frogonastring

That is ridiculously good looking. But you already knew that, didn't you.

TL;DR - My pump failed in a dramatic way and caused the res to explode. Pics below.
 
About five/six years ago, I won a PC in a competition from the UK's PC Gamer magazine. It was state of the art for its time, with an overclocked i7 860, 8GB of RAM, HD 5870, and XSPC water cooling. Up until Saturday, it's been going very strong ever since - I very rarely feel the need to upgrade, as it's been powerful enough for me not to notice.
However.
About a month ago, I noticed that the pump in the reservoir start buzzing - shown in this video.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom1

I didn't think much of it, thinking it was just trapped bubbles or something. At the time, I contacted XPSC who suggested topping the loop up. So I did, and gave it a shake and some time to work the bubbles out, and it got quieter again. Great! I thought I'd solved it. But, I was nervous - so I set temperature alarms on Speedfan, with an indicator LED and auto-shutdown on certain thresholds in case the pump totally failed.
 
Skip ahead to Saturday when things took a turn for the worst. It turns out the temperature alarms weren't needed, because fifteen minutes after booting, the front of the reservoir exploded off and flew across the room.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom2
 
It turns out that the pump had seized, or gotten stuck, or something - caught fire, generated huge amounts of pressure, and vented through the first available weakness - the front of the reservoir.
Cue about a litre of coolant draining onto the carpet over the front of the case.
 
I was out and came in just after it happened - my wife was using the computer. Luckily I was able to disconnect everything, and grab out all the hard drives and stuff before anything else got wet - only the optical drives and one case fan got innundated, and because of where the break was, the water just flowed over the front and didn't ingress in. I think I'm in the clear in terms of actual component damage (other than the pump and reservoir, obviously)
 
I took the res apart with a hammer - amazed at home much effort it took to crack the perspex, even whilst damaged - but didn't learn much other than the pump was totally seized - and that burnt out pumps smell bad.
 
Link to gallery of a handful of pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/bQ2zHnZ46yetZYCL9
 
Things I have learnt.
1. If your pump starts buzzing in an unfamiliar way, take precautions and make plans to replace it as soon as possible.
2. Distilled water mixed with burnt-out motor parts, smoke and burnt plastic smells really bad.
3. Don't sit directly in front of your reservoir.
4. Watercooling is occasionally way more exciting than it has any right to be.
5. Deciding what to do next is tricky.
 
Phew.
 
Now, do I replace the cooling with an air cooler to tide me over till my next upgrade, or do I go with an AIO system, or do I replace the loop entirely with new components? Is there any benefit to replacing the radiator and CPU block as well (XPSC Delta) - other than getting a brand new, corrosion-free one? My system is in need of an update, but it's hard to know how much money to spend now.

It's an older generation (Nehalem) Core i7 that's been overclocked a bit (2.8 to 3.2) so perhaps may run a bit hot on air cooling - although to be fair I've never tested it. 

When I did maintenance a few years back and replaced all the tubes, flushed and replaced fluid, I did enjoy the process although watercooling is quite nerve-wracking and complicated - at least, it felt it to me, being a big noob! So I sort of do care about the aesthetics, the fun, and the process...but saying that what I really value the most is that my PC just gets on with working reliably and efficiently. 

It may be that water cooling isn't the best solution here.

Whoa, I've never seen that happen before. Looks like it got shot by a.... Sniper!
 

TL;DR - My pump failed in a dramatic way and caused the res to explode. Pics below.
 
About five/six years ago, I won a PC in a competition from the UK's PC Gamer magazine. It was state of the art for its time, with an overclocked i7 860, 8GB of RAM, HD 5870, and XSPC water cooling. Up until Saturday, it's been going very strong ever since - I very rarely feel the need to upgrade, as it's been powerful enough for me not to notice.
However.
About a month ago, I noticed that the pump in the reservoir start buzzing - shown in this video.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom1

I didn't think much of it, thinking it was just trapped bubbles or something. At the time, I contacted XPSC who suggested topping the loop up. So I did, and gave it a shake and some time to work the bubbles out, and it got quieter again. Great! I thought I'd solved it. But, I was nervous - so I set temperature alarms on Speedfan, with an indicator LED and auto-shutdown on certain thresholds in case the pump totally failed.
 
Skip ahead to Saturday when things took a turn for the worst. It turns out the temperature alarms weren't needed, because fifteen minutes after booting, the front of the reservoir exploded off and flew across the room.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom2
 
It turns out that the pump had seized, or gotten stuck, or something - caught fire, generated huge amounts of pressure, and vented through the first available weakness - the front of the reservoir.
Cue about a litre of coolant draining onto the carpet over the front of the case.
 
I was out and came in just after it happened - my wife was using the computer. Luckily I was able to disconnect everything, and grab out all the hard drives and stuff before anything else got wet - only the optical drives and one case fan got innundated, and because of where the break was, the water just flowed over the front and didn't ingress in. I think I'm in the clear in terms of actual component damage (other than the pump and reservoir, obviously)
 
I took the res apart with a hammer - amazed at home much effort it took to crack the perspex, even whilst damaged - but didn't learn much other than the pump was totally seized - and that burnt out pumps smell bad.
 
Link to gallery of a handful of pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/bQ2zHnZ46yetZYCL9
 
Things I have learnt.
1. If your pump starts buzzing in an unfamiliar way, take precautions and make plans to replace it as soon as possible.
2. Distilled water mixed with burnt-out motor parts, smoke and burnt plastic smells really bad.
3. Don't sit directly in front of your reservoir.
4. Watercooling is occasionally way more exciting than it has any right to be.
5. Deciding what to do next is tricky.
 
Phew.
 
Now, do I replace the cooling with an air cooler to tide me over till my next upgrade, or do I go with an AIO system, or do I replace the loop entirely with new components? Is there any benefit to replacing the radiator and CPU block as well (XPSC Delta) - other than getting a brand new, corrosion-free one? My system is in need of an update, but it's hard to know how much money to spend now.

my latest build: Mjolnir   I really love all mat black with gold   Parvum Ssytem M1.0 whit triple layer option Intel i7-5820k  @ 4.2 Asus Sabertooth X99 16gb (4x4) Gskill DDR4 2400 2 x GTX980 reference SSD Kingston Hyper X 120gb 3 x Seagate 500gb 7200rpm 2.5" HDD EVGA 1050g PSU  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To be honest, the pictures of the dogs sound ideal to me!

(I've never gotten around to buying a Modmic but I do intend to eventually!)

You're a bad man!