A leak happened due user error

[sl06bhytmar]

So have to admit, I just a couple months ago built my first water cooling loop and now I have most likely a dead GPU...

 

Story: reservoir level had been dropping slowly but surely at rate of about 1ml / day so it took about a month to see reservoir reached minimum coolant level. So time to investigate and I found a very small leak at front radiator where hose clamp had pierced trough hose. Bad quality clamp had sharp tooth inside so replaced it, added more coolant and everything is perfect? WRONG! I didn't do proper leak test again so I didn't notice when I had to move reservoir a bit out the case to refill it had started to leak and leaked straight on top of the SSD, then from SSD to HDD rack and from HDD rack on top of the GPU. Couple hours of gaming and black screen, system halted and first try to reboot computer didn't do anything (Asus MB fault protection probably kicked in and tried to prevent more damage). So I did CMOS clear and tried to reboot and got that nice zap sound with odor of ozone in air. Then it was clear something had gone pretty badly wrong.

 

After opening the case and taking hdd rack and gpu out I was having a small heart attack moment when I saw the leak happening. Luckily SSDs and HDDs are fine but GPU has three resistors damaged but I think it might have a chance if I replace those resistors.

 

Lessons learnt: Always do leak testing when you have to move stuff inside the case, no matter how trivial that movement seemed to be.

 

Do not be like me, couple hours of leak testing won't slow you down too much 

[BloodyWaters]

That's why I'm weary of water cooling. 

[Mick Naughty]

I do about an hour of testing everytime I make a change. I always run the system like normal, turn the pump to max then put on some benchmarks. 

 

Ive had a leak on almost every thing in my pc. I always have fresh fluid so I never worry about it. I'll never go back to air cooling. Unless I give up on pc gaming. Just too many pro's over the con's.