I’ve just built a new PC with an AIO for the CPU. It’s my first time using water cooling of any kind. I’m wondering what happens as an AIO gets older and how it will age and potentially fail. I see threads about people cleaning out their custom loops, but obviously I won’t be doing that, so I’m just wondering what to expect in the coming years. Will it gunk up in some way? Will the pump give up the ghost? Will it slowly get less effective at cooling? Would I be likely to notice temperatures rising? Obviously the worst case scenario is that at some point a seal goes pop and it dumps half a litre of coolant all over everything, so I’d like to know what - if any - warning signs there are ahead of that.
What happens when an AIO gets too old?
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Soldato
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There is always the danger that the pump might fail, which will shut the PC down immediately, but what is more likely is they lose water and slowly become less efficient with time. Just keep an eye on the temperatures.
Man of Honour
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In using a 10 year old Corsair aio which is still going strong, sure you could be unlucky but as long as it doesn't leak it would just fail like the pump.
Worst case scenario is it leaking/bursting and damaging other components, that's extremely unlikely however.
Chances are you'll end up with a pump failure at some point, or due to evaporation over time there wont be enough coolant left to be effective. This could take a very long time however, and in the latter case some AiO's do (albeit rarely) have a port that allows you to top off the water. In this instance your PC will register high temps and shut itself down before they becoming damaging to anything.
You might end up with gunk/clogging but I can't think of many instances where that's proven to be a problem with a closed loop.
Chances are you'll end up with a pump failure at some point, or due to evaporation over time there wont be enough coolant left to be effective. This could take a very long time however, and in the latter case some AiO's do (albeit rarely) have a port that allows you to top off the water. In this instance your PC will register high temps and shut itself down before they becoming damaging to anything.
You might end up with gunk/clogging but I can't think of many instances where that's proven to be a problem with a closed loop.
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One company screwed up their material choices and screwed up their blocks with corrosion. Bit of media about that.
Not least because everyone else managed to make their loops corrosion free.