water cooling Does PETG tubing cloud/plasticize more or less than soft tubing???

[Euphoria]

Hey everyone, so I'm curious to know from any people experienced with hardline water cooling if PETG tubing stains from dyes/coolant and plasticize more or less than soft PVC tubing???

 

Reason for asking; I've always gone with soft tubing out of habit. Over the years I've tried a dozen or more different brands of tubing from big brand's €8-10 per meter tubing, down to a hardware store's own brand €1 per meter stuff. I've tried plain distilled water with nothing else except a tiny amount of biocide, also distilled water with dyes, lots of biocide, with anti-corrosion and without, and many other mixes, but no matter what tubing or fluid I use, the tubing is as cloudy as a British summers day within 6 weeks. It drives me crazy, the loops look amazing for only a few weeks then they start to cloud up and look like poop, so I'm currently draining and flushing the loops every 8 weeks and every time replacing the tubing.

 

Well, I have a new project I want to start soon and this time I was planning to swap to hardline tubing, so I wondered - does PETG tubing suffer as bad from plasticization as PVC tubing? Am I going to be redoing all of those bends, cuts, and measurements every 2 months or is PETG not as bad?

Appreciate any input on this.

 

Thanks.

[toasty6776]

PETG is A LOT better than soft tubing in terms of clouding (not perfect though). If you really don't want any clouding what so ever, you can get glass tubing for your build. Mayhems offers glass tubing for PC water cooling in different sizes. You can check out this video to see how nice glass tubing actually looks. You might run into some issues due to incompatible sizes of fittings. A lot of brands rate their fittings in imperial measurements that roughly match their metric counterparts (1/2" is not neither 12mm nor 13mm). The glass tubing however is measured in the metric system, so watch out for that.

 

[Euphoria]

On 1/19/2017 at 7:08 PM, toasty6776 said:

PETG is A LOT better than soft tubing in terms of clouding (not perfect though).

Ok that's good to hear, thank you.

Have you had a lot of experience with PETG? What I mean is, obviously no one can say: "This tubing clouds up after exactly X amount of time", but in your experience is it a case of having to replace and redo all of the tubing once a year, or still more often than that?

 

As for glass, I would love to but all of the extra fittings needed as you can't bend it would simply be too expensive for me at the moment. Also only 3 stores actually sell any water cooling parts in the country I live in now, and they only stock a handful of basic parts for soft tubing, so I have to buy everything from the UK, then have it shipped to a courier somewhere else in the UK, they ship it to my country and deliver it to my closest city, then a local courier picks it up and delivers it to me. So it takes weeks to receive the parts and a Lot of money in postage.

One of the things I miss about the UK, order anything I could desire today and have it in my hands tomorrow.

[toasty6776]

I personally don't have any experience at all since my PC isn't water cooled (yet). I am looking forward to buying my first loop very soon, though, so I have done quite a lot of research on the subject. As far as I know PETG tubing doesn't cloud for quite some time. I can't give you an exact time frame but you should be fine for over a year (don't sue me if I'm wrong).

[Euphoria]

5 minutes ago, toasty6776 said:

(don't sue me if I'm wrong).

Oh I don't know, "Where there's blame, there's a claim"

[ToastyBear]

Just use acrylic tubing. My experience is acrylic doesnt stain. 

 

However ALL materials will cloud and develop gunk. Soft tubing can have chemicals leech inti the plastic which permanently stains it. Acrylic and glass wont have this happen however particulate matter can settle on the walls of the tubing or block or res or basically any surface no matter what it is.

 

You need to take apart glass reserviours or glass tubing once in a while and give it a good scrub. A waterpik (a water jet thing for cleaning teeth) is very good at cleaning out tubing. A nice scrub and its good as new. 

[Euphoria]

Indeed, I knew all tubing would cloud up eventually, I'm happy to drain and flush every 8 weeks to slow any crap building up in the water, I just don't want to be redoing all of the bends and replacing all the tubing 5 times a year like I am now with soft tubing.

 

As for acrylic, I would be much more nervous using acrylic than PETG. I've worked with acrylic sheet hundreds of times for modding, so I know how fragile it is.

[Ryoku]

6 hours ago, Euphoria said:

Ok that's good to hear, thank you.

Have you had a lot of experience with PETG? What I mean is, obviously no one can say: "This tubing clouds up after exactly X amount of time", but in your experience is it a case of having to replace and redo all of the tubing once a year, or still more often than that?

 

As for glass, I would love to, but all of the extra fittings needed as you can't bend it would simply be too expensive for me at the moment. Also only 3 stores actually sell any water cooling parts in the country I live in now, and they only stock a handful of basic parts for soft tubing, so I have to buy everything from the UK, then have it shipped to a courier somewhere else in the UK, they ship it to my country and deliver it to my closest city, then a local courier picks it up and delivers it to me. So it takes weeks to receive the parts and a Lot of money in postage.

One of the things I miss about the UK, order anything I could desire today and have it in my hands tomorrow.

gimme a second I'll go take a picture of some used PETG tubing i have laying around that I use red fluid in.

 

Edit: don't have a proper camera proving hard to take a picture of the difference it keeps coming out looking worse then it really is.

 

edit2: left tubing is a unused failed bend and the right one is the one that was used for a year., you can see the slight clouding.

[Euphoria]

Ryoku, that's awesome thank you for taking the time to do that. If that's the clouding after 12 months I'm happy. Currently that's what my soft tubing looks like after 2 weeks.

Appreciate it.

[Revan654]

Just be careful when buying Coolant. Not all are PETG safe, Most if not all are safe with acrylic.

[Euphoria]

On 1/20/2017 at 8:17 PM, Revan654 said:

Just be careful when buying Coolant. Not all are PETG safe, Most if not all are safe with acrylic.

Thanks Revan654.

[Revan654]

12 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

Thanks Revan654, I was aware of that with PETG, luckily I much prefer good old dis-water with a hint of dye.

 

It's one reason why I still use acrylic, Even though PETG is a bit easier to work with. I don't have to worry about whats compatible.

 

I used distilled water while back, It's did create a kind of water ring stain in my res.

[0ld_Chicken]

 I cannot tell a difference between my used and new Petg pieces, though they were only used for 6 months or so with x-1 and Aurora 2 (different loops) 

 

It's only Ethylene glycol based coolants that are considered bad for Petg.  Most coolant company's deny this though and say that it's fine or that they've never heard of anyone having any issues with eg and Petg. Mayhem's said they'd look into doing independent testing when I wrote them to have them label Pastel Extreme as EG in online shops.  

 

 

@Ryoku do you know what red coolant it was that you used?  Just curious

[AnonymousGuy]

Eh, I have 2 year old soft tubing that's still crystal clear.  Tygon 2275 is plasticizer free (also 2001, 2375, and 2475), Mayhem Ultraclear by its description sounds like its basically a generic version of the same stuff.  

[Ryoku]

3 hours ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

 I cannot tell a difference between my used and new Petg pieces, though they were only used for 6 months or so with x-1 and Aurora 2 (different loops) 

 

It's only Ethylene glycol based coolants that are considered bad for Petg.  Most coolant company's deny this though and say that it's fine or that they've never heard of anyone having any issues with eg and Petg. Mayhem's said they'd look into doing independent testing when I wrote them to have them label Pastel Extreme as EG in online shops.  

 

 

@Ryoku do you know what red coolant it was that you used?  Just curious

Mayhems Pastel Red.