Best additive?

[Bucket-head]

Hello ppl! my 1st post here and im straight in with a ?
I have just set up my 1st ever water rig and was wondering what additve to use.I was thinking about adding some windscreen washer to my system would this be ok?or could i do better?At the moment i am using de-ionised water on its own. Thanks:)

[TheDude]

I use a mix of anti-freeze and Red Line Wetter and H2O...Red line is used like anti-freeze in race cars. Plain water may "burn" some of your components.

[Bucket-head]

Thanks for that dude ;p can't wait to use this set up on a new rig i'm getting next week.Just got hold of an xp1600 AGOIA Y and also will be getting a proper motherboard KX-7 as opposed to this piece of junk asus A7A266.Will let you know how it goes :) you gotta see the heat exchanger i'm using it is MAD!

[IFMU]

Ill say that alot of folks dont really bother with the anti-freeze. After all, it is made to keep your car engine warm! Which kinda ruins the point of cooling a system.
The main reason so many still do use it is to help keep the water clean from any kind of bacteria. Which will kill any water system.
All that is really needed in a closed system is something that will kill the bacteria off.
Beyond that, nothing other then water.
Now, most will use some water wetter (What he said above). But thats pretty much it. If you dont have that, then you can add in alot of anything really. Ive heard of dishsoap. Very small amounts, you dont want it bubbling up on you.
Alchohol, just enough to kill the bad stuff.
And plenty of others.
Honestly, all that is needed is something to kill it off though.
Beyond that, its personal preference.
oh yea, Welcome to the Sickness!~! :D

TY JBell :D LoL

[JBELL]

the dude - i have a factory stock race car - we run straight water - does just fine....

[TheDude]

Water wetter is mainly to stop corrosion and bacteria. I have run plain distilled water and noticed corrosion on my metal components. Everyone has their favorite mix but I would strongly suggest some kind of additive....even soap as stated above for bacteria.

[Bucket-head]

How bad is the sickness? i feel a real bad dose coming on! one thing i forgot to mention was that my waterblock and heat exchanger are copper,so would need an additive to help the copper from corroding.
Please don't laugh ! i did use some dishsoap......about 5 or six drops OMFG!!! the thing looked like it had ice cream running through it! Took ages to flush it out lol!
I will try and post some piccys of my heat exchanger, i reckon a few ppl here would be interested in it.

[kms]

definately get some anti freeze in there IMO, even if its just 10% or so, prevents pond life & corrosion & the reduction in cooling efficiency is neligable. If its all copper thats good though some corrosion will still occur - worse with dissimilar metals, you get galvanic (battery) corrosion then. If your after a non stinky additive then purple ice is the wtg, foams up for a while but thats just part of the coating process & will go after a few hours.

[Bucket-head]

Cheers for that kms :toast: I asked the same question on another forum,the thread was viewed over 150 times with no replies.No more threads on that forum;)

[Neptune5k]

I run just a distilled water - RL water wetter mix. No problems with aquarium life, just pink tubing now :)

[TheDude]

PS don't go overboard with the additives...just enough to kill the critters and stop corrosion...too much will raise temps.

[Bucket-head]

Don't know exactly how much additive i mixed in,bit of guess work on my behalf.Suppose it was no more than 5% maximum.It runs anywhere from 31.c to 38.c at max when i run something like sisoft burn-in.

[TheDude]

Sounds pretty good to me:D

[zippyc]

Distilled water is usually reccomended because it is non- conductive (in it's pure form) and does not leave deposits in your system.

Water Wetter should actually help your efficiency (marginally) and should be flushed once a year if you have any aluminum in the system. I'm not sure if WW makes your distilled water conductive, though. (anybody know?)

If you don't use water wetter, you can put in 2 tablespoons of bleach (per gallon) to keep any greenines from growing.

Stay away from dissimilar metals (IE: Copper and Aluminum) in one flow system if at all possible.

The only reason I can see to use antifreeze is for extreme cooling, where the liquid falls below 0 Centegrade and is in danger of freezing. But it slows flow a little by increasing viscosity.

This seems to be the consensus in my searches through multiple forums on this subject.

Good luck!

[will_perdikakis]

Pure water has the highest thermal capacitance of all the coolants listed.

Ethylene Glycol (anti-freeze) is used to lower the freezing point (barely) but more importantly, to raise the boiling point of the cooling medium in automotive cooling. Ethylene Glycol by itself is not a very good medium for heat transfer which is why it is mixed with water.

Water Wetter will not increase effeciency, it will hinder it. It will however, hinder it less than normal anti-freeze.

Distilled water will become conductive from all the impurities in the blocks/tubes/heat exchangers, so there is really no point in them.

I recommend using regular tap water, a tiny bit of dish soap to help break the surface tension a little (will help get the bubbles out), and a dash of bleach to kill the living things inside.

Will:)

[Bucket-head]

I would use regular tap water but where i live the water is extremely hard hence the use of de ionised.Believe me if i could get away with not purchasing this stuff i would,being the tight fisted git i am:) must be the onset of old age....
Next time i flush the system out i will try the dish soap and bleach as reccomended.

[Hardass]

My setup:
75% Distilled Water
15% Antifreeze
10% WaterWetter

[TheDude]

What am I supposed to use in this Koolance case? The manual says that if I use anything other than the stuff they sell,it will void my warranty (which is not transferrable anyway), my hair will fall out and my privates will shrink. Don't mind going bald but can't afford to risk the other!:D

[kms]

I use 50/50 antifreeze / demin but thats to stop my chiller icing (water@-2.7C), chucked some purple ice in there too (like to see the foam :D), even added a load of dyelite too, looked great for a few minutes 'till i realised just how much condensation sub ambient water creates, so have lagged the pipes now & the cold cathode stays off lol :D

zippyc i asked becooling wether purple ice is conductive in solution, they said it was negligable & i've had many a leak & not crashed until the leak was huge (i.e. contaminated with fluff & stuff & then conductive). If it was conductive in solution i'd have expected a bsod with the 1st drip?! :) same goes for the antifreeze & dyelite ?

will_perdikakis i ran my 1st w/c system with tap water & its fairly soft in my area, about a month l8r i opened the system and the calcium had come out of the water & scaled my block up no end, anything over a month & flow would seriosly have been hindered. Made a mess of the tubes too & cant be too good for the pump impellor:)

Hardass those percentages are the same that Gabe @ Swiftech reccomended to Mike - mdzcpa, i assume its the QP mix ?

TheDude, what is their mix ? anyone know, may not be worth changing it until your warranty's out just in case they can detect it.



:banana: :toast:

[will_perdikakis]

will_perdikakis i ran my 1st w/c system with tap water & its fairly soft in my area, about a month l8r i opened the system and the calcium had come out of the water & scaled my block up no end, anything over a month & flow would seriosly have been hindered. Made a mess of the tubes too & cant be too good for the pump impellorI stand corrected, only use tap water if it is not too hard.

Metropolian US should not have this problem though.

[Nohto]

will_perdikakis

Water Wetter will not increase effeciency, it will hinder it. It will however, hinder it less than normal anti-freeze.

That is totally FALSE! if you have ever used WATER WETTER or read the instructions and test results you would know that with a 50%glycol/50%water mix compared to a 50/50 + WaterWetter you get a 3.5% increase in coolant efficiency. With plain water compared to a 50/50 glycol mix you get the same (3.5%) increase. With Plain water and WaterWetter you get a 11.5% cooling efficiency increase.
As far as tap water you should never use period. Automotive companys tell you to use only distilled water in the coling system and the same applies to your cooling system.

[kms]

hmmm nothing beats pure water !! period ... add anything & its thermal capacity will reduce

http://speakeasy.net/~language/images/graph-capacity.gif reasons for using additives are as above :)

Would like to see what resuts deuterium - D20 (heavy water) would give in a cooling system though!! Maybe a little to viscous ? Anyone work at a nuke power plant ?:D

[will_perdikakis]

if you have ever used WATER WETTER or read the instructions and test results you would know that with a 50%glycol/50%water mix compared to a 50/50 + WaterWetter you get a 3.5% increase in coolant efficiency.Read what I said before you yell, my friend. Water Wetter is a better capacitor of heat than Ethylene Glycol so it will hinder it less than normal anti-freeze.
As far as tap water you should never use period. And why is this?

[Nohto]

I did read what you said and you said
Water Wetter will not increase effeciency, it will hinder it. it will not hinder it.
Oh yeah I wasn't yelling (NO CAPS LIKE THIS WOULD BE YELLING)

Tap water isn't good for water cooling because it has calcium deposits in it and it also has all kinds of chemicals in it from the water treatment plants, not to mention it will corrode your fittings.