zoltan

Oops my second post crossed yours... Yes you're absolutely right, and the product being relatively good quality, there is no real problem with it, it's just that the majority of the resellers of the rebranded Esmooth stuff sells for much lower prices than Meze. I thought that was pretty relevant info. When Logan posted his review, I mentioned the same on the teksyndicate site.

I see that the thread is unlocked again, good call thing to lock the thread to keep the peace. Earlier on the manufacturer's site was offline, but it's online again now. Maybe it's interesting to check out the OEM page: http://www.woodheadphones.com/oemodm This page clearly states that the 8mm drivers are developed by Esmooth, and there are other resellers mentioned, like Jivo and Zagg. I found Jivo products in online stores, the same in-ear headphones are available there for about 35 USD, which is what the Esmooth branded models usually cost in retail. The Esmooth headphones rebranded by Meze that Linus reviewed are available in Germany since 2010 for about 35 USD equivalent through a German electronics and accessories importer that also provides the guarantee for the products. Again, these products are relatively well regarded in terms of sound quality for the price, for the lower non-Meze price that is... There is also a pic of all the parts esmooth sells, and the Meze parts are clearly visible in the picture.

I saw Linus' video on the Meze 11 earphones. Linus mentions he did research on these earphones, but I seriously doubt that, because then he would certainly have noticed the Scandal about Meze on the internet. This looks like the inverse of the Armaggeddon incident lol... This is a representation of my understanding of what alledgedly happened at headfi.org: Some time ago, Antonio Meze was banned from headfi.org because of misuse of fora to promote his products with misleading information, alledgedly because: - the entire Meze product range is nothing but the rebranded eSmooth OEM product range, available for a third to a fifth of the Meze price on eBay and Amazon, and even cheaper from the Chinese manufacturer himself. - there was absolutely no part of any Meze product designed by Antonio Meze, it's all rebranded OEMware. - the only value added by Meze is the marketing. - Meze doesn't manufacture anything, it's a reseller based in Romania without any real company organisation or support infrastructure, it's basically one guy, Antonio Meze, with a computer and an internet connection. - the eSmooth earphones are pretty good in reviews, the products are probably fine, just not worth the high price Meze charges. - when Antonio Meze was confronted with this, he denied that his products were rebranded eSmooth headphones, but later eSmooth confirmed that they are OEM for Meze. Headfi.org didn't take Meze's lies lightly, and saw that he had made several different accounts to praise his products on the forum all from the same IP address, and banned him. Source for all of this: several threads on headfi.org I don't have anything against chinese made cheap products, it's just that consumers should be well-informed about where these products come from, and who designs and manufactures the products, and what their real retail value is, if I see what happened over at headfi.org, I don't really feel like spending money on a no-value-added reseller that alledgedly lied to one of the most influential headphone review organizations on the internet, but of course, that's just my interpretation of the several threads on this at headfi.org, everyone has to make up his own mind. Edit: it was also on overclock.net: http://www.overclock.net/t/1396063/meze-88-classics On E-Bay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Esmooth-ES-220-Ebony-Wood-In-Ear-Headphones-iPod-iPhone-HTC-Samsung-Blackberry-/400478358639?pt=US_Headphones&hash=item5d3e5ecc6f

It would surprise me if there were no liquid cooling parts in SA. I've built a water cooled rig from off-the-shelf parts in Windhoek in 2003, and I'm sure everything that's available there is imported into the country from SA. Anyway, you won't need a pressure valve, constant gas pressure and slight overpressure in the empty part of the res is what you want to avoid boiling and accelerated evaporation. Heavy overpressure could become an issue if you're planning on using rigid plumming for instance or if your reservoir is under huge pressure, but usually if your radiator surface is big enough, it's not very probable to have such an overpressure. You need air at the top of your res, like Ghost said, to allow for pressure variances, not only due to liquid or gas expansion inside the loop, but also because of variance in atmospheric pressure outside the loop. A pressure valve without air reserve in the reservoir would leak liquid, so you'll have to use an expansion vath with a membrane if you're planning on going airless. That is doable, it's the way central heating systems for houses work airless, and a small membrane expansion vath is actually very cheap, but it has plumming connections, so you'll have to adapt your entire loop to such an arrangement. It's doable though and I would definitely applaud the effort.

USB is not directly controlled from within a virtual box, so I'm afraid it won't work and you'll have to use a PCI WiFi adapter. The best way to use a pentest distro is to run it live from a USB flashdrive or SDCard on a PC with the HDD Physically disconnected, in which case it will not be virtual but will offer the same security at the possible cost of having to throw away the USB flashdrive/SDCard if you've done something really hairy. In any case, with a live distro, the USB WiFi adapter will work.

+1, only go for full blocks, you can sell the GPU cards with the blocks when you upgrade, and they will hold their value really well with the blocks. Full blocks is an easier, more reliable, and more cost effective solution any way you put it.

I really hope so mate, it would be such a technical advancement, and I hope that RedHat keeps pushing the envelope and that new distros that are gaming-oriented like Manjaro, Angel, Spark, etc can change the very fabric of which the gaming market is made, but I don't think GNU/Linux will ever become a major gaming platform, because there is too much choice and compatibility and options and features etc... so much that it's impossible for any company to provide consumer support for software on GNU/Linux. Even Samsung is now offering the GS4 with vanilla Android to cut down on development and support costs, if others follow and do the same, there will only be vanilla Android left and the platform will be locked down, even if it owes everything to the open source community. Everyone knows linux is the future platform, even Microsoft itself can only provide a demo of it's XBox Illumiroom technology with GNU/Linux and linux native games, it's just that commerce will prevail over common sense any time. As you say, a lot of hope is vested in Gabe Newell, who points at the deficiencies of the legacy software platforms, and who actually succeeds in providing native GNU/Linux games for Valve titles and the combined effort of Valve developers and the FOSS-community have succeeded in delivering great compatibility and support (except Canonical that has the official Steam support, but yeah...), so he's a great example of how free and open source actually is much better, but his main business is to retail third party software via the Steam store, and I'm just not sure if other developers will be willing and able to do the same thing Valve did, and provide the same quality. Microsoft is already re-DRM-ing the Steam games on Windows 8 to lock down Valve, they will do everything they can to sabotage technological advancement they themselves cannot afford, and they will do everything they can to steal the open source technology and lock it down. That's just how it goes, the marketing motor is running at full speed to convince users to downgrade to the Windows 8 clickfest GUI nightmare, giving up features (which makes the system lighter and thus a bit faster for a week or so on a new install, compare the speed between a new install of Windows 7 and a new install of Windows 8 though and there will be hardly any difference, compare the speed of a year-old install of Windows 8 with a new install of Windows 7 and Windows 8 will bite the dust, that's just how lying to consumers in the name of commerce goes), and it's nothing but the classic honey trap: users use Windows 8 and all their Steam games, with which Microsoft has nothing to do, are re-DRM'ed by Microsoft, and they hold the consumers in their death-grip again, suddenly the cross-platform features Steam offers for Steamplay games are blocked by Microsoft, and the consumers have to make a choice, play on GNU/Linux and have all the features and speed but less games, or play on Windows and be locked down from playing the games on GNU/Linux. And then there is the matter of the GPU drivers, which are not made available to open source platforms, even though they exist, and probably are even better than the DirectX versions, because I can't imagine Sony or Microsoft bringing consoles to the market with AMD GPU's that don't have all the features, and it's clear that those consoles do not run on the Microsoft Windows kernel since Microsoft is demonstrating it with linux native games. I hope that Gabe Newell doesn't simply keep pushing native GNU/Linux game development, but also keeps pushing wine, because if wine can get really good in the nearby future, it would take the wind out of the sails of Microsoft, because Windows as a platform would not be necessary anymore, and they couldn't keep the platform locked down fast enough to stop GNU/Linux becoming the preferred platform, at least in the non-Anglo-American world.

Part of the problem with Windows as a gaming platform is that game developers are resting on their laurels and not innovating, just like there is no innovation on the Windows platform itself. In the last years, there have been no really exciting revolutionary titles for Windows. Hence the interest of the gamers for indie games, which is fuelled by this impasse in development, and there is a lot of indie stuff coming out on linux. Linux has a lot more headroom for technological evolution than Windows, and even Microsoft knows it (anyone that's seen the Microsoft XBox 720 Illumiroom video has noticed that all the games shown off in that video were linux games...). Microsoft wants to get rid of the Windows platform, and they are doing everything they can to make a new platform that is based on the linux kernel but is not GNU/Linux, just like MacOS is OpenBSD but not Apache-license like BSD is. I would be prepared to bet that there is an open source reference in the EULA of the XBox 720. I'm sure it's just a closed source GNU/Linux clone they have running on it. Same for PS4. Now GNU/Linux as such will never be a gaming platform for traditional AAA-Titles. Just like Adobe applications will never be available for GNU/Linux, even though they run on MacOS, which is OpenBSD, so there is no technical reason why Adobe applications wouldn't already run natively on GNU/Linux. Or just like Canonical trying to close the Ubuntu source because of the deal with Steam. The reality is that software that runs on an open source operating system, has several downsides for companies: - it's open source, so users can provide proof of defects, security leaks and privacy invasion/spyware easily, which means product liability (which would be a first in consumer grade software) and extra investment needed in development and quality control (which would also be a first for consumer grade software), because any geek community WILL be able to do it better and will criticize the crap out of the product; - it's open source, so you can't secretly lock down features to force consumers to buy new hardware; - it's open source, so you can't make consumers pay for the software, only for support, but noone wants to provide consumer software support, it would drive anyone bat crazy (the open source commercial model like RedHat or IBM or Novell have succesfully adopted only works with enterprises and govermental/educational customers); - it's open source based, so it's really easy to pirate, which limits the monetising to online micro-transactions, which is enough for indie and non-Anglo-American game studios, but not enough for traditional Anglo-American game studios, that invest much more in marketing than in actual game development. So while the 20 year old Windows NT platform really isn't viable anymore, and everyone that is honest has to admit it (and things like Microsoft Illumiroom demos running on an XBox with linux games only provide superfluous proof thereof), an open source commercial model is not viable for the consumer market, where you have to take the consumer's money up front based on false promises and snake oil marketing, and then can't care about customer support at all, because there is no way to deal with consumer customer support. So GNU/Linux, even though it has already become the prevalent computing platform, will never become the prevalent software consumption platform, and since games in the form we know now are consumer software products, it will never break through on GNU/Linux, unless the Indie gaming market takes over, and frankly, that is a distinct possibility, there is a lot of talent out there that Anglo-American companies can't afford anymore, and they will produce games even if it's the last thing they will do. Conclusion: keep Windows 7 as your secondary operating system for gaming, don't downgrade to Windows 8 and the Microsoft re-DRM practice, but keep your options open and enjoy the much better computing experience GNU/Linux offers for everything else but AAA-title gaming and Adobe/Steinberg applications. Don't step into the Ubuntu-trap, use a sensible distro, learn and master, and you'll be able to influence the evolution whilst improving your computing experience as a whole. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

+1 Water is not H2O in natural form. It's H3O+ and OH- together. Deionised water is H2O, until the bottle is opened. When it's poored, it's mixed with ions in the ambient atmosphere, and it instantly ionises. Whaler is quite right: there is no neutral to alkyne liquid that conducts thermal energy enough to be used for liquid cooling, that doesn't also conduct electrical energy. No pure single compound, no homogenous mixture, no solution, no alloy of liquid metals, it doesn't exist. Mineral oil doesn't conduct electrical energy, but conducts thermal energy very well, but it is often acid and it is a solvent, and it is abbrasive/corrosive, so it will corrode sensitive materials like plastics etc if those are not sealed from oxygen completely. It will also corrode the materials that are taken out of the oil on contact with the air, plastics will fall apart, metals will lose their shine, that is, if you can get the oil off, because it clogs up in all corners and oil creeps in where blood can't. Functional liquid cooling is just an enthusiast thing I guess.

Mercury is also highly conductive of electricity, not just of heat energy. Another thing is that it has high surface tension, high coherence, low adherence, it rejects most other materials, so some thought must go to the materials the thermal interface surfaces are made of. But seriously, it's pure theory, mercury is evil stuff, and I don't think it's legal to have mercury in sufficient quantities. The viscosity is good though, it should work. When I was a small kid, we used to play with mercury because it was cool, thinking back that was very very dangerous.

In Fedora, make sure you have pavucontrol installed (you didn't say what DE you're using in Fedora, nor if you're on fedora 18 or 17). Then you can just select the Soundblaster card from the sound icon and it will just work. It doesn't need any drivers, it's supported by the kernel as with most hardware in linux. The AMD proprietary drivers: the fastest way is to install "Fedora Utils", which is a third party utility that makes it very easy to perform certain tasks or install particular software in Fedora (like Steam, proprietary graphics drivers, Skype, etc). It's one-click install all the way, and it just works, it will autoconfigure. Things with AMD drivers is that they are not really high quality, because AMD doesn't give a shit about linux on consumer platforms and they don't really have any linux-developers on their payroll. But the drivers still kinda work well, except that they don't support anything under HD4000 series and do not really support HD7000 series completely either, but I'm not having any problems with a 7870 and the proprietary Catalyst 13.4 driver in Fedora 18, nor in Arch Linux. Sometimes, you have to uninstall the xorg-ati packages first before installing the catalyst packages, but fedora utils will take care of that for you.

Distro with preinstalled Steam client and hardware detection utility that works great for installing proprietary drivers, and most bad/ugly/tainted packages are also preinstalled, so you don't have to worry about those either, and it's based on Arch Linux, so it'll actually work and work fast and there will be a huge amount of software available through AUR, and it's not as buggy and incompatible and boring as Ubuntu and it's derivatives: MANJARO LINUX!!!!! Forget about Ubuntu and it's derivatives. Canonical is doing everything it can to make it impossible for the community to build upon Ubuntu. The KDE maintainer has already confirmed that it is highly unlikely that Mir will be supported by KDE. Not only Qt-based (KDE), but also non-Unity gtk-based DE's (Gnome, Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc) will not work with Mir anymore. So Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint, etc, will all be having problems in the future. And that's not the only problem Ubuntu has, it's generally a subpar user experience and a buggy pos in comparison to most other linux distros, and especially in comparison with the big 4, and even in comparison with the big 7. There are three distros Steam works on without any configuration or problems: - Manjaro: it's preinstalled, all proprietary drivers have been tested and work, it's fast and stable, it's Arch based and fully package compatible, so it's a remix of a major distro (Arch). I can wouch for it working without any problems whatsoever (using Steam in Manjaro 0.8.5 on AMD+AMD). - Fedora: the most advanced distro in existance, the testing bed of the operating system the world economy and the internet run on (RHEL), more bleeding edge than Arch if you want it to, and you can install a third party app called Fedora Utils that will allow you to one-click install all the bad-ugly-tainted packages, the proprietary graphics drivers, and steam (and a lot of other things). I can vouch for it working without any problems whatsoever (using Steam in Fedora 18 on Intel+nVidia); - OpenSuSE: a company effort like Fedora, this time from Novell. Modern but not bleeding edge distro that focuses on ease-of-use. Primarily KDE-orientated, it offers an online one-click install for Steam and proprietary graphics drivers. Don't use Ubuntu, their advertising is on the Steam website, but it's a lot more difficult to get Steam running on Ubuntu, and once it's running, that doesn't mean that all games will run, because Ubuntu is not a fine quality product, Canonical approaches GNU/Linux coding like an elephant approaches a tree. Ubuntu has a lot of marketing going on, but it's not worth the spit needed to pronounce it's name.

If red mercury were for real, I would do it: having to wear a hazmat suit in the house 24/7 is a small price to pay for having a red liquid metal cooling loop in a massive lead PC case, of course in a huge concrete sarcophagus in a nuclear bunker 70 meters under the house. Anyone know of a gaming mouse that's still easy to handle with gloves?

Yes, there are other types of tubing that are not compatible with alcohol. Problem with PrimoChill is that Tyler Industries no longer manufactures tubing that is plasticizer free on the inside. That is a problem, because even without the ionic tails of alcohol, there are ions being dispersed by the silver ion reactive antimicrobial compound that is used in various pc cooling parts or by ions dispersed because of capacitance, or by microorganisms, etc, and those will react anyway. There are a lot of problems that can surface with water cooling loops, usually it's a feedback mechanism, more of one part means less of other parts, and that makes the problem shift. It's so hard to know all the factors that play a role in such a complex system as a liquid cooling loop. I do have to say that while PrimoChill is easy to work with, I'm not a big fan of it. I can only recommend food industry grade tubing to anyone that wants to take a couple of possibly negative factors out of the equation, it's cheaper than dedicated PC cooling tubing too, and it's made to higher specs, because the inside is absolutely free of coating and doesn't leach any compounds, whether plasticizer or silver ions. Of course, you can never know what is used in radiators and pumps. Most manufacturers do not use food industry grade lubricants for instance, which is still a problem. I don't think that there are many liquid cooling enthusiasts that had a perfect loop in their first build with new parts, usually the first loop with new parts gets cloudy and gunks up, then you rebuild it, and it doesn't anymore. Manufacturers don't give many specs, it's a kind of snake oil marketing industry, so without lab analysis, it's very hard to know what exactly goes on. I've been liquid cooling for about 15 years I think, and have toned down my expectations on keeping a perfect looking loop enormously over the years, to the point where I decided that function is more important than form and I switched to opaque tubing and all copper metal hardware. Of course, for many people, the form is more important than the function, and a commercial PC loop coolant is the best solution in that case, but it will not perform the same as pure distilled and deionised water or a calculated water/glycol solution. If cooling performance were the only factor, we would all be using mercury as a coolant, because it will definitely outperform any other liquid for cooling purposes, but everyone would die of mercury poisoning with a really cool CPU in their system. Everything is always a compromise, and the more complex the technical solution that needs implementing, the more compromise is going to have to be made, and liquid cooling is a very complex matter. What I don't quite understand though, is that there is so much brand comparison going on with regards to tubing and coolants, whereas a lot of people still don't know that they have to metal match the metallic parts in their loop to avoid capacitance issues. Different metals is probably the first source of corrosion in custom loops. People will invest in an aluminium radiator, a copper block, a steel pump, put a silver killcoil in it, and connect the whole thing with running water? Any plummer will tell you that's an accident waiting to happen, but still it's probably the least talked about problem with PC cooling loops. Other things that are questionable: rincing parts of the loop with acid solutions, or connecting and filling a loop in a PC that hasn't been thoroughly cleaned inside and out first. For a tubing manufacturer it's not easy to deliver a product that checks all boxes of what consumers are up to with the product. For the last 7 years or so, on my main liquid cooled rig, I've been using 20-30% ethylene or propylene glycol in purified deionised water in food industry opaque tubing and all copper metal hardware, and I've been changing the liquid every two years, and my loop is still astonishingly clean, I only have the smallest amount of sediment (mostly copper oxide particles) in the block labyrinths, that would come out with water immediately. The copper oxide stays in place and protects the metal, it looks green but it's very resistant, it's a compromise, but I don't have to worry about anti-corrosive additives in my loop. And food industry grade tubing is also made for alcohol for obvious reasons, and the inside is both antimicrobial and plasticizing compound free.

Celebrating a draught, well, I guess they celebrate worse than that at times. Anyway, after Jesusfest yesterday and then forum downtime every time I wanted to post, he we are lol. An azeotropic solution is a solution whereby the physical characteristics of the liquids will change. With water, everybody already knows how that works, like anti-freeze in a car coolant, etc, but there's also the possibility of changing the boiling temp instead of the freezing temp, and that is very useful for specific use coolants, like PC cooling loops. It's the same principle as an air cooler (well any liquid cooler is still an air cooler of course), whereby heatpipes are used. The fluid used in heatpipes has a very low boiling temp, so that it evaporates quickly, travels towards the heatsink-equipped end of the heatpipe as a gas, then condensates back to liquid again and is pumped through gravity or a capillary pump back to the hot zone. It's basically a closed loop liquid cooling system. In a full size liquid cooling system, this principle can also be used. The trick is to do the inverse of a pressure cooker: making the coolant almost boil, but it can't boil because of the closed loop and the automatic temperature limit that is built into every processor. But, while it has as good as reached boiling temperature, the molecules of the cooling liquid will absorbe much more thermal energy, so they will actively cool. The absorbed energy will be dissipated to the radiator when the molecule reaches that. If the molecule has reached a temperature that would allow it to move to gaseous state normally, it will also dissipate it's stored energy much faster than when it hasn't. It's the same thing as with freezing water: if you put room temperature water in the freezer, it will take a few hours to freeze solid, but if you put boiling water in the freezer, it will freeze in seconds. The reason is that any compound, in order to change it's state, has to use energy, and that energy is thermal energy. You can test this principle at home: you put water on the back of your hand that is exactly the same temperature as your body temperature, and it will feel cold, because it's evaporating, and is drawing thermal energy from your skin. If you put water with alcohol of exactly the same temperature of your body temperature on the back of your hand, it will feel colder, because it evaporates faster, because the boiling point is lowered, thus drawing thermal energy faster. So applied to the PC cooling loop: Let's say we want to cool an overclocked Core i5-3570k. At full load overclocked, this chip will have a Tj of 105°C, which is above the boiling temp of pure water, but above 100°C the CPU is throttled, so a baseplate could get as hot as about the temperature of boiling water. So we need an airtight closed loop anyway for this chip because otherwise, the coolant, even if it's pure water, can boil and form bubbles, except when the gas pressure doesn't allow that, and only allows evaporating to the same pace as condensation. This system is most likely to run at much lower temps than that, but we want to keep it away from 90°C, so we want to boost the cooling performance just before it reaches 90°C. Normally we would do that with a radiator fan profile, but we can also do it with the coolant: by adding enough alcohol to reduce the boiling point of the coolant with 10 degrees celsius, to bring it from 100°C to about 90°C. That necessitates about 30% glycol in the water. Adding the alcohol will also reduce the thermal conductivity, so we can't add too much. Alcohol will also corrode metal, so we can't add too much. Basically, just like in cars, we want to avoid adding more than 50% alcohol. The more alcohol in the water, the lower the boiling point. Here we want to have a boiling temp that is above the normal operating temp, but under the maximum load temp, 90°C. What will happen, is that first of all the coolant will perform about the same at normal operating levels, it evaporates a bit better, thus absorbs a bit more thermal energy, but it's also a bit less thermally conductive. But when the load on the CPU goes up, the coolant will gain in efficiency: as the coolant reaches it's boiling point sooner, it will start drawing a huge amount of thermal energy sooner, and the system will not get as hot. In my experience, adding 20-30% glycol-based high performance anti-freeze (I use high performance motorcycle anti-freeze, because it's made for warm weather and a specific usage scenario, so the manufacturer of the anti-freeze adds nothing that is not necessary, and I use a separate loop for the CPU), lowers the coolant boiling temperature with less than 10°C, which works perfectly for cooling an Intel in a heavy gaming rig, because instead of starting to boost cooling performance at near 100°C, the coolant will start to boost cooling performance at just beyond 90°C. It will have reached its boiling point and the molecules will try to reach a gaseous state by absorbing a huge amount of thermal energy, but they will not be able to form bubbles in the coolant because - even though the molecules will have absorbed all this energy to change state - they will not be able to at a faster pace than the condensation pace in the radiator, because it's an airtight closed loop and the gas pressure can't rise. Modern tubing resist extreme pressures, well beyond the small pressure that will build up because of the evaporating coolant. I get about 2-3°C lower average temperature with glycol+water in comparison to water only myself, so there is a difference. Pre-filled liquid coolers use glycol to boost the performance in this way (or, how to get astonishingly good performance out of mediocre hardware...). As mentioned, there are a few downsides to adding alcohol to the coolant water. One downside I haven't mentioned yet: alcohol, glycol specifically, breaks down into acids, especially when it's heated for a long time. This causes any water/alcohol loop to become dangerously corrosive to the hardware after about 2 years. And that's thanks to the additives in the anti-freeze that it takes that long to become acid. Even pre-filled PC cooling loops, which contain water and summer automotive anti-freeze, which is glycol with very few additives, mainly anti-acids if anything, will have their coolant become acidic after a good two years, and will break down, unless the coolant is tested and changed to moment it drop down to a pH value of 7. Two years is of course a long time for a custom loop, so it's not really a problem for enthusiasts. The colorants and bling additives for coolants, will not leave a residue. Fancy opaque colorants/bling additives, will definitely leave a gel-like residue (I think it's silicone based by the looks of it), but in my opinion, they will not break anything, an amount of residue is only difficutly avoidable in any loop in the long run. However, silicones are only soluble in acid solutions, which is not a great idea for cooling loops. I have no idea how they solve that. Maybe they don't, maybe it's like shampoo, that's not supposed to be acid either, but it is because of the silicones. And that's the problem with some fancy additives or coolants, you don't exactly know what's in them, it's a closed source coolant lol, you have to trust the manufacturer. I'd rather know what I put in the loop exactly, down to the handful of molecules. That's also why I like glycol-based motorcycle anti-freeze, it's a simple product and I know exactly what it is. Also, anti-freeze is often UV reactive (so you don't need extra bling), and it's highly toxic, so a perfect biocide. An anti-freeze solution will become darker with time, many fancy coolants will not change colour that much.