• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Do Via Aqua Pumps work?

N

nomenon

n00b
Joined
Sep 26, 2004
Messages
14
I've been doing research for a watercooling setup and am curious as to whether the via aqua pump really works. If someone has already answered these questions, please post a link.

I am not really that concerned with the noise, I am just worried that the pump might fall apart or not function well, as I have seen some number of people saying that they have had their pumps leak or die after a week. This isn't really scientific so I hoped that people who had been using the pump would post their opinions.

Also, my digging uncovered larger versions of the pump such as the via aqua 2600, and I wondered if anyone had used this as it claims to have some 8 feet of head and some 700 gallons per hour as I recall.

Edit: It also occured to me to ask whether the pumps that have failed (if any) had the impeller mod as I suspect that this pump might be designed to work with little resistance and hence rotate quickly, and doing this mod which disables the anti clog feature might cause the motor to over heat...

Here are a few links to online vendors:
http://amekaaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=Pumps_Via_Aqua
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produ...=5331&N=2004+22788+2146961490&flash_enabled=1

And the Overclockers Pump off:
http://www.overclockers.com/articles723/
 
The day I received the Via Aqua 1300 I did the impeller mod. The pump has been running 24/7 for about 2 weeks now and it's still good. The noise level has gone down tremendously where it is now the least noisy component in my setup.
 
I don't quite understand what you're saying in reference to the pump being designed to work with little resistance and rotate quickly, but I highly doubt that the impeller mod has any effect on the longevity of the pump. All it does is stop the impeller blades from having that little bit of "play" on the shaft. This doesn't affect rotating speed in any way; the rotation is controlled by the frequency of the power source, which is fixed at 60Hz (if you live in the USA).
About the pump in general, I have had two in the past and I am overall disappointed. They both died after a year or so of usage, which doesn't seem too reliable to me. The second one fell apart as I was trying to take it apart. Both made much more noise (vibration and impeller) than my new Eheim 1250.
 
Thanks for the response.

What I was saying in regards to the impeller mod is mostly speculation on my part as I haven't had a change to look at how it works, but I thought that it was designed in such a way that in the event of a very load on the pump, such as a clog, the motor would still be able to spin even if the impeller couldn't. If you removed this bit of give, I thought that the motor might be overheating due to its inability to turn at the anticipated rate. (I.E. increased current flow due to limited back emf) Again, this is purely speculation on my part, and I am not certain that this sort of logic would apply to the pump, if someone has a good explination I'd love to hear it.

That is if this mod does in fact decrease the longevity of the pump ;)
 
mine and my friends broke after about 6 months, peice of shit. i got the hydor l30 and its awesome, way quiter and ive had it for nearly a year with no problems.
 
nomenon said:
Thanks for the response.

What I was saying in regards to the impeller mod is mostly speculation on my part as I haven't had a change to look at how it works, but I thought that it was designed in such a way that in the event of a very load on the pump, such as a clog, the motor would still be able to spin even if the impeller couldn't. If you removed this bit of give, I thought that the motor might be overheating due to its inability to turn at the anticipated rate. (I.E. increased current flow due to limited back emf) Again, this is purely speculation on my part, and I am not certain that this sort of logic would apply to the pump, if someone has a good explination I'd love to hear it.

That is if this mod does in fact decrease the longevity of the pump ;)
Click to expand...

With the impeller glued in place, the shaft will not continuously spin freely. It has about 1/4 to 1/2 rotation of play though, so it lessens the shock on the impeller blades if a piece of gravel or something similar were to come through. If the blockage was actually stuck, preventing the impeller from mosing, then yes it might overheat the pump coils.
 
I've had a ViaAqua for about, oh 6 months now, no problems. I didn't do the impeller mod, as it's really not that noisy. It does vibrate quite a bit, so i have it resting on a folded dishrag at the moment. It's quieter than my drives and fans (2), but not completely silent. Without the rag, it was very loud, as the vibration was transmitted to the whole case, heh. It's currently a little quieter than my previous 7V 80mm fan ducted from the case side to the CPU, and i'm running with the side panel off until i figure out a way to keep the tubing from resting against it and causing intermittent vibration noise. :rolleyes:

FWIW, the flow seems very good, too fast to let air bubbles bleed from the T-line, and too fast to even see the bubbles when they were there initially (the fluid just looked cloudy until the bubbles cleared). This is using a DTek TC-4 rev 2 CPU block and DTek heater core.
 
My via aqua pump is going on about a year of use, works fine. It is loud theres no doubt about that but its been a reliable pump for me.
 
Worked great for about 4 months... the thing rattled to death then finally died. Tried another one and had it for 3 then the same thing happened. Got a mag 3 and never had a problem since.
 
Mine worked for about a year and a half. Then it started making huge amounts of noise, and it would sometimes not start up when I plugged it in. So I benched it and got myself a MCP600. The impeller mod didn't fix my Via Aqua, and I never actually figured out exactly what was wrong with it.
 
I read an article on the via a couple of days ago that talked about it heating up the water. I think that the pump alone heated the water up to about 55C. Not very good news if you expect to put a CPU or video block in the loop. To me that seems way too high to justify the low cost.
 
Please post a link to that article as inline pumps add VERY little heat to the water. Go to Overclockers.com and read their "myths Exposed" essay where they do the eqations on how much a pump can actually heat up the water. Average pump was 0.15c .
 
The incident where a pump heated water to 55C was probably with the pump running and no cooling. I know when I had that pump, I would leave my PC off (rad fan off) but the pump on, returning to find that my water was pretty hot. How much a pump can raise water temperature with the radiator actually cooling it is another story.
You can warm your water to 55C with a CPU or with something as tiny as a 1/4 watt resistor, it all depends on how the system reaches equilibrium. This is a good example of "don't believe everything you read", mostly everything out there that is trying to persuade you of something will be biased in one way or another. Even statements that are completely objective are often improperly justified.
 
As far as the heat issue goes, while poking around looking for reviews, I did see one where the tester noted that the pump ran noticably hotter than an eheim pump, but the measurement was taken on the outside of the pump which may not really mattter, and if the case is hot, at least some of that heat isn't going into the water... I hope.
the pump is rated at about 26 watts I think, so given a water cooling system with a limited amount of water and no real ability to release heat, (e.g. in a case with the fans off) I would be suprised if it didn't get somewhat hot.

Anyway, it would seem that the people with the most success are the "noobies" on the forum at least so maybe I'd be safe. :D
 
nomenon said:
Anyway, it would seem that the people with the most success are the "noobies" on the forum at least so maybe I'd be safe. :D
Click to expand...
LOL, I'll give one a try but I still have to get everything else together first.
 
mines toast after almost exactly 6 months on the job... I had done the impeller mod and sealed the casing and joints with plastic epoxy...
 
I'm happy to report that my Via Aqua 1300 pump is still chugging along very well. The day I received the pump, I did the impeller mod I found on the net.

It's been 15 months now and it's been good to me. Not bad for a $19 pump.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top