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Thunder888

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Messages
221
I had to remove my WC setup a couple of months ago because my wife felt that it was a bit unsightly for the living room. Women. Anyhow, we moved to our new house recently and now I've got my own study / computer room where anything goes.

So last night I busted out the old WC toys and, thinking this was going to take a couple of hours, started to slowly and patiently (as any decent water cooling afficianado knows, patience is the key) :) re-assemble the parts and installing it into my case. I thought it would take me at least two evenings to complete, but to my great surprise I completely re-assembled and installed it in just over two hours.

I've left the pump running overnight to check for any leaks and I'm very excited to get back home from work and once again experience the bliss which is watercooling! No more shitty fans making noise and blowing my case full of dust! A better overclock! Bliss, pure bliss :D

Now, I've done some research and was wondering whether anyone else is using those old Staedtler metal pencil sharpeners as a sacrificial anode to alleviate the battery effect between having a copper waterblock and aluminium radiator. I remember way back when to school science class where we used to burn those sharpeners in a pure oxygen environment. Those sharpeners are made from a magnesium aluminium alloy, the magnesium being the key here.

What else are you guys using, except of course water wetter or similar chemicals? I used one of those old sharpeners for at least a year previously without any visible signs of corrosion to my WC system.

Appreciate the feedback, gotto go and update my sig ;)
 
Very interesting. I've never heard of this being done before. I am very interested in hearing what other people are going to respond to this thread...
 
Just like zinc attached to an aluminum outboard engine housing. Great idea!

I bet it would work great. Heep us informed of your findings.
 
Try looking through some older forums, especially at overclockers.com. It is a common practice to use a sacrificial anode to avoid galvanic corrosion in these type of systems.
 
It's been a few years since I took chemistry.
How does this prevent galvanic corrosion?
I'm a little bit worried about galvanic corrosion in my system (after a long time), because my mcw50 gpu block top is made of anodized aluminum. The rest of it (radiator, cpu block) is entirely copper, so that should be alright.
I use a good bit of Hydrx though. I don't think I'll have too big a problem with it, anyhow.
 
The battery effect is caused from having dissimilar metals submersed in water, with one material being more anodic (wants to give up ions & corrode - enter aluminum) Basicly, hooking up a metal like magnesium, which is even more anodic than aluminum, will shift the corrosion away from the aluminum. If you can get some magnesium, use it, otherwise use zinc. The only problem is that it would have to stradle the one of the metal parts or be in the water. With the anode in the water, it'll start to make the water cloudy - IIRC both zinc and magnesium form white powder after they oxidize.

Using additives in the water will slow down the effect greatly, but not eliminate it. The best solution is frequent flushing & cleaning the surfaces of the aluminum w/o scratching them.
 
i haven't heard of anyone doing this before. then too i haven't heard of anyone having a problem with corrosion in a while. not a serious problem anyway.
 
I used this method until i discovered that I could flash-oxidize the HD waterblock's channels... basically I used an acetylene torch, with the oxygen cranked way up, and only a medium flame going. i heated the waterblocks for a few seconds, and a very thin layer of insolouble Aluminium Oxide formed. I measured the voltage between the HD blocks and the CPU/GPU blocks, plus the radiator... presto, 0.0 even with a concentrated saline solution in the loop (for testing purposes)!
 
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