right kind of microscope to check the MIL-spec claims being made by Swiftech.

I have asked Swiftech to name their supplier, as to be MIL-spec it has to be on a list of people who have signed up to be accredited and follow all the various QA regimes required by the US military and the US standards bodies. So far they haven't responded. That and the lack of any country of manufacture information makes me fairly suspicious about where they sub-contracted the manufacture out to. If it turns out to be anywhere outside the mainland USA.... eg. China, then it could be hard to prove they met the MIL-spec. The lack of any batch-code information would also lead me to believe that they couldn't link a specific unit to a specific production batch which wouldn't comply with the specification they claim to meet. It will be interesting to see what my colleague comes up with.

 

[WJA96]

One of the reason i when with the Acetal toped GT at the time, as I'd seen a few go bad, but yours is the worst
Sorry it happen to you, just glad that the Reservators don't seam to suffer from this (for both our sakes)

The reserators are just double anodized, but there is no metal-to-metal contact in a reserator setup whereas here you actually have the aluminium plate in direct contact with the copper plate. If it's not been properly protected in one way or another (and even paint would do it apparently) then you're going to get this happening.

I've had people from German water-cooling suppliers in contact with me offering help from German technical people as they're on a mission to prove you can use Aluminium in water-cooling loops safely, but it looks like something pretty bad went on at Swiftech at the time this block was being manufactured. Off the record, they're saying Swiftech believed his suppliers and didn't do any extended pre-launch testing, which is why his installation instructions are wrong.

If you actually look at Swiftech's product range, they don't actually make anything much at all - They don't make the tubing, the pumps come from Laing, some other far eastern outfit makes the radiators and I'm assuming they sub-contract out the blocks too. They seem to have made their name when they took on some Australian chaps design and mass-produced it.

Does anyone know a good US law firm?

 

[WJA96]

Dear wja96,

Unfortunately your registration at XtremeSystems Forums did not meet our membership requirements. Therefore your registration was deleted.

Sorry,
XtremeSystems Forums

No bad publicity for Swiftech on there then. Given that they are advertising here, I wonder how long this thread will last.

 

[WJA96]

i had corrosion in just 2 weeks... changed it to the copper top.. make sure you clean your rad mine was stuffed full of crap...

I'm not chancing the radiator with a new pump, so I'm getting a new one of those too.

 

[WJA96]

mine wasn't as bad as yours though.. i only noticed because i changed cpu. hope there wasn't any component damage cause that o-ring looks ready to leak..

Yours or mine? I've effectively written mine off, and the initial lab results don't look good unfortunately.

 

[WJA96]

For you or Swiftech?!

Bit off about the Xtreme Systems log in as well...

For Swiftech. It looks very much from initial microscopy testing like the block hasn't been treated to the standards claimed. I now have to decide if I want to pay for a research student to do a full write-up for me or not. I've asked Swiftech to provide me with any information at all about the manufactuer, and they've not responded yet, but if I was them I would be talking to a lawyer before I admitted anything - especially as they've made claims that might not actually stack up. I am definitely saying might as I have no proof they had these made outside the US, by a contractor without a USDOD MIL-spec number, but if they did...

Also - if you look at the threads Cob posted, all of Gabriel Rauchon's (Swiftech) posts have been deleted from the threads, but you can still see the post numbers in the quotes in other people's posts. I'm not sure why, but it has been done. As all the moderators on that forum seem to be very close to Swiftech, it must have been done for a reason.

 

[WJA96]

Edit: block body isn't painted just die applied (so no protection of any form) and is also not anodised - it's electroplated with nickel (MIL-C-26074E grade B - on scale of a-c) and then Zinc Cobalt (ASTM B 840-99 grade 6 - now a super seeded standard).

MIL-C-26074E grade B (0.005" thickness) is apparently not considered to be protection against corrosion as it generally fails the 1-hour submersion in a flume of salt-water test ie. it's rubbed off by pressurised water-streams (where would you find a pressurised water stream in a CPU block?) - you need the Grade A for that, and, as you say the ASTM standard has now been superceded.

It appears very much like there was little or no pre-launch worst case testing done, and it looks like no-one properly questioned the protection methods. And Swiftech still haven't told me if there is batch traceability, if they get QA reports on production batches, or even where their product is manufactured. I'm now going to buy 5 more GTXs from different places to have them tested too. If they're all like the one I had originally, then I'll send the report from the University to whatever is in place trading standards wise in the US. I'm sure some consumer-group will sue them for us, just for the hell of it. It really hacks me off that he obviously thinks he can get away with this, because most of his customers are abroad, and we must all be stupid, or accepting of his well-intentioned (he used Aluminium because he liked the way it looked) incompetence and lack of product testing.

 

[WJA96]

Like, don't take it personal, man!

I'm not - but it's the summer, business is a bit slack and I need something to do to keep me busy. Spending £1000 on a metallurgy report to prove Swiftech haven't controlled their suppliers properly sounds as good a way to w[h]ile away an evening as any....

 

[WJA96]

Interesting. It sounds as if you've already decided that Swiftech are merely negligent rather than duplicitous. Many might think otherwise. Allegedly.

I haven't decided anything (I hope) but it's far nicer to believe that the guy believes he's doing the right thing, rather than try and make him out to be something less appealling. Besides, you have to be careful what you say to make sure the thread doesn't get deleted.

I am very close to making an appeal for corroded Aluminium top owners to come forward in a class action type suit, but my US lawyer obviously doesn't work over a weekend, and he's not told me what to say yet.

 

[WJA96]

the anodization seems to be in name only/QUOTE]

As far as I know they're not actually anodised - more like soaked in dye. That gives no protection whatsoever.

 

[WJA96]

The warning around HydrX seems way too low-key to be able to claim immunity

If you still have your packaging, does it have a country of origin on it?

 

[WJA96]

It clearly says on two sides:

Made in the USA

That's really interesting because mine has no country of origin markings at all. I'm starting to wonder if mine's a fake or something.