[D] Coolants

[Ghost]

Yes, I have never used clear tubing hat hasn't leached. (this is mayhems xt-1 btw) this tubing was tygon r3603.

plastisciser leaching RUINS pastel because it makes it look a dirty dull faded colour.

I am trying primochill advanced lrt now as it is plasticiser free. tygon e1000 is too.

That's a shame. Are you still going with mayhems coolants even though you have had issues?

[legopc]

All coolants are conductive. If they tell you they are not conductive its a lie. If you get any coolant leaks while your PC is powered up you are "screwed".

:O those **** bastards 

[R4STABAN]

That's a shame. Are you still going with mayhems coolants even though you have had issues?

 

I'll be avoiding xt-1, but I've switched to aquacomputer this time because I fancied a change.

[Ghost]

:o those **** bastards 

Its water after all. You can get non-conductive fluids to cool your PC, an example being Slick's oil cooled PC where the entire electronics is submerged. However, this is very different. Also before you consider using oil as a coolant, it is too viscous to be used as a coolant in a water-cooling loop.

[airdeano]

it was black coolant to baby-poo brown coolant.

 

TTL claimed if anything his loop was too alkyne. and he'd used the same practices of loop prep

and that their "lack of experience" to even accept it and move on, they denied culpability.

so in goes the EC-6 blood red

 

airdeano

[Peopie]

I prefer using distilled water and a kill coil

 

I've read some nasty stories about people's blocks getting dyed or being clogged due to the coolant and the dye separating.

I also like that distilled water is cheaper than coolants.

 

although I did add some anti-freeze to my mixture with distilled water to maybe help prevent corrosion.

 

Though I do say that coolants do look amazing, especially if it can been seen inside of blocks. I would probably want to use it if I had to showcase a build for a short time or the like.

[BCMods]

Mayhem's dyes don't cause issues. :o

I beg to differ...

[legopc]

Its water after all. You can get non-conductive fluids to cool your PC, an example being Slick's oil cooled PC where the entire electronics is submerged. However, this is very different. Also before you consider using oil as a coolant, it is too viscous to be used as a coolant in a water-cooling loop.

is there a coolant that is not conductive?? except oil

[Ghost]

is there a coolant that is not conductive?? except oil

I thought I already said there aren't. Oil is just an exception.

[legopc]

I thought I already said there aren't. Oil is just an exception.

ok thanks for the info

[R4STABAN]

I thought I already said there aren't. Oil is just an exception.

 

There is one but I forget the name. It expands when heat is applied though, meaning you'd need valves in the loop to allow air to escape/re-enter a half-full res. It's also very viscous like oil and is reeeaaly expensive.

 

Would help if I could remember the name..

[Ghost]

There is one but I forget the name. It expands when heat is applied though, meaning you'd need valves in the loop to allow air to escape/re-enter a half-full res. It's also very viscous like oil and is reeeaaly expensive.

 

Would help if I could remember the name..

Viscous is a no-no for pumps.

[R4STABAN]

Viscous is a no-no for pumps.

 

Yeah you'd need something heavy duty

[Ghost]

.

I think its interesting that primochill put this on their website:

 

Warnings/Cautions:

With the use of different components, materials, fluids, and flow rates, results may vary with the appearance of your tubing. Advanced LRT is designed to work with a large variety of cooling components, however the use of alcohols, Ethylene Glycol and as well as any other harmful chemicals is strictly prohibited and will void your warranty.Tubing will stain if dyed coolants are used. PrimoChill is not responsible for any damage caused by or when using this product. Please use at your own risk.

[Christian]

I just use distilled water that i buy from Coles. It's like $1 for a litre. This is great as it means i can buy it at just by going down the road, vs buying coolant which would be far more expensive, and would require me to buy it online  This means waiting for it, plus shipping costs. I can empty and re-fill my loop for about $1. However i do put in a few drops of Primochill's Liquid Utopia. 

[zoltan]

I think its interesting that primochill put this on their website:

 

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.

[Ghost]

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.

That would look incredible. Liquid metal as a coolant.

[crunzaty]

That would look incredible. Liquid metal as a coolant.

Worth it! xD

 

This thread should be sticky'd or Zoltan should have made a thread about water-cooling and gotten it sticky'd :D 

I have learned so much and i can't wait until i'm done with my system! :D

[zoltan]

That would look incredible. Liquid metal as a coolant.

 

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?

[Ghost]

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?

If the loop was a closed system would mercury be possibility? I mean the whole inside of the loop would be contaminated with mercury and you would could never take to loop apart but maybe?

[zoltan]

If the loop was a closed system would mercury be possibility? I mean the whole inside of the loop would be contaminated with mercury and you would could never take to loop apart but maybe?

 

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.

[Ghost]

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.

Time to order 1000 thermometers.

[Hyydrah]

Its water after all. You can get non-conductive fluids to cool your PC, an example being Slick's oil cooled PC where the entire electronics is submerged. However, this is very different. Also before you consider using oil as a coolant, it is too viscous to be used as a coolant in a water-cooling loop.

I'm assuming that you mean electrically conductive, in which case MANY things are. The question remains whether it's conductive enough to fry a component.

[Hyydrah]

Time to order 1000 thermometers.

Most current thermometers don't contain mercury anymore.  :P

 

Plan B?

[Ghost]

I'm assuming that you mean electrically conductive, in which case MANY things are. The question remains whether it's conductive enough to fry a component.

Anything that has water in it is electrically conductive because any impurities in water cause it to conduct. Even having it exposed to CO2 in the atmosphere means its conductivity increases.

 

As most coolants are water based most coolants are conductive. Feel free to pour coolant over your PC but as long as you don't do it do not tell people that some coolants are not conductive enough to damage components.