Copper Oxide problem in custom loop

Randy R · July 11, 2021

Hi.

I've been building PC's since 1998. I'd consider myself somewhat knowledgeable in the art, but one thing that I haven't done until recently is do a custom water loop.

Back when the Threadripper 3960x came out, I went and got one. I had decided to go with a custom loop. The problem I'm having is that every 8 months or so my pump dies. Its probably because my loop is coated in green copper oxide. I've been using distilled water and EK Cryofuel coolant mix. I have all copper parts.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Linus makes it seem so easy all the time.

I'm using mostly all Corsair parts, Corsair pump (Which I had to RMA on the first time it died) Took forever to get the RMA so I had a different pump but it died as well. As I mentioned its probably due to the copper. So, All copper Corsair Radiators, flexable tubing and fittings all Corsair. I have an EK Velocity waterblock. That has some chrome plating on it, but I've seen plenty of tech tubers using the same waterblock. I've had to clean that waterblock several times due to the copper that gums it up. Am I missing something? Should I just use pre mixed coolants or some other type of fluid?

bowrilla · July 11, 2021

Did you clean/prep the radiators before assembly? You need to thoroughly clean them with some acids to remove the oxide layer and production gunk. It's either white vinegar or phosphoric acid (Mayhem's Blitz part 1, straight from the chemical supply and diluted to ~2-5%, Cillit Bang works as well).

Over time there will be some oxide build up. The oxide layer itself won't do anything really bad though except for impeding heat transfer to some degree.I doubt your pump died because of it.

Did you use EK Cryofuel premix or concetrate? If you diluted the premix you might have reduced the biocide and anticorrosive parts too much.

Copper parts will never stay shiny for a long time. They will always build some oxide layer over time.

Section31 · July 11, 2021

I had this happened to my build and lead to one expensive repair. ICopper will oxide. In my case it was brass tubing. Generally speaking corsair rads and fittings should be clean (as they are hardwarelabs oem rads and bitspower oem fitting )but always clean them.

I doubt the copper will have resulted in the pump dying and it has minor to no effect on temperatures. Ekwb cryofuel isn’t the best. You could try something like distilled water plus mayhem xt-1/x1 concentrate or something like mayhem xtr 4nm (expensive).

Picture of how my rads looked like (replaced with watercool new internal rads)

Randy R · July 11, 2021

I can't emphasize enough that everything was coated with copper, the tubings have copper flaking off of them, I've had two pumps die, looks like a lot of copper in the last one. the radiators themselves look clean enough. I cleaned it out with some alcohol solution when I got them 1.5 years ago. The first time the waterblock had enough copper in there it was restricting the flow somewhat on the flowplate in there. I followed the directions on the concentrate.

I don't have good photos but here is the second pump.