My stupidity ... killed my radiator

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prasvt

Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2005
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So I got one of those 120mm Panaflo fans and it's a bit thicker than a standard 120mm fan. I could have used a small screw since the fan holes were open on either side but .. I decided to use a long screw. So guess what my dumb ass did? Yup. Busted a water line in the radiator. Keep in mind I just got this Swiftech Apex GT kit like 4 days ago. Anyway, so I managed to get the radiator off and drain the coolant. Newegg was out of the double 120mm Swiftech radiators so I got the 3 x 120mm even though I'm only cooling the Q6700 right now. Man, I'm so pissed at myself. The moment I started screwing in the fan, I had a bad feeling. And I'm guessing Swiftech doesn't cover that under their warranty huh?

Anyway, until tomorrow I'm computer-less since my other computer is waiting for a vid card and doesn't have a pci-e 6pin (obviously not a gaming machine). Sooo, I'm writing this on my PS3 lol. Anyway, moronic move on my part...just thought I'd share my pain - grrr.
 
Don't worry, you're not the only one.

At least mine was "only" a Black Ice GT stealth 240! ;)

I really didn't like it that much anyway. I replaced it with a Swiftech MCR-220.
 
That's the one I killed...ended up ordering the MCR-320. At least my dad took pity on me and chipped in 30 bucks. That should cover California sales tax and overnight shipping lol.
Well knowing I'm not the only one who's done is some solace. The whole system was working so well - my cpu was running 3.6ghz stable at low temps,...plus I started playing Mass Effect yesterday so it'll be a little painful to have to go without it for 2 days.

Well, I guess I have more time to do some job hunting. Gotten a little complacent after recent layoff and waiting for CSC to call me about the next stage of interviewing. Tinkering with my computer has kind of kept me occupied.
 
Hey my man (prasvt) like the previous poster said you ain't the only one that's fubared a rad and if the truth were to be known I imagine several people have done the same thing. :rolleyes:

I know I screwed up a MCR120 rad many moons ago. At the time with my constant tinkering, improving the shroud (I thought) and general taking apart my small loop and putting it back together again I managed to pull the same stupid stunt as you (too long of a screw). :D

Like you I graduated to a bigger rad but I went from a MCR120 to a MCR220, in hindsight I kinda' wish I had gone with a MCR320 rad or some other brand of 320 rad because now with all the interest in GPU folding (ATM I'm big on F@H) I want to WC' my graphics card and I don't think a MCR220 of any kind could handle the heat load. Hell I haven't decided what card to get and I've read where some cards have up to a 500 watt TDP (I don't think I'll get a card with near that much heat load, but if I do I'll just run two loops in my ATM just cpu WC'ed Q6600 OC'ed to 3.0 GHz boxen, one for the cpu and one for the card. (I have a MCR220 rad and a MCP350 pump in the closet if I do run two loops, so all I'll mainly need is a WB for whatever card I get) :confused:

Don't sweat the small stuff just be more careful next time, remember: "To Err is Human" and the only WC'ers I know are at least semi human.

 
Hey! you broke your cherry! Welcome to the club of bleeding edge my friend. :)
 
LOL thanks for the support guys! Yeah, with me it isn't enough to do something. I have to do it, break it and then do it better next time. I think the 3 x 120 rad is a bit of overkill for me at the moment b/c I don't have my 8800GTS 320mb in the loop. I'll prob replace the card in a few months so no point doing the extra work.

Ah well, lesson learned. SMALL SCREWS. Aside from that, I LOVE watercooling. It's so gratifying to be able to overclock some 900mhz and still be sitting at 30C lol.

I was kind of surprised my dad offered to pay for a replacement ...usually he'd just yell at me. But I think he was impressed with it. Now to just wait...
 
Maybe if he wanted me to give up on it lol. I'm supposed to be job hunting and whatnot and I keep getting sidetracked by things every week. Last week it was converting blu-ray movies to 720p x264 files. Then I was like " ok well if the computer was faster, I could encode faster". Ok time for WC. This week is fixing my other computer (e2200) who's crappy 7300GT pci-e card died. It's the family comp mostly, but I had to replace that card w/ an equally cheap HD3450. I tried putting my Tuniq Tower in that case today, it's too wide. So dug out the stock hsf from my q6700 and used that. (it at least has a copper base).

So if anything, he wants me to fix this ASAP so I can get a job lol.
 
On a related note...the whole reason I was messing w/ the radiator was because, due to the interference w/ the psu plug, I had to put the top rad fan on the outside (pull mode). So it looked a little funny and so I added a pull fan on the bottom as well (TT 120mm case fan laying around). But it was running slower than the rad push fan, so I decided to get a Panaflo 120mm and use it as a matched pull - all this not really knowing for sure if there would be any benefit of having a pull/push setup.
 
You would think that the radiator manufacturers would keep the water lines out of the way or make a slight gap to insure that a puncture from a screw doesn't occur.
 
Methadras said:
You would think that the radiator manufacturers would keep the water lines out of the way or make a slight gap to insure that a puncture from a screw doesn't occur.
Click to expand...

One of the reasons I "decided" I didn't like the Black Ice rad.:mad:;)
 
Exactly! With all that real estate on in the radiator, you have to go and line up the screw holes with the water lines?! ugh. Hopefully I have enough short screws for the fans. I went to Frys today and they were out of the two sizes that would be safe - just my luck.
 
Okay..new rad is coming in today. I better go buy some CORRECT screws :) Luckily I still have a liter of the coolant in a bottle plus 4 gallons of distilled water!
 
I would try to JB Weld the hole. Or you could send me the radiator and I could try to fix it, if you're just going to throw it away. I'll pay for shipping and a few bucks to cover your troubles.

JC634 said:
One of the reasons I "decided" I didn't like the Black Ice rad.:mad:;)
Click to expand...

The old Black Ice radiators weren't that way. I've had a couple of BIX radiators, and you could just use sheet metal screws and run 'em into the fins of the radiator. I've since bought a 240 and a 360 Black Ice Pro radiators. They both have the lines run right under the screw holes. I liked the old way better.
 
hmmm indeed. I'm not sure I'm confident enough to start welding things myself, but I may take you up on fixing the radiator. Hopefully the UPS guy shows up soon...I'd really like to get my machine up and running again.
 
My heatercore is hanging on 4 rods I put through the fins forever ago (about 3-4 years)... I actually pulled them out once, to clean up heatercore good and put them back again... I of course pressure tested each time but I got lucky - no leaks! so far ;) If it does leak, it'll give me a good excuse to get a proper rad :D and a new waterblock, as well :D
 
Yeah..you're like me...I'm always looking for an excuse to replace something :) Well i got the Swiftech MCR-320 radiator installed. Of course, it was 110F today in northern cali so right now my temps are about 38C across the 4 cores @ 3.6ghz. I've got 4 fans across the 3 radiator sections. 2 stock fans (from the swiftech kit) on the bottom, The fat Panaflo in the middle (pulling), and the fan from my Tuniq Tower on the top. Now hopefully I won't have to touch this setup again until it's time to replace the coolant or I add a gpu waterblock to the loop =)

Meanwhile, anybody know where the water line runs on the MCR-220? (sorry if i'm using the wrong model #). Even though I can see where I punctured it on the rad, I can't see like a solid line running through the rad or anything. Does the liquid just go in and come out or something?
 
JB weld would work well actually, if you found exactly where you punctured the radiator.
 
Well from the looks of it, though I stuck 4 screws through the rad, only the bottom right one (looking from the pull side of the rad) got punctured. I haven't ventured to take apart the rad or anything though. I'll take a couple of photos of the damage and show you guys.
 
About the best angle I can give w/o trying to open up the whole thing:

hole1.jpg


Screw driver slipped here..this was just a little of the shroud getting bent:

whoops.jpg


And for the hell of it ..the new rad:

newrad1.jpg

radback.jpg

radprofile.jpg
 
That kind of external mounting looks like what I may end up doing for my upcoming build. How do you like it so far?

I'm worried about noise levels. I'm considering spending $200 + on a case and ~$300 on a water-cooling loop, so I'd at least like the thing to be quiet.

~S
 
The external mounting is great considering I didn't really account for interference issues when i bought the rad / watercooling kit. I had to move the middle fan to the outside b/c of the PSU interference, but aside from drilling holes for the tubing on the back panel, it was easy to set up. The radbox makes life a little easier.

Admittedly, I've left all the fans on high so my temps have been pretty low, but I think w/ this big rad I could probably lower the fan speeds and still be ok. This past week it's cooled off so it's b/t 70 and 75F in my room. So this thing idles at 28C across 4 cores and under load I'm seeing about 45C. 4 120mm fans blowing full speed does get a bit noisy though - esp the FAT Panaflo fan. I might reorganize things so the all the rad fans are connected to the motherboard though. That way I can use the Abit FanEQ bios fan controlling utility...and then the fans will only speed up when it heats up around here.

Aside from that the rear mount is stable and it doesn't get in the way of any pci devices or onboard connectors. I think it's a great idea b/c it's not in the way of anything.

But I do intend to get a full tower (Antec 1200 or CM Stacker or Armor) at some point...watercooling requires a bit more space!
 
Mkay well I just did some modifications...connected all the rad fans to the mobo so they're running quiet unless the cpu temp crosses 35C (27C idle right now). Also, added a very quiet TT 120mm fan facing the pwm heatsink. It's getting cool air from the window fan so that should be a little more effective. For some reason, the 40mm fan I had attached to the pwm sink (blowing back toward the rear of the case) was pretty useless. Meanwhile, I attached that 40mm w/ another one side by side and mounted them face down on the nb heatsink so that should help cool off that heatpipe setup.

The whole thing is remarkably quieter now. Didn't realize how noisy the system was until I did this lol.
 
my sister wanted to help me when i was redoing my WC and i was replacing 2 rads...

she did this to both of them.. funnily enough they dont leak and i still use em to this day.
 
I still can't see where the water line is routed through the radiator. I thought it might run up and down the rad but I don't see anything but shroud. So i guess it just goes in a little (ie. up to the screw hole line). Anyway the rad is kind of welded together so I don't really see a practical way to take it apart. For now it's just sitting around. Looks like there's only one leak though. The other bottom screw didn't puncture it.

But yah..it did suck. I was so pissed at myself for that...b/c it cost me $50+ to replace the rad w/ the mcr320 (newegg was out of 220s and I needed one asap and didn't really shop around).
 
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