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The Best Documented PC Coolants

So, you're saying I should NOT run Prestone universal engine coolant in my 20yr old Koolance loop...again?

 

Man, I remember when people used the cores of markers and highlighters to make colored coolants. I'm old...

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1 hour ago, Bitter said:

So, you're saying I should NOT run Prestone universal engine coolant in my 20yr old Koolance loop...again?

 

Man, I remember when people used the cores of markers and highlighters to make colored coolants. I'm old...

You can what ever you like. Then old koolance loops were interesting. I still remember ripping out Bike rads to cool my 3dfx lol.

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2 hours ago, mayhems said:

Long story short - we no longer make pastel and its been removed from sale due to QC issues with our old supplier. (all pastel lines)

So going forwards, Mayhems Pastel, Pastel Extreme, Pastel V2, should not be recommended to users looking for opaque coolant and Mayhems XTR is the only opaque coolant from Mayhems that you would like the brand to be associated with?

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4 hours ago, mayhems said:

You can what ever you like. Then old koolance loops were interesting. I still remember ripping out Bike rads to cool my 3dfx lol.

It's just got distilled water in it and lives in the basement, I rarely use it anymore. Yes, the push/pull pump setup inside the reservoir is interesting! Turns out they can handle around 300W of Xeon at 4ghz which is pretty stunning. No idea what the intended power handling was anymore.

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12 hours ago, For Science! said:

So going forwards, Mayhems Pastel, Pastel Extreme, Pastel V2, should not be recommended to users looking for opaque coolant and Mayhems XTR is the only opaque coolant from Mayhems that you would like the brand to be associated with?

Yes, mayhems pastel is EOL, XTR is an Opaque looking fluid but we are not calling it "pastel". Its a Nano fluid and being advertised as such. We also have a Sub 1nm Nano fluid and that is clear and also works better at stopping light how ever this is not being produced for consumers its for indusial usage and is still in dev phase.

 

Ref you question on the photos at a nano level, i have spoken this morning to a company and we are getting access to a newer electron microscope, The TEM we used is not good enough to get down to 20nm as the backing plate is graphene based and the Zn0 isn't giving a good enough picture. Hopefully in the next few weeks once we have access to the newer Electron Microscope we can provide better photos.

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Really sounds like these new fluids are worth it, what's the recommended change interval for them?

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We expect minimum between 5 to 10 years. How ever that is at best guess. Sorry seem to be taking over this thread. ill create a new one with all the info later on if I'm allowed.

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4 hours ago, mayhems said:

Yes, mayhems pastel is EOL, XTR is an Opaque looking fluid but we are not calling it "pastel". Its a Nano fluid and being advertised as such. We also have a Sub 1nm Nano fluid and that is clear and also works better at stopping light how ever this is not being produced for consumers its for indusial usage and is still in dev phase.

 

Ref you question on the photos at a nano level, i have spoken this morning to a company and we are getting access to a newer electron microscope, The TEM we used is not good enough to get down to 20nm as the backing plate is graphene based and the Zn0 isn't giving a good enough picture. Hopefully in the next few weeks once we have access to the newer Electron Microscope we can provide better photos.

Must have been a really bad microscope to not achieve subnanometer resolution for an inorganic compound (non-dose sensitive). We routinely achieve resolutions of ~0.3 nm for dose-sensitive particles. I guess you want to use something like an FEI Titan with an K2/K3 sensor, and perhaps most importantly an energy filter. However I guess you will also need to dilute your sample quite substantially to get decent separation, although then you've kind of changed the coolant to the extent that I would question whether the microscopy in itself is meaningful. What did you hope the EM would tell you that you didn't know from the light scattering?

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4 hours ago, mayhems said:

We expect minimum between 5 to 10 years. How ever that is at best guess. Sorry seem to be taking over this thread. ill create a new one with all the info later on if I'm allowed.

Impressive! I was accustomed to doing it on a yearly basis a long time ago. A friend is interested in a custom loop at some point so you might get a message from me in the future.

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7 hours ago, For Science! said:

Must have been a really bad microscope to not achieve subnanometer resolution for an inorganic compound (non-dose sensitive). We routinely achieve resolutions of ~0.3 nm for dose-sensitive particles. I guess you want to use something like an FEI Titan with an K2/K3 sensor, and perhaps most importantly an energy filter. However I guess you will also need to dilute your sample quite substantially to get decent separation, although then you've kind of changed the coolant to the extent that I would question whether the microscopy in itself is meaningful. What did you hope the EM would tell you that you didn't know from the light scattering?

We are hoping for good photos just for advertising and simply to see what it looks like (out of pure interest). Also good for documenting. You have shown such a keen interest, if you would like a 1 ltr of this fluid to look over and give us your feed back I am willing to ship some over to you free of charge.

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9 hours ago, mayhems said:

We are hoping for good photos just for advertising and simply to see what it looks like (out of pure interest). Also good for documenting. You have shown such a keen interest, if you would like a 1 ltr of this fluid to look over and give us your feed back I am willing to ship some over to you free of charge.

Thank you for the kind offer, if times were different I may have accepted to trial the new coolant. Giving the difficult times with the pandemic at current, I am trying my best to minimize contact, couriers included, so I think I will be happy to look into it myself in future when the XTR is available through retailers and when the threat of Corona is slightly better.

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1 hour ago, For Science! said:

Thank you for the kind offer, if times were different I may have accepted to trial the new coolant. Giving the difficult times with the pandemic at current, I am trying my best to minimize contact, couriers included, so I think I will be happy to look into it myself in future when the XTR is available through retailers and when the threat of Corona is slightly better.

Any time, just give me a shout i don't mind sending out samples to ppl who are really interested. As far as i'm concerned its people like your self i like to hand samples over to not only for feed back but also to share the knowledge. You show a good knowledge and understanding of what we are up to and this is brilliant in my eyes.

 

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On 2/10/2021 at 4:28 AM, mayhems said:

Yes, mayhems pastel is EOL, XTR is an Opaque looking fluid but we are not calling it "pastel". Its a Nano fluid and being advertised as such. We also have a Sub 1nm Nano fluid and that is clear and also works better at stopping light how ever this is not being produced for consumers its for indusial usage and is still in dev phase.

 

Ref you question on the photos at a nano level, i have spoken this morning to a company and we are getting access to a newer electron microscope, The TEM we used is not good enough to get down to 20nm as the backing plate is graphene based and the Zn0 isn't giving a good enough picture. Hopefully in the next few weeks once we have access to the newer Electron Microscope we can provide better photos.

When you say "not being produced for consumers", do you mean you're just not sending it out to retailers and it has to be bought from your own store? (https://mayhems.store/may_b2c/premixed-coolants/xtr-6nm-liquid-metal-series.html)

 

A bunch of questions, cause I'm interested and I have enough datalogging on my loop to tell minute differences:

 

-Will this fluid ever settle?  I've never run anything but X1 Clear because of the reputation of all particle based fluids for eventually settling out in "low pressure" zones of a loop like corners of gpu blocks.  I also leave my loops running for years at a time (24x7) with only occasional top-offs so it wouldn't be cool if this fluid demands a full teardown after a couple years.  (Tangent: good job with Ultra Clear tubing and X1 Clear...dead reliable)

 

-Can this fluid be run through a 20 micron filter forever with zero capture?

 

-Compatible with X1 or does the entire loop need to be ultrapure water flushed?

 

-Concentrate availability?  The shipping rate of premix from UK to US is high.

 

-Abrasive qualities?  Is it going to strip out nickel plating after 5 years of use?

Workstation:  13700k @ 5.5Ghz || Gigabyte Z790 Ultra || MSI Gaming Trio 4090 Shunt || TeamGroup DDR5-7800 @ 7000 || Corsair AX1500i@240V || whole-house loop.

LANRig/GuestGamingBox: 9900nonK || Gigabyte Z390 Master || ASUS TUF 3090 650W shunt || Corsair SF600 || CPU+GPU watercooled 280 rad pull only || whole-house loop.

Server Router (Untangle): 13600k @ Stock || ASRock Z690 ITX || All 10Gbe || 2x8GB 3200 || PicoPSU 150W 24pin + AX1200i on CPU|| whole-house loop

Server Compute/Storage: 10850K @ 5.1Ghz || Gigabyte Z490 Ultra || EVGA FTW3 3090 1000W || LSI 9280i-24 port || 4TB Samsung 860 Evo, 5x10TB Seagate Enterprise Raid 6, 4x8TB Seagate Archive Backup ||  whole-house loop.

Laptop: HP Elitebook 840 G8 (Intel 1185G7) + 3080Ti Thunderbolt Dock, Razer Blade Stealth 13" 2017 (Intel 8550U)

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On 2/13/2021 at 3:35 AM, AnonymousGuy said:

 

1)  Mayhems Sub Nano XTR is a strict Dev project only, XTR Premixed Nano coolant is a public product and is on sale now.

 

2) Will XTR settle? short answer yes, it is impossible defeat gravity, all fluids settle in one form or another due to different density and the gravimetric effect. Another answer is some of it will settle with time and no flow in a system. It is picked back up straight away (within minutes) when the flow is going inside the loop. We have tested this a lot. This is the nature of the beast.

 

3)  Reputation! we can take into account our old fluid Mayhems pastel, when it was manufactured sold over 100 tones + in the 10 years and what you read on the net is tiny to the amount we sold, Our issue rate was calculated at 0.0001%. We did have issues with our supply chain and them basically dropping there quality of supplied martials to us, this is when we stopped making Pastel. Other fluids manufacturers are not our problem and we do not get involved with them. Our only concern is our product and our customers.

 

4)  XTR is Sub 6nm it will go through micron filters. Filters should not be used in a closed loop liquid cooled pc, that is a bad idea. You are restricting flow paths and creating a bottle neck. In 35 years of liquid cooling, we have never needed to use one.

 

5) XTR is not compatible with any other fluids, it is not based on the same principles as other glycol-based coolants. We will not be testing compatibility. Any formulations we are currently working on are not for Sub Zero Cooling. Our aim is to bring to the forefront Nano technology to the liquid cooling world not to rehash old methods. We may look later down the line at sub zero cooling but using different methods.

 

6) Shipping 100% out of our control. Blame greedy companies, reduced shipping fright ect ect the list goes on. There are plenty of Youtubers who have explained what is going on in the world.

 

7) In testing it has shown to be non- abrasive at the micron level after 6 months of constant running fluids passing over a nickel-plated blocks (EKWB, Alphacool and Heatkiller tested). Some testing was done externally of Mayhems via a non bias company.

 

I think some one needs to make a new thread if you are interested in XTR and I will follow it. This thread is about documenting SDS sheets for coolants. Sorry I feel as though we should not do this and is disrespectful to the original poster.

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@mayhems

Are any of your fluids damaged by freezing? Currently it's a high of 7F today and anything delivered during the past week and next week is pretty likely to freeze in the warehouse, on the truck, or once it's delivered to my front door. Weather like this is pretty normal a few weeks to a month every year here.

 

Plus side, I could do subzero air cooling at night if I didn't fear frostbite or had longer cables.

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13 hours ago, Bitter said:

@mayhems

Are any of your fluids damaged by freezing? Currently it's a high of 7F today and anything delivered during the past week and next week is pretty likely to freeze in the warehouse, on the truck, or once it's delivered to my front door. Weather like this is pretty normal a few weeks to a month every year here.

 

Plus side, I could do subzero air cooling at night if I didn't fear frostbite or had longer cables.

This is a very good question and one i did not think about, Please leave this with me and ill get back to you on that one as soon as i can, we will need to test this.

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9 hours ago, mayhems said:

This is a very good question and one i did not think about, Please leave this with me and ill get back to you on that one as soon as i can, we will need to test this.

No rush for me.

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On 2/15/2021 at 7:04 PM, Bitter said:

No rush for me.

Oky initial testing. Freezing XTR in its current form is not a good idea, Initial testing has shown that when freezing and un freezing the coolant there is double the amount of drop out. The charge around the larger particles is lost, how ever warming back up in a system and running a full heat load (low rpm fans and bench mark suite to create the heat) causes the particles to create the charge again. This is early testing. We will look into this further when we made this coolant we didn't look into freezing it as it was not one of our goals but some thing we will investigate further.

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Could that also be 'recharged' by heating it prior to filling the loop? Double boiler on a stove or microwave on low power?

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Not some thing we would do or suggest TBH. In the loop its has pressure as well as heat and it being forced though fins, this all helps. Boiling or cooking it is not the way forwards. As said it some thing were going to look into and see if there is some thing we can add to stop this from happening.

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  • 8 months later...

Great thread, really appreciate the effort in going through all of the documentation!

 

Which coolant would you recommend to use in an mixed metals AIO that is going to be modded to use acrylic GPU water block? I was thinking about further diluting Prestone 50/50 or Toyota Long Life RED, but I'm afraid it will damage acrylic/tubing. How much dilution would still prevent corrosion and biological growth and not be eating at plastics?

 

I've managed to find this table. It shows that acrylic can withstand 50°C ethylene glycol for a month or "may even tolerate chemical for years". How accurate would that be?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that typical coolants like EK Cryofuel are less likely to damage acrylic, but how good would they be in preventing galvanic corrosion in mixed metals AIO loop?

 

Another question would be the longevity of the coolants. How often would you have to change them to benefit from their properties?

 

This thread seems to be a godsend, as I've finally managed to find someone (@For Sience!) knowledgeable and not the typical watercooling guru that has shallow undertanding of the topic.

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13 hours ago, galvaniccorroder said:

Great thread, really appreciate the effort in going through all of the documentation!

 

Which coolant would you recommend to use in an mixed metals AIO that is going to be modded to use acrylic GPU water block? I was thinking about further diluting Prestone 50/50 or Toyota Long Life RED, but I'm afraid it will damage acrylic/tubing. How much dilution would still prevent corrosion and biological growth and not be eating at plastics?

 

I've managed to find this table. It shows that acrylic can withstand 50°C ethylene glycol for a month or "may even tolerate chemical for years". How accurate would that be?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that typical coolants like EK Cryofuel are less likely to damage acrylic, but how good would they be in preventing galvanic corrosion in mixed metals AIO loop?

 

Another question would be the longevity of the coolants. How often would you have to change them to benefit from their properties?

 

This thread seems to be a godsend, as I've finally managed to find someone (@For Sience!) knowledgeable and not the typical watercooling guru that has shallow undertanding of the topic.

 

Thanks for your feedback! In order of my confidence of answering:

 

Another question would be the longevity of the coolants. How often would you have to change them to benefit from their properties?

- This would largely depends on the coolant, temperature maintained for its life time, exposure to UV, etc. So its hard to give a definite answer, but I would generally still recommend you to replace preventatively every 1~1.5 years. Having said that, I have a system that's been running 2.5 years now and have been too lazy to do maintenance and its fine, but wouldn't really recommend that as a general strategy (EK CryoFuel Clear).

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that typical coolants like EK Cryofuel are less likely to damage acrylic, but how good would they be in preventing galvanic corrosion in mixed metals AIO loop?

- No solid comment on the acrylic per se, but all the coolants should be tolerated well by acrylic. Some coolants may "yellow or cloud" the acrylic over time, by leaving a thin film of "something" on the surface. This was the case with cryofuel, but I polish my blocks with PlastX as part of my maintenance, and this brings the acrylic blocks to shiny new, and has not had issues with subsequent coolant fills.

 

20180209_232402.jpg.8ec7dc1c4629d8e26bd0171e07b7c955.jpg

 

I've managed to find this table. It shows that acrylic can withstand 50°C ethylene glycol for a month or "may even tolerate chemical for years". How accurate would that be?

- I think it is accurate, given EG is a major component in a lot of the coolants and 50 degrees is not an unreasonable fluid temperature for a PC cooling loop. So I htink the "may even tolerate chemical for years" is what applies here.

 

Which coolant would you recommend to use in an mixed metals AIO that is going to be modded to use acrylic GPU water block? I was thinking about further diluting Prestone 50/50 or Toyota Long Life RED, but I'm afraid it will damage acrylic/tubing. How much dilution would still prevent corrosion and biological growth and not be eating at plastics?

- EK-CryoFuel (non-opaque) was used as part of their FluidGaming which handled aluminium parts with steel containing pump. So as a minimum EK-CryoFuel is suitable for use with Copper parts or aluminium parts seperately. Whether it has enough power to keep a full mixed metal loop at bay is not something I have tried. It's anti-corrosive active component is the same as the Prestone 50/50 albeit at a lower concentration. Prestone 50/50 contains a poison and so may be more hazardous to handle. 

 

A 2x diluted Prestone 50/50 should be a similar efficacy to EK-CryoFuel in terms of anti-corrosion. Still toxic though.

 

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I'm not sure if this is helpful or not but there's been an ongoing issue with some automotive coolants (mostly from "USA" makes) having poor long term interactions with glass reinforced nylon (PA66/PA6 usually) softening from exposure to hot coolant due to some coolants containing chemicals that either are directly or decompose into plasticizers. The most widely blamed and talked about one is 2-EHA, but I doubt it's an issue at 50C since most cars run their coolant 100-110C. I'm not sure how it interacts with other plastics like acrylic or that black one whatever it's called or at what temps but I'd make an effort to avoid coolants that contain it in my PC.

 

That being said, most automotive coolants are designed to run for 5+ years in a car with mixed metals before being changed, so the right coolant may be a good long term product for a PC loop.

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Thank you for clearing things up for me.

 

I've just realised that Prestone claims it can be mixed with existing coolants. Would that mean I could keep the original coolant from an AIO and just add a bit of diluted prestone and be done?

 

Anyways I think I'll stick to diluted Prestone that some people seem to successfully use, as I can't find any info on ingredients of Toyota Super Long Life Red, or Honda Type 2 collants.

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https://garagedreams.net/products/toyota-red-vs-pink-coolant-which-is-better

6 minutes ago, galvaniccorroder said:

Thank you for clearing things up for me.

 

I've just realised that Prestone claims it can be mixed with existing coolants. Would that mean I could keep the original coolant from an AIO and just add a bit of diluted prestone and be done?

 

Anyways I think I'll stick to diluted Prestone that some people seem to successfully use, as I can't find any info on ingredients of Toyota Super Long Life Red, or Honda Type 2 collants.

Does that help?

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