Wasmachineman's Water Cooling Adventures

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Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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I bought some Fleetguard ES Compleat EG coolant, will it attack acetal or nylon/PMMA in my loop?
 

Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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I bought some Fleetguard ES Compleat EG coolant, will it attack acetal or nylon/PMMA in my loop?
Car coolants are not recommended for PC cooling loops. Both EG and PG are more viscous and reduce flow in a loop. Both have much less thermal conductance and heat capacity over plain distilled water. 25% less.

Recommended is just plain distilled water and maybe a drop or two of biocide.

If you do use the car coolant, dilute it by 400%.

Some block and tubing manufacturers make a disclaimer that if PG or EG is used in their blocks or tubing, the warranty is void. Koolance and PrimoChill for example.
 

lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
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I bought some Fleetguard ES Compleat EG coolant, will it attack acetal or nylon/PMMA in my loop?
Recommended is just plain distilled water and maybe a drop or two of biocide.
Biocide in any case and distilled water. Nothing else. Maybe there is one specific additive to reduce bubbles esspecially for water cooling loops. But thats it. Color, car coolant,... enough examples where those killed whole loops. Even some certified color additions for water cooling turned out to break. Just dont try it.
 
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Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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Car coolants are not recommended for PC cooling loops. Both EG and PG are more viscous and reduce flow in a loop. Both have much less thermal conductance and heat capacity over plain distilled water. 25% less.

Recommended is just plain distilled water and maybe a drop or two of biocide.

If you do use the car coolant, dilute it by 400%.

Some block and tubing manufacturers make a disclaimer that if PG or EG is used in their blocks or tubing, the warranty is void. Koolance and PrimoChill for example.
Biocide in any case and distilled water. Nothing else. Maybe there is one specific additive to reduce bubbles esspecially for water cooling loops. But thats it. Color, car coolant,... enough examples where those killed whole loops. Even some certified color additions for water cooling turned out to break. Just dont try it.
I don't have anything from Koolance or PrimoChill. It's 50:50 diluted anyways so I guess i'll just go for it.
 

Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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Biocide in any case and distilled water. Nothing else. Maybe there is one specific additive to reduce bubbles esspecially for water cooling loops. But thats it. Color, car coolant,... enough examples where those killed whole loops. Even some certified color additions for water cooling turned out to break. Just dont try it.
Just about every colored coolant clogs up the microchannels in the finstack arrays from what I have read. I agree, just distilled water is best.
 

Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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But your automotive coolant HAS die in it. Either green, orange or blue. Yours is blue from the OSHA MSDS data sheet.
Appearance : Clear Blue Liquid. Colour : Blue
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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hoh shit I bought a NOS Zalman Reserator XT for way too much money :^) even comes with CPU+GPU blocks and the box lol.

4 GHz on a water cooled and voltmodded 940XM here I come!

As for the main project: highflow is out of ZMT tubing right now so that'll have to wait.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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Grab the popcorn, I just bought water cooling stuff from HF:

ZMT hoses are on backorder though, so my order is delayed until then. I also bought two Alphacool blanking plugs to shake my rad clean.
 
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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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+1 distilled water, I use a silver kill coil and my loops don't grow anything.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
1,872
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I refilled my H100i V1 for shits 'n giggles just now, wow that coolant in it is pretty gross. That, and the microfins had a small layer of crud stuck on it. Nothing a toothbrush and some IPA can't shift though.

Refilled it with 120ml of car coolant and i'm now running it off a testing PSU to recirculate the new coolant.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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SITREP: my Alphacool pump-res combo is ****ED. The axle for the pump impeller broke off during shipping. And I was wondering what that little "plastic" (it actually is ceramic) pin was in my res! Already mailed Highflow who then told me to mail Alphacool, hopefully they'll send me another pump under warranty. So much for the reservoir being Toughbook-tier tough:

At least the loop is taking shape. Wow, EK ZMT is hard to cut, I had to use a rather sharp kitchen knife and even then it didn't give clean cuts. Question: is a small amount of distilled water in my loop a algae danger? I drained as much as I can but there's still some left in my rad.
 

Keith Myers

Active Member
Oct 10, 2020
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By yourself a tubing cutter. Makes things a lot easier. Distilled water does not promote algae. Its contaminated water or other biological remnants left over in custom cooling parts that allows algae growth.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
1,872
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Interesting email by Highflow: I can buy a new pump and get the money back for the broken one as I needed some more stuff from HF anyway. Let's hope they won't be complaining about the fact the screws are missing. (I had the great idea of throwing ALL my black computer screws and the ones for the Eisstation in a single bowl lol)