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

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?:D

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?
 
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.
 
Nice one WJA,
Keep us informed, looks like this block went dodgy in the right hands. :D


Doubt you'll get the same thing happening with the D-Teks (someone mentioned above) the top is made of Plastic :D
 
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)
 
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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?
 
Email from Xtremesystems Forums said:
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.
 
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.

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

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

mine wasn't as bad on the top plate, all you need to do is give the copper base a really good clean with an old tooth brush. and buy the copper top for it.
 
mine wasn't as bad on the top plate, all you need to do is give the copper base a really good clean with an old tooth brush. and buy the copper top for it.

p.s you'll need a new o-ring as the copper top does not come with one.
 
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.

Just been doing some extra research on this - so sorry for the science lession but here goes.

Galvanic corrosion occurs when two (or more) dissimilar metals are brought into electrical contact under water. (aka wet and touching)

Preventing galvanic corrosion

1) Electrically insulate the two metals from each other (aka plastic spacer/rubber washer)
2) keep the metals dry and/or shielded from ionic compounds (salts, acids, bases) aka paint or electroplating (edit: anodising does not fully shield as it's porus, a sealant is required but that normal practice - teflon is a good example of a sealant and are applied in different thickness dependant on use.)
3) Sacrificial anodes
4) Apply electrical current to oppose the corrosive galvanic current

Relative size of anode and cathode also has a major impact - This is known as the "Area Effect" - the smaller the anode surface area relative to the cathode, the faster it corrodes.

So if WJA96 block was only thinly sheilded (shielded from ionic compounds) and he/manufaturer made a tiny scratch in the aluminium (anode) when opening/closeing/cleaning, You have corrosion central.

Ratio of aluminium scratch surface area to surface area of ALL copper pins is extremely high, paint not that great an insulate so corrosion start quickly. Rust starts bubbling off more paint until aluminium and copper in direct contact and electrical current flows freely. As more aluminium is made bare corrosion slows down and the slimes start protecting your block instead of the paint!

But by then the corroding aluminium has make your coolant more acid. This then starts to eat all your water loop components especially the seals and part corroded aluminium. Nice little chemical vicious circle.

SO aluminium and copper can be mixed in a loop (small risk of acid corrosion) but should never be in direct contact with each other without at lease two of the 4 ways in place and fully tested. Edit: this is my own view btw and the GTX has two layers of the SAME type of protection [shielding]

Hope that helps people understand some of the why's and how's in this thread.

Edit: Regarding the two posts above - the corrosion has 'protected' the copper so yes a good clean, to remove the slime off the pins should make it 'almost' as good as new - but the acid attack from months of use with low pH coolant will NOT just clean off, thats perminant damage.

Having another look at the photos - I guess the bent pins are what scratched the top as the corrosion is worst at the edges (but could be the rust bubbles bend the pins)

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).
 
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Another thing about Swiftech, their Stealth block.

Had one, went to install the posts around where the block touches the core and one of them just span, span and span. Thread was completely naff.

I had two ApogeeGTXs, one was right when it was launched and came in OEM packaging, second was in retail packaging.

The first one was dire in terms of build quality when comparing to the second, base wasn't even cut square, top was sanded poorly. Massive variation in production quality.

I like some of their products, the Micro res is fantastic but other products leave a lot to be desired.
 
that is a big eye opener, had my zalman reserator 1 in distilled water for 2 years with no change of water for 2 years or anti algae and everything looks and runs fine! in the next few weeks when i get a new pump i will be flushing out!
 
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?:rolleyes:) - 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.
 
Like, don't take it personal, man!

Shall we hear it for:

Abit's capacitors on the BE6-2?
IBM's infamous Deathstars?

US buyers got compensation, elsewhere no-one got a bean. UK consumer protection is a joke.
 
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....
 
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