Watercooling Mixing Metals

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I have a EK copper block for my CPU and have an XSPC RX360. Overkill for now until I get 2 GFX cards on it.

However, I want to start using Battery top-up water and silver kill coil but how do I know if I am mixing metals? Is it just the water blocks that matter or does the rad matter as well??

Im currently using Feaser One but insist of changing :)
 
corrosion inhibitor? - care to enlighten me :p

I know where to get PT nuke would that alone do the job?


From looking at this page:
http://www.xspc.biz/rx360.php

- Dimensions: 125x58.5x410mm (WxDxH)
- Copper Tubes and Fins
- 3 rows of 13mm by 2mm Tubes

It would appear that the internals of my rad are copper anyway.
 
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Right Ive been reading a bit more into water itself with de-ionized vs distilled.

I need an anti corrosive if I go with de-ionized because it will eat away at the copper and is also needed if I have to mix metals.

Distilled water does not eat away copper but will still need a silver coil or pt nuke.

So distilled water would be better then? Any other ideas please are more than welcome.
 
Anything you put in the loop will attack the metals. The issue is some of them will attack the metals very slowly indeed. Distilled is fractionally better than deionised, but they'll both pick up co2 during bleeding anyway and end up much of a likeness.

silver/nickel/copper/brass are generally considered fine together as the electrochemical potential between them is relatively small. Certainly you're very unlikely to see corrosion issues when using these, most barbs are nickel coated brass and most radiators are brass with copper fins. PT nuke is a marginally better idea than silver as it's copper sulphate, which is pretty unlikely to attack copper. Kill coil is more convenient though.

Mixing metals is an issue if you have aluminium and copper in physical contact, i.e. Swiftecs famous **** up. Jokester maintains that corrosion can't occur if the pieces are electrically isolated from each other, say connected by plastic tubes rather than copper piping. Again this will be an approximation but a reasonable one, corrosion will just go a lot slower if the metals are separated and insulated.

The conclusion most people reach is to not have aluminium anywhere in the loop. This is the approach I take but I'm hardly experienced. I believe a lot of people use antifreeze to stop algae and this is considered to reduce corrosion, but I've not seen a source for this.
 
silver/nickel/copper/brass are generally considered fine together as the electrochemical potential between them is relatively small. Certainly you're very unlikely to see corrosion issues when using these, most barbs are nickel coated brass and most radiators are brass with copper fins. PT nuke is a marginally better idea than silver as it's copper sulphate, which is pretty unlikely to attack copper. Kill coil is more convenient though.

So going on the basis that everything on my loop is a mix of copper/brass I should see no/little corrosion over long periods of time with using de-ionized water and just use PT nuke/Silver coil for preventing algae.
 
Yep. That's just my researched opinion though, it's quite possible a more experienced person will turn up and correct much of what I believe :)
 
Mixing copper and brass is fine - it's aluminium you need to avoid.

A corrosion inhibitor won't hurt though - antifreeze is very good as it generally contains corrosion inhibitors.

VW Pentosin Coolant is cheap as chips and can be mixed 1:1 or used neat if you prefer and if you have a VW/Audi/SEAT/Skoda you can claim the remains of the (large) bottle at a main service and that will probably keep you in coolant for the rest of your days.
 
Galvanic corrosion needs two things to occur. First it needs both metals to be in contact with a electrolyte (water in this case)for the transfer of ions in one direction and it needs both metals to be connected electrically for the transfer of electrons in the other direction.

As long as you don't have the metals in contact or otherwise have a conductive path between them you won't get galvanic corrosion. It's why Swiftech thought they would be ok by plating the aluminium tops of their GTX blocks, but when the plating failed they had rampant galvanic corrosion between the copper base plate and aluminium top.
 
Mixing copper and brass is fine - it's aluminium you need to avoid.

A corrosion inhibitor won't hurt though - antifreeze is very good as it generally contains corrosion inhibitors.

VW Pentosin Coolant is cheap as chips and can be mixed 1:1 or used neat if you prefer and if you have a VW/Audi/SEAT/Skoda you can claim the remains of the (large) bottle at a main service and that will probably keep you in coolant for the rest of your days.

Is that G11 or G12 as we get both types?
 
Thanks very much for the help, only other thing I can think of is when a product description states (say PT nuke) about mixing with water they only mention distilled water.

Is it safe to assume swapping that to de-ionized is fine?

So to sum up basically i need:

- Lots of De-ionized or Distilled water
- Corrosion Inhibitor
- Algae Inhibitor
- Stick with all copper blocks
 
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Is that G11 or G12 as we get both types?

I don't know - Pentosin is what VW call all their fluids - there is a Pentosin power steering fluid, brake fluid, general hydraulic fluid, so I couldn't tell you whether it's G11 or G12. I would suspect either would probably do.
 
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