[D] Coolants

[Ghost]

Wish I knew what Jesus-event is celebrated today, I'm feeding and entertaining people in my house and I don't know what for lol.

Apparently there was a draught in a room 2000ish years ago. :3

[PBaines]

I have used Mayhems for a very long time

 

I usually use Distilled Water from the supermarket with a drop of Biocide and then about 3-4 drops of Dye of the desired choice. 

I started using Mayhems products after watching a lot of TTL videos, which he highly regarded them

 

Have not used Pastel yet but will be using it for my desk build, hope it turns out well :D

[Ghost]

Have not used Pastel yet but will be using it for my desk build, hope it turns out well :D

There is a lot of "talking" about the pastel coolant. Some say it is risky to use while others are fine with it. Maybe its the people complaining being loudest but after TTL its become a bit fishy.

 

I ordered 2L for myself to find out if there is any truth in anything people say about it.

[crunzaty]

It says concentrated but not how concentrated, so that's an unknown factor. It also doesn't say what the freezing temp is, which would be the same info but different.
But if you would know the concentration, that would probably be suitable.

I'll explain the azeotropic solution thing as soon as I can get behind my keyboard long enough, apparently God and/or Jesus are having some kind of a party today, and you probably all know or can imagine how that goes in catholic families, they all expect a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish and wine when it's a God Party Day, and I have to cater for that until they all can go home and watch soccer or something. Won't be too long lol, very sorry for leaving you guys hanging a bit longer. Wish I knew what Jesus-event is celebrated today, I'm feeding and entertaining people in my house and I don't know what for lol.

What would you suggest then? ^^
I don't really know anything about that what-so-ever xD

[R4STABAN]

I've used:

 

mayhems x1, various colours

mayhems pastel various colours

 

and I've just swapped out mayhems xt-1 for aquacomputer double protect ultra.

 

Mayhems pastel = minefield. You need to have the right tubing. TBH I'm not a big fan of pastel because it just looks like coloured tubing with the added bonus of being incompatible with loads of different types of tubing.

 

So far I haven't found any clear tubing that doesn't cloud, I'm trying out primochill advanced lrt now. When the tubing clouds it ruins the look of the dyed coolant anyway.

 

I decided against running mayhems xt-1 again because while using it my purple dye disappeared and algae grew in my loop.

 

I use premix because it works out a similar cost to buying:

distilled

dye

anti corrosion

biocide

 

and means i have less dodgy little posion bottle hanging around for my dog to chew on or w/e.

 

I use dye because it looks good and coloured tubing that isn't black looks ridiculous.

 

I've never had dye 'gunk up' my blocks, I'm convinced it's a myth spawned by people with stained plasticiser or organic growth wedged in their cpu blocks.

[PBaines]

There is a lot of "talking" about the pastel coolant. Some say it is risky to use while others are fine with it. Maybe its the people complaining being loudest but after TTL its become a bit fishy.

 

I ordered 2L for myself to find out if there is any truth in anything people say about it.

 

The only complaint I have seen was TTL's build.

 

Will still stick with the Pastel Orange and see how it turns out :)

[zoltan]

Apparently there was a draught in a room 2000ish years ago. :3

 

Celebrating a draught, well, I guess they celebrate worse than that at times.

 

Anyway, after Jesusfest yesterday and then forum downtime every time I wanted to post, he we are lol.

 

An azeotropic solution is a solution whereby the physical characteristics of the liquids will change. With water, everybody already knows how that works, like anti-freeze in a car coolant, etc, but there's also the possibility of changing the boiling temp instead of the freezing temp, and that is very useful for specific use coolants, like PC cooling loops.

It's the same principle as an air cooler (well any liquid cooler is still an air cooler of course), whereby heatpipes are used. The fluid used in heatpipes has a very low boiling temp, so that it evaporates quickly, travels towards the heatsink-equipped end of the heatpipe as a gas, then condensates back to liquid again and is pumped through gravity or a capillary pump back to the hot zone. It's basically a closed loop liquid cooling system. In a full size liquid cooling system, this principle can also be used. The trick is to do the inverse of a pressure cooker: making the coolant almost boil, but it can't boil because of the closed loop and the automatic temperature limit that is built into every processor. But, while it has as good as reached boiling temperature, the molecules of the cooling liquid will absorbe much more thermal energy, so they will actively cool. The absorbed energy will be dissipated to the radiator when the molecule reaches that. If the molecule has reached a temperature that would allow it to move to gaseous state normally, it will also dissipate it's stored energy much faster than when it hasn't.

It's the same thing as with freezing water: if you put room temperature water in the freezer, it will take a few hours to freeze solid, but if you put boiling water in the freezer, it will freeze in seconds. The reason is that any compound, in order to change it's state, has to use energy, and that energy is thermal energy. You can test this principle at home: you put water on the back of your hand that is exactly the same temperature as your body temperature, and it will feel cold, because it's evaporating, and is drawing thermal energy from your skin. If you put water with alcohol of exactly the same temperature of your body temperature on the back of your hand, it will feel colder, because it evaporates faster, because the boiling point is lowered, thus drawing thermal energy faster.

So applied to the PC cooling loop:

Let's say we want to cool an overclocked Core i5-3570k. At full load overclocked, this chip will have a Tj of 105°C, which is above the boiling temp of pure water, but above 100°C the CPU is throttled, so a baseplate could get as hot as about the temperature of boiling water. So we need an airtight closed loop anyway for this chip because otherwise, the coolant, even if it's pure water, can boil and form bubbles, except when the gas pressure doesn't allow that, and only allows evaporating to the same pace as condensation.

This system is most likely to run at much lower temps than that, but we want to keep it away from 90°C, so we want to boost the cooling performance just before it reaches 90°C. Normally we would do that with a radiator fan profile, but we can also do it with the coolant: by adding enough alcohol to reduce the boiling point of the coolant with 10 degrees celsius, to bring it from 100°C to about 90°C. That necessitates about 30% glycol in the water. Adding the alcohol will also reduce the thermal conductivity, so we can't add too much. Alcohol will also corrode metal, so we can't add too much. Basically, just like in cars, we want to avoid adding more than 50% alcohol. The more alcohol in the water, the lower the boiling point. Here we want to have a boiling temp that is above the normal operating temp, but under the maximum load temp, 90°C. What will happen, is that first of all the coolant will perform about the same at normal operating levels, it evaporates a bit better, thus absorbs a bit more thermal energy, but it's also a bit less thermally conductive. But when the load on the CPU goes up, the coolant will gain in efficiency: as the coolant reaches it's boiling point sooner, it will start drawing a huge amount of thermal energy sooner, and the system will not get as hot.

 

In my experience, adding 20-30% glycol-based high performance anti-freeze (I use high performance motorcycle anti-freeze, because it's made for warm weather and a specific usage scenario, so the manufacturer of the anti-freeze adds nothing that is not necessary, and I use a separate loop for the CPU), lowers the coolant boiling temperature with less than 10°C, which works perfectly for cooling an Intel in a heavy gaming rig, because instead of starting to boost cooling performance at near 100°C, the coolant will start to boost cooling performance at just beyond 90°C. It will have reached its boiling point and the molecules will try to reach a gaseous state by absorbing a huge amount of thermal energy, but they will not be able to form bubbles in the coolant because - even though the molecules will have absorbed all this energy to change state - they will not be able to at a faster pace than the condensation pace in the radiator, because it's an airtight closed loop and the gas pressure can't rise. Modern tubing resist extreme pressures, well beyond the small pressure that will build up because of the evaporating coolant. I get about 2-3°C lower average temperature with glycol+water in comparison to water only myself, so there is a difference. Pre-filled liquid coolers use glycol to boost the performance in this way (or, how to get astonishingly good performance out of mediocre hardware...).

As mentioned, there are a few downsides to adding alcohol to the coolant water. One downside I haven't mentioned yet: alcohol, glycol specifically, breaks down into acids, especially when it's heated for a long time. This causes any water/alcohol loop to become dangerously corrosive to the hardware after about 2 years. And that's thanks to the additives in the anti-freeze that it takes that long to become acid. Even pre-filled PC cooling loops, which contain water and summer automotive anti-freeze, which is glycol with very few additives, mainly anti-acids if anything, will have their coolant become acidic after a good two years, and will break down, unless the coolant is tested and changed to moment it drop down to a pH value of 7. Two years is of course a long time for a custom loop, so it's not really a problem for enthusiasts.

 

The colorants and bling additives for coolants, will not leave a residue. Fancy opaque colorants/bling additives, will definitely leave a gel-like residue (I think it's silicone based by the looks of it), but in my opinion, they will not break anything, an amount of residue is only difficutly avoidable in any loop in the long run. However, silicones are only soluble in acid solutions, which is not a great idea for cooling loops. I have no idea how they solve that. Maybe they don't, maybe it's like shampoo, that's not supposed to be acid either, but it is because of the silicones. And that's the problem with some fancy additives or coolants, you don't exactly know what's in them, it's a closed source coolant lol, you have to trust the manufacturer. I'd rather know what I put in the loop exactly, down to the handful of molecules. That's also why I like glycol-based motorcycle anti-freeze, it's a simple product and I know exactly what it is. Also, anti-freeze is often UV reactive (so you don't need extra bling), and it's highly toxic, so a perfect biocide. An anti-freeze solution will become darker with time, many fancy coolants will not change colour that much.

[everything count to life]

Wow that's a lot of writing you know a lot about coolants. :) :)

[crunzaty]

..

 

Longest read ever but it was worth it! I feel like i know a bit more, but this also made me feel like i have no idea what i'm doing xD

Thanks for this useful information! ;D

[mybeat]

Always used coolants, will be using EK clear coolant in my upcoming rig. 

While it's possible to get distilled in a pharmacy,  it's not that much cheaper than coolants and the whole mixing it with other stuff looks like more trouble than it's worth.

I have a few bottles of sterilized water, don't know if it's the same as distilled, but it smells funny and I don't feel comfortable putting it in my loop. 

[legopc]

I have always used EK Coolant mixes. Work well, keep color, don't stain to badly and are a good buy. I typically buy distilled water from drug store though for flushing and rinsing...

 

Why coolant - typically I like the colors and I really don't want to worry about mixing in a dye... biocide or a kill coil, etc. I always use clear tubing...

are the ek coolant thingys conductive? 

[Hyydrah]

I heard that a killcoil isn't even necessary. What's the best dye for a white liquid? If I can find one that doesn't cause frequent problems like Mayhem's apparently does, I'll definitely stay away from coolant.

[Ghost]

are the ek coolant thingys conductive? 

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".

[Ghost]

I heard that a killcoil isn't even necessary. What's the best dye for a white liquid? If I can find one that doesn't cause frequent problems like Mayhem's apparently does, I'll definitely stay away from coolant.

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

[Hyydrah]

There is a lot of "talking" about the pastel coolant. Some say it is risky to use while others are fine with it. Maybe its the people complaining being loudest but after TTL its become a bit fishy.

 

I ordered 2L for myself to find out if there is any truth in anything people say about it.

He did mix his quite a bit, so I think that it might be okay if it's used the way it was "meant" to be.

[Hyydrah]

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

It doesn't come in white, though.  -_- (from what I've seen)

[Ghost]

He did mix his quite a bit, so I think that it might be okay if it's used the way it was "meant" to be.

He didn't mix any dyes into it if that's what you mean. How did you want him to use the coolant, have it stand on a shelf? Of course the coolant is mixed inside a loop.

[Ghost]

It doesn't come in white, though.  -_-

There are no white dyes. You can get a white base but only mayhems and one other company make white coolant. But they are based on the same thing and have the same issues.

[Hyydrah]

He didn't mix any dyes into it if that's what you mean. How did you want him to use the coolant, have it stand on a shelf? Of course the coolant is mixed inside a loop.

No, he said in one of his videos that he mixed another brand's dye in to it and the person that supplied the Mayhem's coolant gave him a hassle, so he will be draining Orca soon and using XSPC coolant from now on.

[Ghost]

No, he said in one of his videos that he mixed another brand's dye in to it and the person that supplied the Mayhem's coolant gave him a hassle, so he will be draining Orca soon and using XSPC coolant from now on.

He did? I am very sure that he is adamant he did everything correctly and mayhems is blaming acidity in his loop on the colour fading. If you have a source I would love to hear it.

[R4STABAN]

There's not really any way to dye mayhems black a different colour anyway. Like all other pastels it is just pastel white with dye. With black its *saturated* with loads of dye, particularly green.

[Ghost]

There's not really any way to dye mayhems black a different colour anyway. Like all other pastels it is just pastel white with dye. With black its *saturated* with loads of dye, particularly green.

The claimed acidity in the loop made the red dye fade which led to brown. :(

[R4STABAN]

The claimed acidity in the loop made the red dye fade which led to brown. :(

when my purple dye disappeared mick of mayhems claimed it was acidity.

I think it's the go-to response atm

[Ghost]

when my purple dye disappeared mick of mayhems claimed it was acidity.

I think it's the go-to response atm

Out of interest did anything happen besides the colour fading? Any plasticizer issues?

[R4STABAN]

Out of interest did anything happen besides the colour fading? Any plasticizer issues?

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. if these dont leach they are the ideal tubing for pastel.

the worst tubing for pastel is primochill pro lrt. it leaches very badly to the point where instead of looking like anti perispirant it looks like fur. mine went bright green too. personally i think its down to the anti microbial coating in that tubing.