Noob advice needed..

[wilson]

Ok so im getting some converters for my Pwm water blocks and want to know if i need to put thread lock or ptfe tape on the joints to be sure of a good seal. Now the kit does come with a rubber o-ring but will this alone be enough as the waterblock, converter and barb are from different manufacturers.
Cheers Paul

[NysoO]

As long as you have a o-ring you will be fine if you tighten the barb up. Though you can always be on the safe side and put some thread tape on the barbs to be really sure that it is going to keep water tight, it wont affect the performance in any way so I don't see why you wouldn't wanna use it. Unless you are putting the barb in a reservoir made out of plexiglas, which is a bit sensitive to tension, which thread tape creates.

[wilson]

Well the converter is going in to plexiglass so it`s best to leave it then?? or is some thread lock ok to use?

[Pisklink]

I think it's completely unnecessary to use tape when making use of O-rings. Normally the O-ring will make a seal between the surface of an object and the barb threaded in that object. The tape causes resistance when putting the barb in the thread which eventually could prevent you from threading the barb completely into the thread hole. Ultimately the O-ring won't even touch the surface anymore which makes it useless.

[NysoO]

I think it's completely unnecessary to use tape when making use of O-rings. Normally the O-ring will make a seal between the surface of an object and the barb threaded in that object. The tape causes resistance when putting the barb in the thread which eventually could prevent you from threading the barb completely into the thread hole. Ultimately the O-ring won't even touch the surface anymore which makes it useless.

Both yes and no, the O-ring will still put a pressure and seal between the plexiglas and the barb. Actually I put three DD highflow barbs with O-ring on my MCres, and when I leaktested it, there was a few drops coming out of the thread area, so basically I tightened up the barb more and more, eventually I got it water-tight, but I really had to tighten the barb up scarily much. Now, when I reassembled the loop, I used thread tape on the barbs, and with that in mind, I didn't tightned the barb up as much, fearing for the plexiglas, and what do you know, the barb is still water-tight (After ~1 month).

Now you might think that thread tape will make the barb hard to screw in place, but in the end it depends on how much tape you use. Two or three rounds should be enough.