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Long-term reliability for AIO coolers?

S

svyerkgeniiy

n00b
Joined
Oct 5, 2009
Messages
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In 2006 I bought a custom PC with an AIO cooler (a Coolermaster Aquagate Mini R120). After about two years, the PC started shutting down... and I determined it was because of CPU overheating. As far as I could tell, the coolant in the sealed unit still managed to evaporate somewhat (or maybe just leak very slowly, though I saw absolutely no evidence of leaks), and the unit became air bound.

I tried taking the unit down and refilling it (with tap water; more below). I was able to do this without removing it from the CPU-- I didn't want to take the time to take the whole motherboard out and remove the bracket and re-paste a new cooler on top of it, and besides I'd never done such a thing myself before. Anyway, the system began to work again without shutting down... for a few months. Eventually it stopped cooling altogether, and as far as I could tell the pump itself wasn't even working anymore.

I've come to realize that perhaps I shouldn't have used tap water, though NYC water is not very hard at all. But my experience made me wonder if the AIO units have long term reliability problems that no one has had the patience to discover? They're so sealed they can't be refilled when/if necessary.

I'm asking because I will (finally) be doing my own high-end build in the upcoming month, and I'm wondering if a refillable reservoir-based system is a better choice, even if it costs somewhat more than the H100. (Silence is my main goal, not overclockability.) I don't want to have to replace the cooling unit in a year or two just because I sacrificed long-term durability for convenience. Has anyone else had bad (or good) long-term experience with these AIOs? Do you recommend something more robust or flexible in its place? I am a bit intimidated by trying to build a from-scratch watercooled system as a first attempt.
 
I am going to assume that no one here has ever considered or experienced this issue or concern long-term. Perhaps general hardware forum would be a better place to ask (since a sealed system is not traditional water cooling)?
 
Your tap water hardness probably isn't what did it in. A brief search on the aquagate mini R120 reveals it uses a copper based water block, and what looks in the pictures to be an aluminum rad...Hello galvanic corrosion.
 
But the H100 has a similar setup, yes? The R120 had an enhanced coolant (antifreeze + CuSO4 [it was blue] + who knows what else) so that may have included an anti-corrosive. However, my main problem was that it became air-bound in the first place. Refilling it with water resumed cooling, but maybe accelerated the corrosion, but how does a "sealed" system lose its coolant? And why don't they provide the means to at least re-fill or top off easily? It was a major pain to refill without just immersing the entire unit and chasing away air bubbles.
 
I have had the Antec Kuhler 620 for more than a year now and have had no issues with it. You may have just had a defective unit that was manufactured with a small gap in one of its seals.
 
I ran an H50 from the time it came out until sometime at the end of 2011, so probably almost 3 years and never had a single issue. It was on maybe 10 different CPU's over that time. Seems to be fairly reliable.
 
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