Replacement EK Res Tube?

[matari]

Glad I was proven wrong- one of mine leaked from the threads and after I attempted to tighten it, the tube cracked.

[PiLsY]

Waterlogged that's exactly what I'm saying . With watercooling being so accessible now you have people who frankly need their hand holding crossing roads trying to watercool PCs after spending 10 mins on google. You would expect some failures - between 1 and 10 in every 1000 units depending on your margins. People posting this on the forum means every monkey that tightens their res like theyre strangling a ginger stepchild and cracks it screams product failure.

With so much of that going on its hard not to justify moving away from a threaded design despite the short term costs. The design itself allows this to happen so it needs changing. Not because its wrong, but because it can be incorrectly assembled and cause failure.

[gr1p]

Aside from the "idiot factor" and the use of a thread assembly, what annoys me is the inconsistency of the thread length.

An inconsistent thread length causes the barb outlet/inlet holes of the multioption caps to line up differently when the tube has been adequately tightened. This makes build consistency impossible when using multiple reservoirs per build.

Also to Tiborrr, I'd recommend heatcycling the liquid in your test reservoirs to simulate a hot loop.

[Martinm210]

We're testing our EK RES X2 tubes for several weeks already, running the system using both flushed and non-flushed (EK factory packed) radiators. We're conducting test with four different market available water additives and we will soon add two more! Loops are exposed to direct sunlight, the radiators are ultimatively covered with paper insulation providing water temperature similiar to real life conditions (~ 32°C).

So far not a single crack has occured nor any leak appeared on the bottom of the reservoirs. We will continue with these tests for several months to come or until the first damage to the tube is done. We do not wan't jump to conclusions too soon!


Best Regards,
Niko

Great job trying to get to the bottom of it!

[NaeKuh]

the radiators are ultimatively covered with paper insulation providing water temperature similiar to real life conditions (~ 32°C).

Best Regards,
Niko

i was just about to recomend doing something like this, until i read it..

lol.. nice one... yeah, you need some heat load to see if the res's can tollerate it.

Personally id take it up to 40C even or higher to simulate extreme conditions.
This way if you dont crack at extreme conditions, you can be sure it wont crack at the standard settings.

There is 1 more factor neither you nor EK have taken into account here. As Liquid cooling has gained more and more popularity and taken that small shift closer to mainstream, it's also collected a whole bunch of what I like to call "the idiot factor". These are ppl who think they're "technically capable" but in reality, they have a problem even tying their shoes. . .don't discount it folks, it's a bigger problem than you think.

I plead the 5th! :X

Oh wait.. i shouldnt admit to this huh?

[the finisher]

Good to see EK is on top of it

[Xrim]

I might be an idiot, I'll ask my wife and see what she says

[tiborrr]

Thanks for the thumbs up, guys! Yeah, I'll start doing cycles but unfortunately I don't have any heat source, I might as well use a high power hair-dryer or heat gun once a day for 15 minutes to heat up the radiators?

We will be adding the nickel plated waterblocks in each loop as well to check whether any of the water additives can cause nickel plating to come off. Distilled water eventually ionizes itself again and combined with some other metals with different electron potential (don't know if this is the right word in english) it may cause reverse galvanic reaction, effectively removing the nickel from the copper.

We'll try to rule everything out!

Best Regards,
Niko

[Erdrick1980]

Thanks for the thumbs up, guys! Yeah, I'll start doing cycles but unfortunately I don't have any heat source, I might as well use a high power hair-dryer or heat gun once a day for 15 minutes to heat up the radiators?

We will be adding the nickel plated waterblocks in each loop as well to check whether any of the water additives can cause nickel plating to come off. Distilled water eventually ionizes itself again and combined with some other metals with different electron potential (don't know if this is the right word in english) it may cause reverse galvanic reaction, effectively removing the nickel from the copper.

We'll try to rule everything out!

Best Regards,
Niko

Why don't you use aquarium heaters for heat load tests? get a aquarium tank, add water and drop in the heater/heaters.

[Church]

tiborrr: from cases i recall reading @XS about damaged nickel plating, most of them were because of too strongly acidic solution usage for cleaning (eg. stronger types of vinegar and for too long time) - so maybe it's not worth to bother, as normal usage with normal distilled+silver or distilled+(not overdosed)PHN shouldn't cause any problems. Hmm .. but then again .. remembering WL's brought up "idiot factor" - you can test overdosed PHN-Cu, and for RMA cases ask user - how much he put in biocide .

[tiborrr]

@churchy: We're testing every possible scenario, including the overdose of PT Nuke (sadly not the PHN version as It's impossible to obtain one). We would like to get to the bottom of things once and for all. We're doing everything we can to stop the ... (see pic below) ... of the EK brand

nd for RMA cases ask user - how much he put in biocide

[Gunslinger]

Mine cracked after leaving the top off of it for an extended period of time, while the base was still threaded onto the pump. I've actually got 2 that are like this.

[the finisher]

I certainly do not have a negative view of EK. Too the contrary.

Personally, I find it hard to trust any acrylic res of any type, from any manufacture. Just over time, I've seen/ heard so many stories of cracking.

[PiLsY]

Tiborr - you could pop the rads over that wall radiator in the background of your test bench pic. Switching that on a few times a day should give you a nice heat cycle .

[Xrim]

I have nothing negative to say either, for my part it just seems to be bad luck. And a huge positive thing is that both res did not leak even if there where a lot of cracks in them.

[Church]

Xrim: even if they didn't leak back then, i wouldn't keep running/using them, as cracks may widen until said leaks appear, no trust in such any more.
tiborr: btw, i still think that there is SOMETHING wrong/different with X2 reservoirs. I cannot remember almost any post where someone complained about 50mm EK reservoirs, but even taking into accounts that there might be bigger numbers of less competent users @LC field these days then few years ago, somehow relatively big number of reported cracks for X2 rises a bit suspicion. You should check every possible bit that might differ between res lines. Starting from shipping packaging (if it changed, maybe new one is less protecting brittle things), till thread cutting machinery (maybe some slight inaccuracies/slight mismatching, that might add extra stress when bolted together/tightening down), maybe material as some suspected, or whatever else even slightest difference. If material used is same .. maybe something in tooling or in process of making/cutting/threading is not well fit for bigger diameter reservoirs.

[Waterlogged]

@churchy: We're testing every possible scenario, including the overdose of PT Nuke (sadly not the PHN version as It's impossible to obtain one). We would like to get to the bottom of things once and for all. We're doing everything we can to stop the ... (see pic below) ... of the EK brand

The only time I toss EK on the spit is when it's truly EK's screwup (usually a design flaw, and there have been more than a few of those over the years ).

btw, get a different shade of blue for your test bench. Every time I see it, I can't help but jump to the conclusion your running that God awful Gigabyte Liquid cooling system.

[matari]

You might (if you have not) try dual pumps. There is such a thing as too much flow :p Aeration and foaming liquid is a direct result of excess flow.

[NaeKuh]

im a diety.. i Gospel.. not lie..

[Alexandr0s]

You claim to be a deity, yet your user title says you're still chasing after becoming one. Make up your mind .