Good Coolant to use - non conductive

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DangerIsGo

2[H]4U
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I've been out of the loop (hah, pardon the pun) for some time with my PC and I want to re-do my loop, purge my loop and start a-fresh. Unfortunately, I don't know whats good anymore for coolant. I used Pentosin and Zerex (obviously not together) and both worked fine, except I think pentosin was conductive (IIRC? not sure). I am looking for a decent performing (I already have a gallon jug of distilled water waiting to be used) coolant addative to use. Again, I used Zerex, but I can't find it anymore. Is it the same thing as that comes in the big jug like so:

http://www.drillspot.com/products/459494/Zerex_ZXEL1_Antifreeze_Coolant
?

If so, can I just use that? Again, this really sucks to be out of it for so long but my loop is starting to suck (loop is getting air pockets and preventing coolant from circulating as its not reaching the pump when the PC is shut down, so when I start up, the PC shuts off from CPU overheating). I'm looking to redo it and first starts with the coolant. Thanks in advance.
 
I prefer distilled water and ptnuke. I used to use the swiftech stuff, but I got tired of the green look.

http://www.petrastechshop.com/pepcobi1.html

You only need a few drops per liter, so it lasts a long time. And it doesn't thicken up the water like other additives do.

AFAIK, if the base of your coolant is water, you'll still be conductive, ragardless of if the additive is non-conductive. It kinda goes along with the territory, that if you have a spill you might have an issue.
 
Heh, I just saw the sticky about good coolant to use which answered my question. Last time I was here often, I honestly don't remember seeing that.

Q: What is the best fluid to use ?

A: The best fluid we can use in a loop is pure distilled water with nothing else added. Pure distilled/deionized water have the best thermal properties of any fluid while not having anything which can cause issues (precipitates, dye staining, chemical reaction or acidity/alkalinity). For those who wanted to keep distilled water for more than 1 month should consider adding 1 or 2 drops of a biocide (copper sulfate like PT Nuke) to stop the growth of algae. If you need to add color, use a dye sparingly or use colored tubing to avoid using a dye.

There is pre-mixed fluids available in the market so it's tempting to buy them for the "cool" or no hassle factor. They often have the "non-conductive" marking on the bottle but don't get duped by this because no fluid is non-conductive, even plain distilled water (even if a fluid or distilled water is deemed non-conductive, it will become conductive over time due to the migration of metal ions in the water). It's also expensive and sometime poisonous.

About the anticorrosion additives like Pentosin G11, if you setup the loop correctly with the right parts, there is no corrosion risk (as outlined in the next Q/A about corrosion) so you don't need to add them. The only reason is mostly for color and less risk of biological growth if you keep it over a few months without flushing. In case you insist to use some aluminium parts, it's required to add them to mitigate the corrosion effects or you can risk voiding the warranty.
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Are you looking for color in your system, or does that matter?

I feel like automotive coolants have a lot of extra stuff in them that we don't need. Like lube for auto water pumps, anti-corrosion additives, anti freeze additives, etc. I feel like thinner colant is more easy on my pumps too. My old swiftech/distilled coolant seemed more viscous than pure water. Maybe it was a surfactant effect (coating my fingers) when I got it on me.

It seems, lately, that the trend has been to use nothing, silver kill coils, or uncolored additives such as ptnuke by itself. Just my observation on the forums combined with my own actions? Many more folks are going with colored tubing to achieve the desired effect.
 
I agree. I'm going to go with nothing...whenever I get around to purging my system, cleaning it out and re-filling it. Now my next question:

The current pump I have is a swiftech mcp-355 and it performs OK, I was wondering how the Aquastream XT performs or pretty much, I'm looking for a decent pump thats quiet. Suggestions anyone?
 
The mcp-355 is a solid pump according to most sources here and on some other forums. You might want to upgrade the pump top if you are still using the stock one with the built-in barbs. I've seen tests where they improved the flow in a loop by 60-80% with the same pump just by modding the pump or replacing the top.
 
^ absolutely agreed on that as well. I have a pair of 355's in my system and they work very well IMO. A pump top helps them to slightly outperform the mcp655. That said, the 655 is the only other pump I would use for watercooling, if you had a need to change it out. it flows a bit better than the 355, but is also a bit bigger (baseball sized).

If you decide to change tops, you'll want to upgrade to 1/2" fittings as well as 7/16" or 1/2" ID tubing to realize the flow gains. Pumping with a top through 3/8" fittings nullifies your gain for the most part.

One helpful hint, a thing I do when I clean my loop. Take apart all the blocks and clean the copper parts in a bowl of ketchup, with a toothbrush. Soak them for a bitt too. If any have micro-pins be careful not to bend any of them when brushing. Rinse thoroughly and reassemble. Make sure all your o-rings and seals are properly seated before tightening the blocks back together too.

HTH
 
Feser One :) Performs almost as good as straight distilled, has 4 anti-corosive agents inside, dires up with no residue, easy to use.
 
Usually any coolant other than distilled water will leave residue especially those with dyes in them. The best option is get colored tubing and use distilled water with PT nuke. Even nano fluid leaves similar residue as with dyes.

Any coolant you use will also be dangerous if it touches operating parts as the coolant picks up impurities from the loop it will become conductive.
 
DangerIsGo said:
I agree. I'm going to go with nothing...whenever I get around to purging my system, cleaning it out and re-filling it. Now my next question:

The current pump I have is a swiftech mcp-355 and it performs OK, I was wondering how the Aquastream XT performs or pretty much, I'm looking for a decent pump thats quiet. Suggestions anyone?
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You will likely lose some performance moving to the Aquastream XT, but it is one of the quietest pumps you can get. It is also rather large, and has odd sized fittings.
 
Some prefer to the use of silver coils in their reservoir to avoid all those residue, even the pt nuke will eventually come up with some white stuff...don't get dirty.
 
Distilled water + silver kill coil and/or a tiny amount of CuSO4.

You can buy a 1 pound bag of CuSO4 for about the same price as a tiny bottle of PT Nuke.
 
whatever happened to FluidXP ? it was big when i was into H2O

back then i personally ran distilled water with just a few drops of algaecide, nothign else, but i can tell you it is conductive of course
 
What about 100% Blue Anti-Freeze or a mix with it and of something else (not sure what that would be)? I do not know if that would be good or not for pumps/gumming up the system, but for us who want some color and class...? :D
 
King Icewind said:
What about 100% Blue Anti-Freeze or a mix with it and of something else (not sure what that would be)? I do not know if that would be good or not for pumps/gumming up the system, but for us who want some color and class...? :D
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where do you get blue antifreeze? are we talking automotive antifreeze? or are you talking about windshield wiper fluid that only freezes below -20 degrees F ?
 
King Icewind said:
What about 100% Blue Anti-Freeze or a mix with it and of something else (not sure what that would be)? I do not know if that would be good or not for pumps/gumming up the system, but for us who want some color and class...? :D
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Oh I would not recommend that. Automotive (or most any other antifreeze) is mostly ethylene glycol and some other non water additives. Yes antifreeze is now colored (green or red or blue) depending on something I cant remember. Ah here : http://www.filtercouncil.org/techdata/tsbs/05-2.pdf

Back in the day when you bought antifreeze it was 100% antifreeze and I guess you can still get it that way but most stuff I see for sale these days is is a premix of 50/50 antifreeze and water so you think you are getting a deal when you buy a jug 1/2 full of water and I guess to keep people from using 100% antifreeze, which is bad, in a car engine. For automotive use which is a very different use (mainly anti-freeze) than we are talking about more than a 50/50 mix is a waste and can even hamper engine cooling.

Nothing affordable or practical cools better than water.

We typcially are not trying to keep a WCing loop from freezing, antifreeze is suggested in small quanties because of three things.

1) main reason- anti-corrosion properties where the loop is not all copper.
(few of us need that as most stuff is copper or brass or nickel plated and those metals are compatible with one another and do not tend to corrode in any kind of time frame that would cause us trouble. BUT if you do need it then you need it bad, but 90% water and 10% antifreeze should do the trick, 20% if you are paranoid)

2) kill bugs - the stuff is posion to living organisms and even 5% solution will kill anything that tries to grow in the loop.
(This baffels me as if the stuff is clean when assembled how do bugs get in ? Dont spit on your hose barbs LOL)

3) pump lubrication - good antifreeze has some stuff in it that might help lubricate pump impeller bearings for longer pump life.
(WCing pumps are designed to be lubricated by the water itself and the benifits of additives for lubrication is not documented, my take is that it cant hurt).

The point is you want to replace the good cooling water with as little of anything else as possible as water cools best. Just enough addiitive to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

Most of us are not concerned with reason 1, and 3 is marginal so that is why a lot of people just use water + algecide or silver compound as "make sure no bugs" is really all we are worried about.

For color get a dye pack and use as little as possible and even better get colored tubing. If you dont need the UV "glowy" even food coloring will work but expect both to stain your clear tubing. You would have to use too much anti-freeze to get any decent color unless you just wanted a light tint and it likely would not glow or just faintly if the manuf put some leak trace in.

If you got money to burn there is nothing "wrong" with most additives and pre-mixed stuff. I would let anything I bought sit undisturbed for a week so any crap would settle to the bottom of the bottle before using and be careful not to pour that last bit out. If it recommends to "shake before using" I would not buy it, sure sign it is going to leave gunk somewhere in your system.

anywho, thats my thoughts on it. /shrug
 
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yup, as bill said (he beat me to it by a few minutes) anti freeze is just that, anti-freeze unless you are running your system outside during the coldest days of winter, adding it to your system really isnt needed

i have been running with 100% distilled for nearly a year now, no white coating on my tubes still as clear as the day i installed them.. silver coils and other additives arnt needed if you do it right

and by do it right i mean, boil your tubing, fittings and blocks/rads. any plastic parts get a bath in rubbing alcohol (warning leaving plexi in to long will cause it to micro crack) and then everything is reasembled while wearing latex gloves, fill only with a funnel that has been boiled at the same time and only use distilled water with the same metels (i.e. if your going to do it do it right and make sure all of your parts use the same metal all alu or all copper... no mixing and matching).
 
Definitely agree with using distilled water. I had a leak with some of that "non-conductive" MCT-5 crap and it destroyed my board, and video card. It also made a huge sticky mess. I went with distilled water and had another leak and watched the water run across the board, and into the power supply. It didn't seem to hurt anything, and it just dried up and I was able to go again with no sticky mess.
 
So I took you guys advice and went with just distilled water and some PTNuke. CPU temps (Q9550 @ 3.5GHz, 1.2V) are meh. Before (which I had zerex mixed with distilled water and there were HUGE air pockets in the loop, so large, in fact, that the CPU would overheat and shutdown on boot up because the pump couldnt get the flow going, it was that bad) temps were 71-75C for the cores (load). Now, with no air in the loop and a clean rad (yes, that was another thing, the rad had a nice thick later of cat hair between the fans and the fins), the temps dropped to 60/61C (load). I'm not that impressed. I mean, should they not be lower? I did clean off the blocks and put a new layer of AS5 on them, so I don't know why the temps aren't that great.

As far as the GPU is concerned, I have a 4870x2 with a DD FC WB on it. Prior, temps were between 40-50C and now they are high 30s. (idle) So I don't know what is causing this poor performance (well not POOR but definitely not great). Here is a shot of my old loop. You can see all the air pockets (system was on)

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8633/dsc1477c.jpg

Edit: I do appreciate about the color, but I have a P182 and I don't think I'm planning on getting a side window. It was great when I had the stacker case, but now, I'm looking for silence. Maybe if I can come across one for cheap, but I'm not paying $90-$100 for a door. And my cutting skills suck for those wondering :p
 
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hmm, your core temps still seem high, every thing should be idle/ loading at about the same temp once the water equalizes temperature (one piece running a few degrees hotter is normal unless your thermal sensors are way off...) in a loop that size it should take it a good while to get there.. 15 to 20 minuets...

have you checked your contact patch under the cpu block? something doesn't seem right it should loading lower, and closer to the temps of your vid card. When you cleaned the loop, did you take apart the cpu block and make sure it wasn't all gummed up inside?
 
Rock&Roll said:
I'm curious what the advantages are between the two different types of PT Nuke:

http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-65556269779593/peptpcobi1.html

http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-65556269779593/pepcobi1.html
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Nuke -PHN uses Benzalkonium chloride, Nuke -Cu (the blue one) uses Copper (II) Sulfate.

The product descriptions sum it up well. Copper (II) Sulfate is effective in a wide variety of coolants. Benzalkonium chloride is intended for distilled water loops and has the advantage of not effecting the pH of the water.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Nuke -PHN uses Benzalkonium chloride, Nuke -Cu (the blue one) uses Copper (II) Sulfate.

The product descriptions sum it up well. Copper (II) Sulfate is effective in a wide variety of coolants. Benzalkonium chloride is intended for distilled water loops and has the advantage of not effecting the pH of the water.
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Your description comes off much more clear than theirs for some reason. Thank you. PHN it is.
 
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