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What made you go Water Cooling?

I went to water cooling because....


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Hi guys, I was thinking of going for the watercooling route (PC gets a mite bit warm for my liking) but I had some questions about it.

First off, I'm assuming that I can test my loop without having the heat sinks attached to the parts right?

Second, and the most important to me I suppose, I keep hearing that it's higher maintenance than standard air. What kind of maintenance (and problems I suppose) would I expect? Is it essentially the same as changing the water for a fish tank?
 

sneekypeet

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#1 Yes, just use a jumper on a PSU and you can test in or out of the case.

#2 Fan and radiator dust is the only real maintenance, so make them somewhat accessible so you can clean them. Of course case filters and a dust free house helps with the length of time between cleanings, but eventually dust will build and lower performance.

As for maintaining the rest of the loop, if the water starts to look cloudy or funky in any way, you may consider flushing the coolant, but as far as the rest, once its built it is pretty maintenance free.
 

cdawall

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Same thing Sneeky said, but to increase I interval between water changes consider running a 25% coolant mix with deionized water. Stops algae growth as a whole. Went about two years between my last coolant change and only changed it because the loop was torn down.
 
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I initially went for water cooling for the performance, to get every bit out of my hardware that I could.
It even became a nice little hobby for me. Doing total DIY systems and even going to manufacture with my own block design, as in my avatar. It's been a total blast and a good way to relax and use up some time.
Now I do it for the combination of performance with acceptable noise. My rig is very much quieter these days compared to my first forays into water cooling. :p

Heck my current setup is a modded Antec 920 that has a res, a Koolance 7970 full cover block, 240 and 120 rads, with pwm modded gentle typhoons. It's a overclocking beast and is FAR quieter than the 7970 stock heatsink could ever think of being.
 
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Thanks for the info mate. Previously I was running with high CFM fans and for filters, I'm using stockings, great because they don't seem to impede air intake (until they get clogged with dust) and they don't let much dust through (last time I had to clean the internals was a bit over 8 months ago).

Biggest problem with that is 1: making the filters (gotta make a cardboard frame), and 2: store clerks look at you funny when you buy stockings.
 

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I run pure distilled water. Haven't flushed my loop in 2 years. Still crystal clear. I'll be flushing soon though, only because I got new goodies to install.
 

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I run pure distilled water. Haven't flushed my loop in 2 years. Still crystal clear. I'll be flushing soon though, only because I got new goodies to install.

What did you get?
 

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since i have my xeon setup i haven't flushed it i only added like 200/300 ml pure car coolant every thing else is condensed water from my dryer
 
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Does that really work with no ill effect? The Car Coolant I mean. Like if I used pure car coolant, would I run into any issues like corrosion or mucking?
 

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you don't need much, maybe like half a cap full and use it for the anti corrosive and anti fungal/algal additives.

I used to use a product called Water Wetter, any additive is basically fine, but I usually just use water. Last rig ran for well over a year with only dusting of the fans and rad. There was some evaporation in that time but almost not enough to notice really, just the level in the res was slightly lower when the loop was off.
 

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Does that really work with no ill effect? The Car Coolant I mean. Like if I used pure car coolant, would I run into any issues like corrosion or mucking?

Car coolant is much to thick to be used pure. Most anyone should go even with cold water setups is about 25%.
 
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Thanks guys, now all I need to do is save up the dough for a new GPU and a W/C system.
 

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What did you get?

Danger Den full cover block for the 580, some black tubing, and thinking of swapping over to the D5's I have laying around in both loops. Just need another res.
 

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Cool. I am getting ready to put the i7 970 back under water, but not the GPU's or motherboard. I am going to wait until I upgrade:)
 
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I run pure distilled water. Haven't flushed my loop in 2 years. Still crystal clear. I'll be flushing soon though, only because I got new goodies to install.

Pure distilled or Pure Bidistilled?

Thanks, I might drop my Aquacomputer coolant which is awesome but man it costs something like 30-40 Eur every flush.
 
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Because an AIO was in my price range on a new cooler. :D
 

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Pure distilled or Pure Bidistilled?

Thanks, I might drop my Aquacomputer coolant which is awesome but man it costs something like 30-40 Eur every flush.

Just regular distilled that costs less than $1 at Walmart.
 
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Thank you, sir.
 
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I also use distilled water, with just a silver coil to keep it clean.

Works great and so much cheaper than the bottled coolant stuff.
 
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Dunno about the silver in your loop, do you have any nickel plated part?

A Koolance rep said to me that I shouldn't mix silver with nickel.
 
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never heard anything about it and never had any problem.

don't think it hurts nickel, only algae.
 

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A Koolance rep said to me that I shouldn't mix silver with nickel.

I have never heard this either though I don't time to Google right now. However, I will say that just because dude works for Koolance (or whomever) doesn't necessarily mean he knows wtf he is talking about, whether this particular piece of info turns out to be true or not.
 

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I read one time someone was blaming the silver for the nickel plating being crap and coming off (I think it was EK, not sure), don't remember when or where, but I read from many others that it's completely fine to mix them. However, my nickel gpu block seems to be crap, and though it may be because of the silver coil, I would much more likely attribute it to the crap EK nickel plating job
 
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