So, my watercooling loop literally exploded...

[ImBleu]

1 minute ago, frogonastring said:

I'd contacted them via Facebook but not heard anything; I'm just sending them an email now. To be honest, the system is five years old so I'm not expecting anything - but I'm curious to hear what they'll have to say about it!

Could link them to the thread here too. Negative publicity is no matter what a bad thing.

[frogonastring]

3 minutes ago, ThatCoolBlueKidd said:

Could link them to the thread here too. Negative publicity is no matter what a bad thing.

I do want to be careful to say that I don't blame XSPC for anything! This was a five year old system, maintained well, but nonetheless quite old. I wonder if the pump had reached end-of-life. It's not their fault, I don't think.

[Guest]

Was that a submerged pump? 

[frogonastring]

15 hours ago, Slickwicked said:

Was that a submerged pump? 

Yes - it's this product: (http://martinsliquidlab.petrastech.com/XSPC-DualBay-ReservoirPump-Review.html)

 

[klh2000]

On 4/12/2016 at 5:50 AM, frogonastring said:

TL;DR - My pump failed in a dramatic way and caused the res to explode. Pics below.
 

About five/six years ago, I won a PC in a competition from the UK's PC Gamer magazine. It was state of the art for its time, with an overclocked i7 860, 8GB of RAM, HD 5870, and XSPC water cooling. Up until Saturday, it's been going very strong ever since - I very rarely feel the need to upgrade, as it's been powerful enough for me not to notice.

However.

About a month ago, I noticed that the pump in the reservoir start buzzing - shown in this video.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom1

I didn't think much of it, thinking it was just trapped bubbles or something. At the time, I contacted XPSC who suggested topping the loop up. So I did, and gave it a shake and some time to work the bubbles out, and it got quieter again. Great! I thought I'd solved it. But, I was nervous - so I set temperature alarms on Speedfan, with an indicator LED and auto-shutdown on certain thresholds in case the pump totally failed.
 

Skip ahead to Saturday when things took a turn for the worst. It turns out the temperature alarms weren't needed, because fifteen minutes after booting, the front of the reservoir exploded off and flew across the room.http://bit.ly/watercoolboom2
 

It turns out that the pump had seized, or gotten stuck, or something - caught fire, generated huge amounts of pressure, and vented through the first available weakness - the front of the reservoir.

Cue about a litre of coolant draining onto the carpet over the front of the case.
 

I was out and came in just after it happened - my wife was using the computer. Luckily I was able to disconnect everything, and grab out all the hard drives and stuff before anything else got wet - only the optical drives and one case fan got innundated, and because of where the break was, the water just flowed over the front and didn't ingress in. I think I'm in the clear in terms of actual component damage (other than the pump and reservoir, obviously)
 

I took the res apart with a hammer - amazed at home much effort it took to crack the perspex, even whilst damaged - but didn't learn much other than the pump was totally seized - and that burnt out pumps smell bad.
 

Link to gallery of a handful of pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/bQ2zHnZ46yetZYCL9
 

Things I have learnt.
1. If your pump starts buzzing in an unfamiliar way, take precautions and make plans to replace it as soon as possible.
2. Distilled water mixed with burnt-out motor parts, smoke and burnt plastic smells really bad.
3. Don't sit directly in front of your reservoir.
4. Watercooling is occasionally way more exciting than it has any right to be.
5. Deciding what to do next is tricky.
 

Phew.
 

Now, do I replace the cooling with an air cooler to tide me over till my next upgrade, or do I go with an AIO system, or do I replace the loop entirely with new components? Is there any benefit to replacing the radiator and CPU block as well (XPSC Delta) - other than getting a brand new, corrosion-free one? My system is in need of an update, but it's hard to know how much money to spend now.

Please fix for night theme users

 

[frogonastring]

3 hours ago, klh2000 said:

Please fix for night theme users

 

I thought I'd already done it, but I've reset the formatting again. 
 

Thanks for contributing ;-)

[klh2000]

1 hour ago, frogonastring said:

I thought I'd already done it, but I've reset the formatting again. 
 

Thanks for contributing ;-)

It's fixed now, thank you!

[user21513]

My XSPC water cooler exploded after 4-5 years of use.  The  motor was on fire and black smoke was emitting.

The whole room smells extremely like burned chemical and I have to replace almost everything.

 

Probably my whole house would have burned down, if I weren't at home. Now, I don't feel good about leaving the PC on before leaving.

I will contact XSPC for compensation.