Corrosion, is this normal?

T

Tricyclthief

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2011
Messages
354
**UPDATE** See last post

So i've been reading up tons on pt nuke, ek-ekoolant etc and hadn't really decided on what i was gonna use yet but figured id get the system hooked up and test for leaks while i decided. I hooked up the lines and did about 30 mins of testing last night and then ran for about 12hrs or so and just noticed this. Is this normal that i would get tarnishing/corrosion in less than 24 hours with just distilled water? I thought id have more time with just distilled water before i really needed to add something else to the system.

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Yikes! Hope you figure this one out...
But this doesn't look at all normal. I stripped my system multiple times and even after a month or so it looked brand new.
 
Shoot, I kinda thought that wasn't normal but my first time doing custom loop so wanted to make sure. Is there any additive or chemical I can add to clean up or prevent this again if i tare it down and clean it

Thanks
 
I remember a long time ago when EK was new on the scene with their nickle plated waterblocks, this was a huge problem. Well that and the plating flaking off... i thought they were well past this, i almost bought that same exact block yesterday but went with the supremacy copper due to evga making two different pcb for the 980ti sc+

how did the water look was it murky or smell metalic when you drained it?
 
Water and reservoir look crystal clear. Haven't drained it yet, just noticed it late last night..and was hoping there was something I could add to water to remove it without tearing apart the system haha. Really though just wanted to get some opinions before I did anything major to the system
 
idk if theres anything you can do to clean it, from what i remember you can add some auto anti-freeze, waterweter or redline to the DI water to prevent corrosion they do make sysprep for WC loops check performance-pcs or frozencpu ive seen it there. dont know if it will clean the nickle tarnish but they may have a suggestion
 
Did you clean everything before putting it together? I'm guessing you didn't do a couple flushes, run, then final flush again. You're loop has contaminates in it reacting with ze nickle. Hopefully its just superficial because the speed that it happened in and the color is very unusual.
 
I flushed the radiator out with distilled water before hooking it up but no i didn't fill then flush. Guess ill tear it apart and see if i can clean it up while i decide if i want to keep nickel blocks or swap out for copper.
 
When you say you flushed the radiator out, what exactly did you do? You need to use near boiling water, a bit of white vinegar works well too. Make sure you plug the holes and really shake the water around, let it sit for awhile then empty into a bowl and inspect to make sure it is clear. You need to keep flushing over and over again until everything comes out clear. Radiators often times have lots of really nasty stuff in them from the manufacturing process. It can sometimes take many flushes to actually get it clean.
 
I filled with distilled water then shook it and drained 2 or 3 times. 1 little black spec came out on the first drain, rest were all clean water.
 
Tricyclthief said:
I filled with distilled water then shook it and drained 2 or 3 times. 1 little black spec came out on the first drain, rest were all clean water.
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That doesn't do much. Btw, given how quickly your block changed you've got some serious contaminants. I'd start by buying some vinegar and some gal jugs of distilled. Then tear that loop down.
 
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I'm tearing it down now to clean it up. Sure vinegar is ok to use? Ek website says to avoid using it for cleaning. Don't want to do anything to further damage anything
 
Tricyclthief said:
I'm tearing it down now to clean it up. Sure vinegar is ok to use? Ek website says to avoid using it for cleaning. Don't want to do anything to further damage anything
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Yea, you want to use it sparingly on nickel. The problem will be cleaning the stuff off the inside of the tubes. For that, the quickest yet mostly costly way is to replace the tubing, or two cheapest yet pita way is to run vinegar thru the loop for 30 minutes, then flush multiple times. When doing the vinegar flush, you should bypass your nickel blocks.
 
Honestly - at this stage personally I'd go and buy a kit of Mayhems Blitz to do your radiators. About as thorough a system as you can get, so you won't have any worries about doing it right.

Radiators are hard to clean - tiny tubing, very little natural flow etc.
Personally I use denatured alcohol and boiling hot soapy water. I flush until the radiator doesn't smell of anything, which is probably 20 times. PC gear is hard to find in Australia - otherwise I'd just get that mayhems kit myself.

As for everything else - just warm soapy water will do. Your tubes loop clear so no change there, the block might need some scrubbing with a toothbrush.
For safety's sake I'd open up the CPU block and do the same.
Once you're done, a quick rinse with distilled water and you're done.

Hopefully the nickel plating is ok.
 
I'm starting to second guess using nickel,.I picked it from the looks and everything I read said it played nice with copper and shouldn't be an issue. Is it normal to have such a reaction so fast "matter of few hours" to a contaminate? I'm thinking if I had copper I could just flush whole system with something abrasive and call it a day.
 
Absolutely not normal for this to occur unfortunately.

However, copper and Nickel are fine to use together. Their anodic indexes are very close, (0.35, 0.30) so this is extremely unlikely to be the cause. Basically impossible.

The discoloration could come from poor plating, the flux and contaminants from your radiator or even biological growth.

If you really want to switch to copper that's fine, but be aware that copper absolutely will discolour quite dramatically. As for flushing with an abrasive, you would destroy your entire system immediately. No easy way out unfortunately...

It sucks, but you're best off pulling it all apart and giving it a scrub. The radiators especially and that's most likely to be your issue.
 
Tricyclthief said:
I'm starting to second guess using nickel,.I picked it from the looks and everything I read said it played nice with copper and shouldn't be an issue. Is it normal to have such a reaction so fast "matter of few hours" to a contaminate? I'm thinking if I had copper I could just flush whole system with something abrasive and call it a day.
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I've been running straight copper/brass in my loops for the last few years, distilled with PTN Nuke. Simple but never had any problems, and I usually go 9 to 12 months on the same water. I never got the appeal of nickle plated parts, I know it looks "better" but I'd much rather keep to using all the same metal. No silver either...
 
So little update, I contacted the company and they sent out a replacement for that block. New block arrived and i got it all setup and within 30mins did the same thing as the first one. It only started corroding when the pump was off and water sat still.

Anyways company reached out and offered to refund or replace it again. Now looking for outside opinion, do i try it a 3rd time? Should i go with a different block manufacturer or should i dump the nickel and just go full copper for cpu and gpu? I really like the look of the nickel with blue LEDs but its been a headache to say the least. Thoughts?
 
did you use just straight distilled again, from the same source? maybe that's no good. maybe you should use some actual cooling fluid.
 
Pretty unlikely, but you don't happen to have 12v shorted to one of your fittings, do you?
 
I had used the same distilled water brand. Once it started to corrode again i emptied and flushed/filled it with a new brand of distilled water (just by accident, store i went to didnt carry stuff i bought before). I also, because i was at my wits end, went out to home depot and bought a filtration system. $19 i had seen a few posts on different sites about people using it to filter system. Ran water through the filter (5 microns)? i think it was. Had no further corrosion but block was already discolored at that point.

Not sure which if any of it fixed the issue. One last drain, new water brand or filtering the water.

I can live with the copper, rather not but i can. I'm just torn with do i risk it again for the looks of nickel and be good or kick myself cause i didnt switch to copper now
 
pendragon1 said:
did you use just straight distilled again, from the same source? maybe that's no good. maybe you should use some actual cooling fluid.
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I plan on going to pastel blue, I had been holding off since it was my first loop and knew id probably be draining and filling quite a bit, plus im gonna be going to hard lines here soon and by now i would of wasted a whole bottom of coolant.
 
That's crazy- even cheap distilled shouldn't be able to corrode anything so fast. That's why they use nickel- corrosion resistance. Did you ever pull the block apart and see if it's corrosion or just something on top of the nickel?
 
DWolvin said:
That's crazy- even cheap distilled shouldn't be able to corrode anything so fast. That's why they use nickel- corrosion resistance. Did you ever pull the block apart and see if it's corrosion or just something on top of the nickel?
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It's something on top of the nickel. The first block i was able to remove some with a qtip but took quite a bit of rubbing. Didnt bother trying on the CPU. I probably could of tore it down and put some serious elbow grease into it and cleaned it up, but i paid good money and dont expect to have to perform that kind of maintenance within days of buying it new. Just don't know if i want to try a 3rd time, go to a different brand or say F it and do copper
 
Tricyclthief said:
I plan on going to pastel blue, I had been holding off since it was my first loop and knew id probably be draining and filling quite a bit, plus im gonna be going to hard lines here soon and by now i would of wasted a whole bottom of coolant.
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it probably would have been worth your time and money to just use some actual system prep solutions rather than just distilled. even some cheap coolant or additives for distilled designed for WC loops.
in all reality it probably is not a problem with the block but something in your setup.
 
Did you actually do a tear down of your loop and inspect everything? PSA, stop getting new blocks till you figure it out.
 
thesmokingman said:
Did you actually do a tear down of your loop and inspect everything? PSA, stop getting new blocks till you figure it out.
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Seconded- if it's on top of the blocks it's either something in your loop, or something introduced to your loop. I left a fat finger print in a CPU block once, and I could see through the clear top that it stated gunking up within a week...
 
This is pretty bizarre. Not that this is really going out on a limb, but the only way you're going to get an intense color like that is the formation of some kind of metal complex, and since its only occurring on the nickel part (based on what you've said) its something reacting with the Nickel. Not sure what though, nickel chloride can be yellow, but iirc only in dried form. Most nickel complexes I remember are green or blue, so the yellow seems odd to me, but my days of inorganic chemistry are behind me. Typical corrosion I've seen of nickel plating on blocks usually manifests as pitting or flaking.

IMO, to anyone who is suggesting that OP should have used some kind of special fluid: there is no way normal distilled water should do this within 24 hours, and adding a little glycol and some dye isn't going to change that.
 
Agreed- any decent distilled should be functionally inert in the short term.
 
yes that is true but there is obviously something in the setup causing issues and the proper coolant or additives could prevent it from happening or a system prep maybe would clean up, what ever it is.
 
I'm thinking it was either the water, it's stopped effecting the block since i changed brands or there was something inside and its gone now since I hooked up the filter to the system.
Here's what the block looks like currently, Theres a few patches where nickel wasnt effected. Lighting is horrible i know
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Tricyclthief said:
I'm thinking it was either the water, it's stopped effecting the block since i changed brands or there was little something still left inside and its gone now since I hooked up the filter to the system.
Here's what the block looks like currently, Theres a few patches where nickel wasnt effected. Lighting is horrible i know
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Pic doesnt work. FYI, distilled or spring water won't do that. I've accidentally used drinking water instead of distilled before and NEVER seen corrosion like you have and in that short a time frame either. Wait correction, I've never seen that level of color/corrosion in all my years of watercooling.
 
could have been contamination in the first brand. no way to check it unless you have a tds meter and/or ph test or other sciencey shit
 
pendragon1 said:
could have been contamination in the first brand. no way to check it unless you have a tds meter and/or ph test or other sciencey shit
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Could very well be, I noticed after the fact that the first water i bought didnt say steam distilled like the 2nd brand does. Either way, water or something else in the system it's been fixed. The block isn't discoloring anymore and there's spots of nickel unaffected.

I probably should of started a new thread, was really just looking for opinions on copper vs nickel and brands of waterblocks
 
I'm glad this was resolved. It's just strange that everything happened so quickly in your system!

As for the whole water block debate - I don't think there is much difference honestly. Unbiased reviews are hard to come by. As long as your system is running fine I'd leave it alone.
Kinda interested in your filter "system" though... Care to take some pics for us? :)

Also - I've been using Pastel blue from the begining and it seems fine. No issues to report. Added some Mayhems UV blue dye as well - I'd say maybe it's not as vibrant after a few months, but it's not a huge difference.
 
Chapeau said:
I'm glad this was resolved. It's just strange that everything happened so quickly in your system!

As for the whole water block debate - I don't think there is much difference honestly. Unbiased reviews are hard to come by. As long as your system is running fine I'd leave it alone.
Kinda interested in your filter "system" though... Care to take some pics for us? :)

Also - I've been using Pastel blue from the begining and it seems fine. No issues to report. Added some Mayhems UV blue dye as well - I'd say maybe it's not as vibrant after a few months, but it's not a huge difference.
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http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=362609. It's basically This Filter run with a pond pump to filter parts or ran inline with your current pump.http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-Whole-Home-Water-Filtration-System-GXWH20S/202073874
 
The new block is still discoloring, meaning the loop is still contaminated. What am I missing that you think its fixed?
 
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