Trickling of water heard from an AIO

[WereCat]

Hello, I have an EVGA 1080ti FTW3 for which I bought the Hybrid AIO cooler years ago.

It used to be able to keep the card under 60*C while card core being at around 2050MHz with 127% power limit and +500MHz on the VRAM.

 

Few months ago I started hearing a trickling of water as if it was leaking, I checked everywhere in panic but I couldn't see a thing. This very audible trickling of water is now happening more often and I still can't see any leaks. It's not constant, it stops doing that after a while but I've noticed now after a long time of not monitoring the temps that the cooling performance went down the drain.

 

I have set a max temp of 65*C in the EVGA Precision XOC and before the card never hit that, it boosted all the way as I had the OC set up.

Now the card is constantly at the limit and clocks dip as low as 1550MHz for the card to keep itself cool. It's typically sitting at around 1800MHz most of the time, but this is also after removing the +27% power limit and the OC.

 

I haven't took the card apart yet as it's a PITA and I use PC every day, I still have the original FTW3 air cooler if I have to throw away the AIO. I just need to get thermal pads, if I'm going to take it apart, I will probably clean and change everything if I have to.

 

Do you think that the liquid from the AIO has evaporated to the point that it's hurting the cooling performance and it's also causing the trickling noise due to bubbles in the loop?

 

 

BTW:

The AIO is mounted as an exhaust next to the I/O on the motherboard at the rear of the case. The tubes are located at the bottom of the radiator. I can feel hot air being exhausted from the rad when I put my hand there.

[Kilrah]

It's common for AIO to get more air/less coolant with time, yes. 

[WereCat]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

It's common for AIO to get more air/less coolant with time, yes. 

Ok, I think I expected for it to last longer as it's about 3y old. But I guess that a 120mm AIO on a 350W GPU will have an accelerated rate of evaporation if it's under constant load. I'll order some thermal pads for replacement and take the card apart then.

[freeagent]

2 hours ago, WereCat said:

it's about 3y old

So right now permeation is kicking in. You will have to try to top up the cooler soon, or you will have to mount a heatsink to it, like one from Arctic, or Raijintek.

 

One of the downsides to AIOs. If you talk to water cooled guys they will tell you they top up monthly. 

[Youn]

Without seeing how your case is set up.. Try the following:

 

It sounds like the Radiator is below the level of your cpu or gpu. This would mean that any air in the system (upto 10% coming out of the factory) would end up near a pump or gpu. This is bad. Reposition your radiator even temporarily so that the opposite end of your radiator from the connections is above both of the components. This will mean all air bubbles will end up at the end of the radiator away from the hoses. And no trickling sound should occur. It might take a few minutes of running to get everything to flow to that location.  

 

As has been stated the hoses on an AIO will evaporate out water over time.  

[WereCat]

7 hours ago, Youn said:

Without seeing how your case is set up.. Try the following:

 

It sounds like the Radiator is below the level of your cpu or gpu.

It's not.

It's rear exhaust on top of the case, GPU with pump is way down.

I shaked the case a bit seems like that helped at least temporarily

[Youn]

You could (and I note this is not necessarily the manufacturers method)  undo the end at the radiator, submerge the radiator in 90% distilled water and 10% anti-freeze and start it back up.. refilling the loop to 100%, then put the hose back on and secure it with either heat shrink, zip ties or hose clamp. I currently have a Corsair AIO apart that the radiator has metal barbs on the tank and plastic ones on the pump. You would have to look at your radiator to see if it is just plain barbed fittings on the radiator. That way you top it off with very inexpensive method. 

[freeagent]

5 hours ago, WereCat said:

It's not.

It's rear exhaust on top of the case, GPU with pump is way down.

I shaked the case a bit seems like that helped at least temporarily

I have an H100 that is very light these days  

 

Time is limited with that cooler