Best Liquid for W.C. setup...

T

Taradino

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 11, 2005
Messages
147
I would like peoples opinion on the best watercooling liquid to use in a Computer.

Currently I have (well I believe I have) a mixture of metals (copper and aluminium), so whats the best liquid to put in it?

I was thinking distilled and ion free water with water wetter and a some rad fluid for green color.

Options?!??????
 
So much complicated!

No, grab some swiftech Hydrex, mix with distilled water, profit.

Or, Pentosin + distilled water if you want blue.
 
IMO, Distilled water and only Distilled water is the best coolant for a water cooling system in a computer. "Water cooling system" being defined as excluding "strange" configurations requiring more money than intelligence or a permits from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and EPA.

Now the question is, What is the best fluid or mix of fluids for use in YOUR water cooling system? Thats open to wide debate :eek: , it will be fun to see how many pages we get out of this one.

The next best question I can think of is:

Why do you think you have a mix of copper and AL ? Please list your part numbers and manuf of your components because the answer to that question makes all the difference.

Or

Just put a modest amount of any anti-corrosion fluid (read its instructions as to solution percentages, too much is often worse than too little) in a gallon of distilled water from the grocery store (distilled, NOT deionized) and you have the best most economical coolant money can buy. If you want to put something else in to make it pretty, thats OK too. Its your computer and its not going to make more than 2C difference in cooling, Its all about maintenance. I just don't want you spending $25 for fluid XP unless you are obscenely rich and can afford to throw money way. If you are, consider giving me some. Please ?
 
BillParrish said:
Its all about maintenance.
Click to expand...

Maintenance? I havent changed the liquid in my loop since I installed it last August, nor have I dusted my case since then either. Sometimes I wonder why it keeps getting louder :rolleyes:
 
BillParish:
Come to think about it, I removed my aluminium T connectors and went to plastic, so I think I'm all copper now.

The parts I am using are:
Koolance CPU 300-V13 1/2' ID Waterblock (cpu):
http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=29_44&products_id=116

DangerDen 8800GTS Waterblock (video card):
http://www.dangerden.com/store/product.php?productid=272&cat=48&page=1

Dangerden N/B Waterblock
http://www.dangerden.com/store/product.php?productid=157&cat=46&page=1

A plastic tank from bigfootcomputers
http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/Mer...en=PROD&Product_Code=6267&Category_Code=510.2
.
Eheim waterpump

--
So why not deionized water? I can get distilled AND deionized water for free..
 
Best liquid is just 100% distilled water. Every additive you add will decrease the performance of your loop. I'd suggest adding biocide to prevent algae growth. However, if you run no lights in your system and don't have any windows, you can get away with not adding any at all, since the copper in your blocks should be able to take care of the minuscule amounts of life that might already be present.

Some prefer to "lube" the water by adding pentosin and other additives to prevent corrosion. If you're going strictly copper (as I'd recommend), you probably won't be forced to use any additives.

Don't buy PC-Ice, Fluid-XP, MCT-40. It's a load of crap that will gunk up your system.
 
yeh... deionized water re-ionizes when in contact with any metal. water is the universal solvent and will pull electrons from the metal regardless. this is also why water will begin to have conductive properties after being in the loop for a short amount of time.

i goofed and bought a lot of FluidXP+ because of good reviews. i never took into consideration the fact that the review machines are short lived. a few guys here took it upon them selves to warn me but it was to late. look like i will be cleaning out goo when i rebuild my gaming rig:(

i used distilled water for 5 months while testing and tinkering and on average got 4-6c lower on idle and load so i say just H2O.

i would like to test distilled with no light. that sound interesting. the water temp is perfect for algae but i never thought of no light.
 
Ok, technically algicide will reduce your performance. How much depends on how much you use - I have some nice aquarium algicide that treats about 1 gallon of water per drop, so 15 drop in ~1 liter of water should work pretty well ;)
Then again, I also have Zerex as well, which should kill most anything anyway. In any case, a $5 (or less) container of algicide can save a lot of work if you actually get some growth in your loop.
 
BillParrish said:
Its all about maintenance.
Click to expand...

:D

If you set your cooling loop up properly in the first place, there's almost no reason why you should ever need to crack it open for at least 2 years(the shortest working life of any corrosion inhibiting anti-freeze I know of, and that's for use at ~200'F, so it will probably last longer in a computer).

Have I tried this? Of course! My last W/C rig ran for over 3 years on the ORIGINAL mixture of distilled water and water wetter. Mixture never changed colour, never had any corrosion, never had any acquatic life(algae) form. Zero problems, ever.

Maintenance, sure, but the schedules will be longer than most of your hardware refresh cycles.
 
I originally did my setup with Distilled water, water wetter, and green rad fluid (diluted with the distilled water).

I ran it for like almost a year, and no issues.
 
I run 95% Distilled Water and 5% Pentosin, never have had a problem even in a case subjected to sunlight.
 
Gyrfalcon said:
I run 95% Distilled Water and 5% Pentosin, never have had a problem even in a case subjected to sunlight.
Click to expand...

Hell, I ran 2.3% pentosin and 2.7% UV dye with a top, mounted porthole reservoir (let LOTS of light in) with the case sitting in an open window, with no algae buildup!
 
Ranker said:
Best liquid is just 100% distilled water. Every additive you add will decrease the performance of your loop. I'd suggest adding biocide to prevent algae growth. However, if you run no lights in your system and don't have any windows, you can get away with not adding any at all, since the copper in your blocks should be able to take care of the minuscule amounts of life that might already be present.

Some prefer to "lube" the water by adding pentosin and other additives to prevent corrosion. If you're going strictly copper (as I'd recommend), you probably won't be forced to use any additives.

Don't buy PC-Ice, Fluid-XP, MCT-40. It's a load of crap that will gunk up your system.
Click to expand...

I take exception here. I've had two leaks in my system, one months after it was leak tested and installed. Like it or not, my motherboard and video card are quite fine after their blue bath, and I'm 100% satisfied with my $20 spent. I think its a viable option, sacrifice a degree or two so you dont roast hundreds worth of components *IF* a leak springs. I don't care how careful you are, noone and no component is perfect. And at least in the case of pc ice, it really is non-conductive.
 
The clouding/gunking is caused by the dye that comes with the PC ICE. I'm using some Dtek Dye and I don't seem to be having any ill effects...yet.
 
arnemetis said:
I take exception here. I've had two leaks in my system, one months after it was leak tested and installed. Like it or not, my motherboard and video card are quite fine after their blue bath, and I'm 100% satisfied with my $20 spent. I think its a viable option, sacrifice a degree or two so you dont roast hundreds worth of components *IF* a leak springs. I don't care how careful you are, noone and no component is perfect. And at least in the case of pc ice, it really is non-conductive.
Click to expand...

If those leaks had been 4-5 months later, you might be singing a different story. :eek:
 
Tangent inc. said:
i would like to test distilled with no light. that sound interesting. the water temp is perfect for algae but i never thought of no light.
Click to expand...

If your system is clean and is only filled with distilled water it is impossible to have algae growing in it no matter how much light you have. The problem is that you probably used regular water or spit to help get on the fittings and thus contaminated the system before hand with microbiological material.
 
Arcygenical said:
If those leaks had been 4-5 months later, you might be singing a different story. :eek:
Click to expand...

Yes of course. Hell its been 16+ months now and I recently cleaned out the dust from my radiator. I got the newer formulation, not the old one which was seperated. Even the remaining stuff left in the bottle on the shelf doesn't seem to have any settling residue. I think they cleaned up their act, but whatever, 1 month or 24 months it doesn't matter - it was beyond the scope of any preperation or leak testing. I'm still confident it still offers me a level of protection beyond what the best install+leak testing+distilled does.
 
Top Nurse said:
If your system is clean and is only filled with distilled water it is impossible to have algae growing in it no matter how much light you have. The problem is that you probably used regular water or spit to help get on the fittings and thus contaminated the system before hand with microbiological material.
Click to expand...

QFT I didnt come back for a while to let the screaming settle down. you all susprised me very good and reasonable replies all around and here I was all ready to raise hell. RATS !

If all copper, 100% distilled water and if you want to put someting in to make pretty thats cool. I hear good stuff about the petrosin or however you spell it, just a small amout wont hurt or something else to color it. Why I said distilled is that some cheap de-ionized water has not gone thur a process that removes all the impurites, I cant remember, and now 5 years after I looked into it, i might be all wet. But for sure steam distilled water (dont know how else you would do it but the last bottle I bought said Steam Distilled /shrug) has nothing in it but water unless the guys at the plant are spitting in it.

My maintenance blurb was really aimed at adding additives in excessive amounts. Old school NF-7s big bore system been running 5+ years on distilled water, top it off every now and then, I drained and refilled 2 years ago because I was bored.

As nurse said if its clean to start with you cant grow bugs. Clean eveything with white vinegar before hand. get a bucket and 2 quarts of white viengar and dunk everything get an extra gallon or two of distillled water to rinse stuff wotj use a rubber band and cling wrap to seal the ends of stuff if you are not going to assemble right away. No spitting.
 
Spewn said:
:D

If you set your cooling loop up properly in the first place, there's almost no reason why you should ever need to crack it open for at least 2 years(the shortest working life of any corrosion inhibiting anti-freeze I know of, and that's for use at ~200'F, so it will probably last longer in a computer).

Have I tried this? Of course! My last W/C rig ran for over 3 years on the ORIGINAL mixture of distilled water and water wetter. Mixture never changed colour, never had any corrosion, never had any acquatic life(algae) form. Zero problems, ever.

Maintenance, sure, but the schedules will be longer than most of your hardware refresh cycles.
Click to expand...

my last loop (before I drained it) was distilled water, humidifier bacteriostatic treatment and about 3 drops of betadine (whatever the humidifer treatment didnt kill the betadine would lol) and royal purple. The loop was setup when I bought my S-TDX (mine was from the first week it was released) and ran up untill 2 weeks ago. the water level didnt drop to a point where it needed to be refilled and nothing grew it in. And well I had the same perfomance as when I first set it up. My system sits IN the sun here and I never had an issue.
 
Ranker said:
<snip>
Don't buy PC-Ice, Fluid-XP, MCT-40. It's a load of crap that will gunk up your system.
Click to expand...

Eh, I think PC Ice had issues when they were first introduced and changed their formula shortly thereafter. I ran PC Ice in my rig for 2 years with no gunk and nice temperatures, my Tygon didn't even start to discolor slightly until a year later(and that's normal wear) plus the added security of non-conductivity.

I can't speak about the other fluids because I haven't used them.

100% distilled water.... how boring.
 
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