A + B = F me...

U

USMCGrunt

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 19, 2010
Messages
3,103
So I thought I was lucky enough to have gotten three good EK Nickel waterblocks and that the Ice Dragon fluid was pretty awesome looking...beautiful white.

Cracked my loop open two days ago and there was an incredibly strong smell of something biological...

After draining my loops I find my EK GPU blocks have flaked (though the non-reference, V2 isn't nearly as bad), the tubing has been coated in a combination of nickel flaking, some strange layer of deposit from the fluid which also smells of something growing.

I spent the next two days disassebling absolutely everything and cleaning them. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried to get the rads clean, there was still some milky residue in them I couldn't flush out and a few of the swivel fittings may have possible attributed to my now slightly cloudy plain ass distilled water.

On top of the fluid, I had an IandH Silver kill coil in a line of each of the loops...apparently not doing a damn thing.

Now that I have the system back up and running, the front face of my resevoir has tons of microbubbles on it that should hopefully go away over the course of a few power cycles and many hours. I also had barely enough tubing left over so instead of being able to have my fill ports connected, I had to run a couple short tubes out the front of my case through an empty face plate...damn things looks like a bug now....


What have I learned....listen to realredrider and pretty well everyone else about buying EK products and not using any of that crazy bullshit colored fluid...
 
wondering if you took any pics of your old loop + the disassembled water blocks. having that would be useful for future reference.

i've noticed a few people have had issues with silver in mixed metal loops. also since you used 'Ice Dragon' fluid (not familiar with this product) in your loop, may have introduced another variable to why your old loop self-destructed.

i think the safest bet is to use plain distilled + silver or with Liquid Utopia.
 
SonDa5 said:
Could be Plasticizer from your tubing as well.

Sidewinder computers just recently started selling Tygon tubing that is Plasticizer free. http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/ty20plfrtu.html
Click to expand...

Damn over 4 bucks a foot tho!

That sucks that you had issues with the blocks. I can't say i'm surprised on either though to be honest. EK's issues have been documented and vocalized for months. Course if you bought before then you're SOL on the blocks. Then after seeing thread after thread of people gunking up loops by using fluid that's not distilled water, that one doesn't surprise me either sadly. I know all these fancy expensive fluids look nice, but are they really worth the hassle? I'm voting no, plus i'm cheap and distilled is almost free :)

Microbubbles should dissipate after a while of running it.
 
Tossing garbage plated blocks & that colored toilet water in the loop is the problem. Distilled + silver is all you need.
 
As promised, here are the few photos I took:

These are Tygon 1/2"x5/8" clear tubes. The three on the top (there's actually two seperate ones on the top "row") are from the CPU loop and the three on the bottom are from the GPU loop. While difficult to tell in the picture, the CPU ones lack a lot of the grit that was in the GPU block...assumingly, that grit was the nickel flaking
tubingyb.jpg


Next up is the reference EK Nickel plated waterblock prior to it being cleaned. While the pictures are pretty crappy, the area around the screw in the very center and of course the outer edges of the block are what its ALL supposed to look like. There is a small section to the bottom right of the center screw in the lowest recess that didn't have any flaking...assumigly this is an area of low-zero flow...indicating a bad design (at least to me it would be):
beforev1.jpg


Here's the aftershot once I had scrubbed away as much....crap....as I could. There's still plating there but its all tarnished and lost its shine.
afterv1j.jpg


I didn't take a picture of both reference blocks as they both were pretty evenly crapified but the non-reference V2 blocks seem to have been through a better nickeling process...though still not what I would call quality. Here's the V2 after I got it all cleaned up, keep in mind the hazing is actually the acrylic cover, that hazy part is normally covered by a metal plate so they skipped making it nice and smooth there:
afterv2.jpg


Here's the CPU block that was in a seperate loop from the GPUs:
cpublockv.jpg
 
Going to have to blame the EK block since so many people have complained about the quality of their blocks.

I'd stick with distilled water just to keep a good eye on everything.
 
Last edited:
the machining on that cpu block - those channels, is it just me or does that look really badly done? the milled out grooves don't even line up.
 
Well, that picture explains why the Apogee HD has higher restriction than other CPU blocks...
I have an EK block on my 7970, but I made sure to get an all-copper version. So far my loop is nice and clear after 4 months, but I'm running just distilled water and a kill coil.
 
csshih said:
the machining on that cpu block - those channels, is it just me or does that look really badly done? the milled out grooves don't even line up.
Click to expand...

Nope, that's not you. That's what you see when it isn't CNC. That was clearly controlled on a mill by hand.
 
Imitation said:
Damn over 4 bucks a foot tho!

That sucks that you had issues with the blocks. I can't say i'm surprised on either though to be honest. EK's issues have been documented and vocalized for months. Course if you bought before then you're SOL on the blocks. Then after seeing thread after thread of people gunking up loops by using fluid that's not distilled water, that one doesn't surprise me either sadly. I know all these fancy expensive fluids look nice, but are they really worth the hassle? I'm voting no, plus i'm cheap and distilled is almost free :)

Microbubbles should dissipate after a while of running it.
Click to expand...

This is where I buy all my tubing. No need to go to the resellers like Sidewinder.

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23578&catid=861&clickid=searchresults
 
Last edited:
I've been using Durelene PVC tubing. Its been working well for me and I've yet to hear one report about any issues with clouding or leaching. The best part is that its only $0.69 a foot. Its a bit hazy out of the box but its not bad and doesn't seem to get any worse.

I also saw this study done by EK about their nickel plating. I thought that it was pretty interesting.

I had considered using that Ice Dragon fluid. I thought that it was pretty much the same thing as Mayhem's pastel coolant.

Mayhems Pastel range of coolants have been in development for over two years, with co-operation between Ice Dragon Cooling and Mayhems.
Click to expand...
 
Methadras said:
Nope, that's not you. That's what you see when it isn't CNC. That was clearly controlled on a mill by hand.
Click to expand...

....how are they still in business?

edit: swiftech: "The base-plate is precision-machined from C110 copper. Thermal design of the cooling engine is characterized by Swiftech's fin/pin matrix composed of 225 µm (0.009") micro structures; the matrix has been further refined with variable width cross channels to improve flow rate without affecting thermal efficiency, and fabrication quality has also been enhanced to reduce micro machining imperfections. "

micro machining imperfections?
 
csshih said:
....how are they still in business?

edit: swiftech: "The base-plate is precision-machined from C110 copper. Thermal design of the cooling engine is characterized by Swiftech's fin/pin matrix composed of 225 µm (0.009") micro structures; the matrix has been further refined with variable width cross channels to improve flow rate without affecting thermal efficiency, and fabrication quality has also been enhanced to reduce micro machining imperfections. "

micro machining imperfections?
Click to expand...

Gogo marketing speak!
 
Doesn't the ice dragon stuff have a property where it "clings" to imperfect surfaces like tubing and EK nickel plating, due to the tiny particles? Apparently it just wipes off, or can be brushed off with pipe cleaners.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Doesn't the ice dragon stuff have a property where it "clings" to imperfect surfaces like tubing and EK nickel plating, due to the tiny particles? Apparently it just wipes off, or can be brushed off with pipe cleaners.
Click to expand...

Well if it clings, it clings like glue, lol. I used a toothbrush to scrub the blocks as much as I could and then dried them off pretty roughly with a microfiber cloth before dosing them with distilled water. What you see in my pictures is all that was coming off without using some sort of polish or abrasive cleaner.
 
Its plasticizer in your tubes. I had the same thing happen with Fresser fluid and clear Primochill tubes.
 
csshih said:
....how are they still in business?

edit: swiftech: "The base-plate is precision-machined from C110 copper. Thermal design of the cooling engine is characterized by Swiftech's fin/pin matrix composed of 225 µm (0.009") micro structures; the matrix has been further refined with variable width cross channels to improve flow rate without affecting thermal efficiency, and fabrication quality has also been enhanced to reduce micro machining imperfections. "

micro machining imperfections?
Click to expand...

Well, let me put it to you this way, if this was an actual CNC program running on a mill that created this non-uniform, asymmetrical pin grid that you see in that picture, then someone fucked up or there better be a very good explanation as to why that thermal pin array looks like it was hacked out by a Parkinson's sufferer.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039117940 said:
Why on earth would you hand turn something like that... :confused:
Click to expand...

It just looks like it the pin grid was done by hand turning. I could be wrong.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Which would contradict their marketing which would be false advertising...right?
Click to expand...

Well, this is only one block that I see. It might be a fluke. If it's like this with all of them or most of them, then I'd say yeah. Unless someone can quantify that I'm not seeing something right in that picture or can help reconcile an explanation, then I'm sticking by what I said.
 
I'm astounded by the machining on that cpu block...

I would've returned it from the beginning... that's pretty amazing that they'd sell something like that.

Sorry that saying this doesn't help you out at all, hopefully you can get that cleaned back up and working good again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top