watercooling maint. ?

[vivithemage]

I am curious, one thing holding me back on watercooling is the aspect of having to maintain it. I like air because it's set, and it's good.

I have a server I want to watercool, sitting in an Antec 300 case, nothing too hard, 1 cpu, 1 gpu + northbridge that gets roasty toasty.

The thing is on 24/7, and I don't want to have to take it down for maint. on the WC loop if I can help it.

So my question is, what do I have to do to maintain my loop?

[jumper2high]

If you do it all properly, make sure you clean all components and use a clean liquid plus maybe a silver kill coil acting as an antibacterial agent, you could get away with running it for a year or more without having to tear it down for cleaning.


Usually, the only reason you'd have to disassemble a loop is for cleaning or upgrades.

[jayhall0315]

Viveth - A properly setup loop with a reliable pump (I would never use a DDC pump on a server, only the Swiftech MCP 655/Koolance 450 models) and properly pre-cleaned radiator(s) will easily last you 1 to 2 years with no maintenance except occasionally topping off the water level a little bit. As Jumper said, the coil works well or you can buy some algae inhibitor at a pet-store for $3. We have 23 servers/workstations in our lab and four of them use watercooling with no problems.

[matari]

What is the big deal? Even on air you tear down once a year, dust and reseat everything.

[MadHacker]

I have been running my server for over a year now 24/7 ... watercooled Q6600 O/C to 3.6Ghz
and havn't seen any change in temperatures.
i guess i'll do a tear down sometime this summer and clean it out... well mabe...
like i said my temps haven't changed since i first set it up so i don't realy see a need to clean it.

[jinsean]

With my current build, the only maintenance I've had to do is top off the water in my res. I don't see any signs of bacterial growth. It's been 1 year 3 months since I assembled the loop.

[vivithemage]

Good to know, and no, I never tear down my Air pc's ... sometime I just can air them, but rarely (rarely builds up dust).

[foodfightr]

I used 90% distilled water, 10% pentosin and a few drops of PT nuke. Drained it for the first time in about 3.5 years. Came out the same clear blue color that went in. The tubes started turning blue but nothing growing inside.

I did have to top it off once or twice a year and I added a drop of PT nuke for good measure.

[muskel]

i use 90% distilled water, 10% (99.9% proof) ethanol and a silver killcoil. After 5 months my Clearflex60 tubing started giving off plasticizer on its walls. I swapped out the tubing, refilled the loop. All my rads and blocks were clean.

vivithemage, dont worry about how difficult watercooling could be. Its just tubes and blocks etc... All the info you find on the web might make you think its difficult but its not. Stop worrying and dive in the water!

[vivithemage]

Where do you put the silver in it? Could I just drop it in the rad? What are the best/better tubes out there?

[zalbard]

You want to put silver coil in your reservoir. That way it does not affect performance.

[Conumdrum]

Maybe this will help.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...96&postcount=3

You can easily learn what is best by just reading lots. My link will help. You just dunno yet, you need to learn. Rest is up to you. Your stuff, you need to figure it out.

I spent THREE months reading before I bought my first WC parts list. Been perfect with many upgrades and mainteneance ever since.

Again, your stuff, you are the key to a good build.

[vivithemage]

I've actually read almost all of those links, I was just unsure about a few thing still...especially maint.

I actually just made my first thread on my WC build.

[Computurd]

im no watercooling pro, but what i do is make a gallon of distilled, and add PTNuke to it as a pre-mix. then i keep it around and use it for topping off.

[Frag_Lord]

I use distilled water and a splash of Nulon Ultracool (car coolant) and close my loop for minimum of a year with 0 issues.

[Johnny87au]

6 months is when i clean my loop, just make sure everything is cleaned thoroughly and ur good to go!

[Erklat]

I think you could significantly lengthen the times between maintenance by swapping the coolant rather often. You could see if you have a junk in the coolant after you drain it. Of course you should have a fill and drain port for this to make sense.

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