ENERMAX LIQTECH TR4 AIO Liquid CPU Coolers Review

[Joust]

Any jelly like substance in the cooler? If there was it would suggest a lack of a biocide to kill bacteria build up.

Not sure if anyone has swapped out the fluid - may something to try out, see if temps drop back with the new fluid and report back to everyone

I intend to do exactly this. Now that you mention it, I'll do before and after benchmarks, take pictures, and maybe do a write up. Seems to be a lot of interest in this particular cooler.

Plan is: benchmark, take apart cooler, document, clean, replace coolant, cut intake line, add micro reservoir, replace coolant with diluted automotive coolant solution (75-25), benchmark.

 

[jhsu]

I did the Liqtech II today. Not as bad, but still same signs of bacteria and corrosion. The blobby stuff really makes you wonder if this is some scifi thing where you die of a horrible disease from touching it:


I did the same routine and cleaned everything off. The cold plate doesn't look too bad:


The main block still shows signs of corrosion. I wonder if the exposed aluminum needs to be hit with rustoleum or some kind of marine enamel, or if the paint would just flake. At the very least I imagine the fluid needs some kind of corrosion retardant because of the aluminum copper contact? It looks like the jelly nibbled off one of the nubs I circled in the photo:

 

[Nathan_P]

The blobby stuff is jelly that builds up when water and its bacteria are cooled down, we get it in the fridges where I work all the time, a good biocide should kill it off. I'm doing my 360 next week, going to use xspc EC6 clear pre mix as the new fluid, it says its got corrosion inhibitors and biocides mixed in.

 

[jhsu]

The blobby stuff is jelly that builds up when water and its bacteria are cooled down, we get it in the fridges where I work all the time, a good biocide should kill it off. I'm doing my 360 next week, going to use xspc EC6 clear pre mix as the new fluid, it says its got corrosion inhibitors and biocides mixed in.

Thanks for the tip, I think I might try it as well.

I'm also interested in splicing the tubing. At this point I have a couple extra radiators, wondering if it's possible to combine them in a loop to get better cooling.

 

[Nathan_P]

Its taken a while to get this posted but I pulled my 360 apart back in march when i was off work. The disassembly process was easy, hats off to gamers nexus for their tear down video on this.

Colour of the fluid when i drained it all:


Now according to the video there should be over 200ml of fluid in the 240mm version - I drained 150ml out of my 360 and several chunks of paint and solid matter.

State of the cold plate and block before cleaning.



That yellow mass was encrusted onto the block hard, after cleaning it off there was a good 2mm chunk out of the aluminium. I've attributed the cause of it being so hard to the fact that my mobo has a fault with the on board chip that does all the hardware monitoring, if you leave a program open that constantly polls the chip, aura sync or HWinfo 64 for example, it will eventually lock up the chip which then shuts down all the cooling fans and aio pump, If you don't notice this the next thing that happens is a thermal shutdown - this happened a few days before i pulled the aio apart - it took me 30 minutes of a handheld battery fan blowing onto the block to cool everything down enough to allow a restart. Its a known Bios bug for my mobo but Asus don't seem to be in a hurry to fix it.

This also explains the heat discoloration on the cold plate. The jelly was easy to remove from the edges but it took a while to get it out the microfins - a hour with an old toothbrush helped here.

After cleaning everything off I filled the aio with deionised (no distilled available where i live) water, again the aio would only take 160-170mm so not sure how GN got 200ml out of a 240, plugged it into to a spare power cable and ran it for 3 days, changing out the water twice. The first change out produced water just as dark as the original fluid. The second swap out was much cleaner. On the 3rd swap out i put in the XSPC EC6 clear fluid that I am using in it to flush out all the water.

That ran for a day and then I drained and cleaned everything for the final time before refilling with more fluid.

i reinstalled the aio with no leaks or problems. The pump seems to be running about 100rpm slower according to HWinfo 64 but my temps are back where they should be, idle was showing 29.3c with a room temp of around 23c. Fully loading all the cores put the temps into the mid 50's but i'm going to do more testing on this in a few weeks.

Having just checked my phone for the pics I realised that i have no pics of after the cleaning which is a shame but both my block and cold plate did not come up as shiny as jhsu's. i'm going to give the fluid another week or so and i'm going to pull everything apart again over easter and see what teh fluid looks like. I'll also get some pic's to add to this post of after the clean and especially the damage to the block.

 

[Nobu]

Its taken a while to get this posted but I pulled my 360 apart back in march when i was off work. The disassembly process was easy, hats off to gamers nexus for their tear down video on this.

Colour of the fluid when i drained it all:
View attachment 154725

Now according to the video there should be over 200ml of fluid in the 240mm version - I drained 150ml out of my 360 and several chunks of paint and solid matter.

State of the cold plate and block before cleaning.

View attachment 154726 View attachment 154727

That yellow mass was encrusted onto the block hard, after cleaning it off there was a good 2mm chunk out of the aluminium. I've attributed the cause of it being so hard to the fact that my mobo has a fault with the on board chip that does all the hardware monitoring, if you leave a program open that constantly polls the chip, aura sync or HWinfo 64 for example, it will eventually lock up the chip which then shuts down all the cooling fans and aio pump, If you don't notice this the next thing that happens is a thermal shutdown - this happened a few days before i pulled the aio apart - it took me 30 minutes of a handheld battery fan blowing onto the block to cool everything down enough to allow a restart. Its a known Bios bug for my mobo but Asus don't seem to be in a hurry to fix it.

This also explains the heat discoloration on the cold plate. The jelly was easy to remove from the edges but it took a while to get it out the microfins - a hour with an old toothbrush helped here.

After cleaning everything off I filled the aio with deionised (no distilled available where i live) water, again the aio would only take 160-170mm so not sure how GN got 200ml out of a 240, plugged it into to a spare power cable and ran it for 3 days, changing out the water twice. The first change out produced water just as dark as the original fluid. The second swap out was much cleaner. On the 3rd swap out i put in the XSPC EC6 clear fluid that I am using in it to flush out all the water.

That ran for a day and then I drained and cleaned everything for the final time before refilling with more fluid.

i reinstalled the aio with no leaks or problems. The pump seems to be running about 100rpm slower according to HWinfo 64 but my temps are back where they should be, idle was showing 29.3c with a room temp of around 23c. Fully loading all the cores put the temps into the mid 50's but i'm going to do more testing on this in a few weeks.

Having just checked my phone for the pics I realised that i have no pics of after the cleaning which is a shame but both my block and cold plate did not come up as shiny as jhsu's. i'm going to give the fluid another week or so and i'm going to pull everything apart again over easter and see what teh fluid looks like. I'll also get some pic's to add to this post of after the clean and especially the damage to the block.

Looks like corrosion to my untrained eye, probably accelerated by the heat and stagnant fluid.

 

[pendragon1]

 

[LurkerLito]

What I find really interesting is that the fluid enermax uses seems worse than the refilled distilled water they used with biocide. I was kind of expecting the refilled one to be worse given he said it was in use, while the 360 one he had was pretty bad considering it hasn't been used since they reviewed it.

 

[OSEProphecy]

Mine just failed too, lasted less than six months. These are junk, stay away from them. Not even bothering with an RMA would never trust putting this thing back in. Went with a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 instead.

 

[doyll]

Mine just failed too, lasted less than six months. These are junk, stay away from them. Not even bothering with an RMA would never trust putting this thing back in. Went with a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 instead.

Good choice

 

[pendragon1]