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never run just distilled - explained by der8auer

Yeah, some kind of corrosion protection is a good idea.

With just DI + silver kill coil metals will corrode over time.

I used to be a big fan of basic glycol solutions as the glycol performs all three functions (corrosion protection, growth inhibition, and surfactant) but you have to be careful what with how much plastic is in modern loops.

Certain concentrations of glycols do not like acrylics and can break them down. The concentration differs whether it is ethylene glycol or it is propylene glycol. I can't remember the details though.

Glycol mixes at the concentrations required to have these effects will also increase the density of the coolant to where flow rates will be reduced.

I have been using EK's coolants for a long time (first Ekoolant, and then the rebranded cryofuel) and it works well as long as you don't leave it more than 5 years. (No corrosion, but it will tend to gunk up and clog blocks if left too long)

On my big project I am working on now I am going to try XSPC's "Pure" concentrate, as I need a lot, and it was cheap and reviewed well. Since I bought it however, I remembered one of the early additives, PrimoChill Liquid Utopia.

I'm temporarily running liquid utopia in a loop until I am ready to fill the big overkill loop, and I am quite liking it. Haven't seen any long term tests of it though. When it is time to replace the coolant, I may just go with liquid utopia.
 
I've always run pre-mixed coolants. As long as they didn't have particles in them for a visual effect I've not had any issues with any of the major brands. Specifically, I've had great experiences with Koolance's fluids and even EKWB's Cryofuel. I've used a few others over the years without any issues either. I've got radiators that are over a decade old and still work fine. I recently disassembled my custom loop and found no issues after running it pretty solid for two years. The loop is four years old but I did drain it and change the fluid at one point because I upgraded one of the blocks.
 
Dan_D said:
I've always run pre-mixed coolants. As long as they didn't have particles in them for a visual effect I've not had any issues with any of the major brands. Specifically, I've had great experiences with Koolance's fluids and even EKWB's Cryofuel. I've used a few others over the years without any issues either. I've got radiators that are over a decade old and still work fine. I recently disassembled my custom loop and found no issues after running it pretty solid for two years. The loop is four years old but I did drain it and change the fluid at one point because I upgraded one of the blocks.
Click to expand...

I used clear Cryofuel in my loop up until very recently.

I had intended to replace the fluid every 1-2 years but time has no meaning since the pandemic, so I guess I just never got around to it

It was great when I opened the loop to remove the GPU after 5 years and 10 weeks. No gunk, no corrosion, perfectly clear.

Then three weeks later the CPU block clogged up with gunk 😅

So I have learned that fluid can be great, and then it can go very very fast.

I'm not sure what the gunk was. If it was broken down fluid, or if it was plasticizer leaching out from the tubing.
 
Im lazy af with loop maintenance. I have not changed the cryofuel in my loop for 3.5 years.... seems fine and i just keep topping it up. My blovks are clear and i cant see any blockage.
 
Recommending people flush rads with coolant is not the way. Flush with water then fill with coolant / water + inhibitors and you'll be fine.

A lot of special comments in there lol, what "forums" are you reading, rgb bling influencer culture reddit? They couldn't care less about performance, reliability or maintenance they just want likes.
 
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D-EJ915 said:
Recommending people flush rads with coolant is not the way. Flush with water then fill with coolant / water + inhibitors and you'll be fine.

A lot of special comments in there lol, what "forums" are you reading, rgb bling influencer culture reddit? They couldn't care less about performance, reliability or maintenance they just want likes.
Click to expand...

I'd flush with DI or distilled water to minimize loop conductivity, but yeah. Why waste coolant for something like that?
 
motqalden said:
Im lazy af with loop maintenance. I have not changed the cryofuel in my loop for 3.5 years.... seems fine and i just keep topping it up. My blovks are clear and i cant see any blockage.
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As I mentioned above, eventually it does start degrading. A 1-2 year replacement routine is best practice, but you can push it and get lucky..

...for a while.
 
This is my Heatkiller 3.0 after 10 years of distilled + silver killcoil with maybe 3 coolant flushes in its lifetime. Not in perfect condition, but not terrible either and still perfectly functional. I'm running Primochill Liquid Utopia now only because my tubing kit came with it.
 

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lots of those channels look really clogged up or corroded, and it looks like you had some seepage past the oring...
 
Tsumi said:
This is my Heatkiller 3.0 after 10 years of distilled + silver killcoil with maybe 3 coolant flushes in its lifetime. Not in perfect condition, but not terrible either and still perfectly functional. I'm running Primochill Liquid Utopia now only because my tubing kit came with it.
Click to expand...
I was initially going to ask: "Who was running just distilled water in their cooling loops" but I have my answer now. Some people actually do that. I'm sorry, but that block looks like its been to the bottom of the ocean. They've pulled rusty shit up from the Titanic that looks better than that. (OK, I'm kidding there but you get the idea.) Regardless, that is terrible. I have blocks that are ten years old that look brand new. All I've run are fluids without bullshit particles in them and I've never experienced issues with corrosion of any kind.
 
Tsumi said:
This is my Heatkiller 3.0 after 10 years of distilled + silver killcoil with maybe 3 coolant flushes in its lifetime. Not in perfect condition, but not terrible either and still perfectly functional.
Click to expand...

Man, that looks kind of gnarly.

Not only are some of those micro-channels likely clogged, but heat transfer through oxidation is much lower than it is with direct metal contact.

I would expect the performance of that block to be significantly compromised.


For reference, this is what my Heatkiller IV Pro block from my Threadripper running on the same EK Cryofuel (75% clear, 25% blue) looked like after ~5 years and 4 months withotu changing the fluid. (ignore the cat hair, that shit gets everywhere, but it was not inside the loop)

1745346486650.jpeg


While I intended to, I lost track of time, and never changed the fluid until it clogged.

The reddish brown stuff in some of the channels is not corrosion, but rather some sort of gunk.

I was able to scrub everything out with a toothbrush and various solvents and put it back into service, and it has been performing good as new.

Now this is only half the service life compared to yours, but I still think it did pretty well!


All of that said, after 10 years, does it really matter?

We often buy water blocks to get the absolute best performance out of high end new gear. 10 years later we are unlikely to be pushing it the same way anymore as we have probably moved on to a newer faster chip that probably required a new block.

At least that's what I do.

10 years later, I am likely no longer overclocking anything. If it is still in service at all, it is likely just as a backup or incidental system. It may not even be water cooled anymore.


Tsumi said:
I'm running Primochill Liquid Utopia now only because my tubing kit came with it.
Click to expand...

I am temporarily using Liquid Utopia in this loop right now, but that's because it was all I had handy. Once the new build is complete, it will be broken down, the parts flushed, and I will be using something else (I went with "XSPC Pure" as I needed a lot of fluid, and of the fluids that review OK, that is the one I got the best deal on.

I have read that Liquid Utopia - while excellent on pure copper blocks - maybe doesn't protect nickel plated ones as well. Especially EK blocks.

(It's funny that all of these years later EK's nickel plating is still subpar compared to everyone elses)
 
I will say that it kept my E5-1680V2 below 80 C throughout its life and that I intend to continue using it in my secondary system after cleaning it out a bit. It was slightly overvolted; I believe I had it running at 4.6 ghz which is the highest it would go without massive voltage increases. I now have a Heatkiller Pro IV for my AM5 system which replaced my LGA2011 system.
 
When I setup my loop I flushed it with distilled water, filled it with distilled water and blue antifreeze off the shelf. I did add a few drops of an EK fluorescent enhancer (yeah, got a small ring of black lights). That was uhm... 7-8 years ago. still rocking dual 1080ti's. No SLI games anymore I know. I've upgraded the AMD cpu, but the same block worked so I have not changed anything in the loop since I put it together. No flush refills. It's mostly all the same fluid from start. The GPU and CPU blocks have clear acrylic tops so I can see the channels. No crud built up yet. The CPU block has slightly yellowed over the years I think, but it is minor. The temps are all still great. I run a 480 and a 360 rad. Mostly to keep fan speeds low for sound. I top off the water reservoir maybe once a year with distilled water. It looses maybe a tablespoon or two of water in a year or two. I assume to evaporation, I've never seen signs of a leak.
So, blue antifreeze worked for me.
All EK gear and clear flexible tubes.
I probably had a little to much antifreeze from the start. So I only top off with water. My temps have always been good, not amazing, but plenty safe. The oversized rad area probably made up for that.
 
mord said:
I did add a few drops of an EK fluorescent enhancer (yeah, got a small ring of black lights). That was uhm... 7-8 years ago.
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nice. any pics around here? thats a good long run. i think im at about 3/3.5yrs and i only top it up.
 
I always ran distilled water with a silver coil, never had any issues. Just had to avoid nickel plating. However, the only custom watercooling I use now is my old watercooled GTX 1080 on my son's rig. Only two AIO's for CPU's, everything else is air cooled.
 
D-EJ915 said:
Recommending people flush rads with coolant is not the way. Flush with water then fill with coolant / water + inhibitors and you'll be fine.

A lot of special comments in there lol, what "forums" are you reading, rgb bling influencer culture reddit? They couldn't care less about performance, reliability or maintenance they just want likes.
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Yep. Exactly what I do. I clean my loop every two years. Boiling water for rads, warm distilled water for blocks and tubing. Refill with distilled water and liquid Utopia (biocide and inhibitor in one) and my loop is clean as a whistle. I think I can go even longer without cleaning based on how clean it always looks after two years.
 
im a dirty dog. been running deionized water at a couple of drops of PTnuke since about 2006. all my parts are copper as of now except the pump which has some stainless. i get a light coating of corrosion on copper parts...and it doesn't go any further. many of my parts i have used for many years. some over 10. i replaced my brass rad with a full copper one several years back because i was getting paranoid...it was fine.

i really couldn't care less what it looks like. it works well.
 
I used distilled water plus a silver coil on a Core i7-2700k, then went air cooled up until Ryzen. Since then, I've only used Koolance Clear 702. The current loop has been running the same coolant for close to 3 years I think. I'll be changing the fluid soon as I need to change out my cpu block for a new build. I'll be adding more Koolance QD connections. Currently, my gpu is connected via QD connectors and I also have them between the GPU and the radiator. I think I'm going to ditch those connectors there and add them to the cpu block. I still have plenty of flow.

I'm using epdm tubing and trying to decide if I need to swap it out. I have enough spare to do that. I'm also wondering if I should swap out o-rings on the fittings. I don't plan on flushing the loop, I think I'll just drain as best I can, then refill.
 
kamikazi said:
I used distilled water plus a silver coil on a Core i7-2700k, then went air cooled up until Ryzen. Since then, I've only used Koolance Clear 702. The current loop has been running the same coolant for close to 3 years I think. I'll be changing the fluid soon as I need to change out my cpu block for a new build. I'll be adding more Koolance QD connections. Currently, my gpu is connected via QD connectors and I also have them between the GPU and the radiator. I think I'm going to ditch those connectors there and add them to the cpu block. I still have plenty of flow.

I'm using epdm tubing and trying to decide if I need to swap it out. I have enough spare to do that. I'm also wondering if I should swap out o-rings on the fittings. I don't plan on flushing the loop, I think I'll just drain as best I can, then refill.
Click to expand...
I've used that Koolance fluid for the better part of two decades. It's never caused a problem in any loop I've run.
 
Dan_D said:
I've used that Koolance fluid for the better part of two decades. It's never caused a problem in any loop I've run.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Over the past 25 years, I pretty much did not have experience with any other fluid treatment simply because Koolance's worked so extremely well. Ain't broke, don't fix it....
 
FrgMstr said:
Exactly. Over the past 25 years, I pretty much did not have experience with any other fluid treatment simply because Koolance's worked so extremely well. Ain't broke, don't fix it....
Click to expand...
I tried a couple others that looked cool or whatever and ended up having to take blocks apart and clean them.
 
Used to run distilled with premixed 50/50 antifreeze for the anti-corrosive properties, then switched to just distilled and a drop or two of Dawn, as an experiment to assist with water surface tension, and it ended up helping with foaming on initial fill-up, as well as bubble build up over time, especially on gfx card blocks.. Both never gave me any issues other than the normal plasticizer buildup from clearflex tubing. Switched to the high end lab-grade Tygon tubing from a medical supplier not just the usual stuff, and then the black Tygon tubing to prevent light from enabling growth completely with no additives. Both of those also never gave me any kind of buildup with no other additives. I usually run my loops for 4-5 years before a service, only topping up when the T or the res was lower than usual.
 
FrgMstr said:
Exactly. Over the past 25 years, I pretty much did not have experience with any other fluid treatment simply because Koolance's worked so extremely well. Ain't broke, don't fix it....
Click to expand...

Dan_D said:
I've used that Koolance fluid for the better part of two decades. It's never caused a problem in any loop I've run.
Click to expand...
I also followed your advice on bitspower fittings. The only other fittings I've ever used is Koolance QD fittings as bitspower doesn't seem to have any comparable and easily obtainable alternatives. Over several loops, I've collected an obscene amount of bitspower fittings. I picked up a bunch when frozencpu was going out of business, too. I'd estimate I'm somewhere between $500 and $1000 in bitspower fittings and probably close to half are in the wrapper. Those dual rotating 45s, 60s, 90s and ball valves are not cheap. Koolance QDs are not cheap either. I just rebuilt my loop and I have it set up where I can remove my cpu and gpu without draining the loop. I can also disconnect the radiator the same way.

Back on topic, when I drained the loop prior to rebuild, I didn't seem to drain out near what I thought was in there. My watercool MORA is at the bottom of my loop. I have a drain at the bottom I opened, but I'm guessing only half the radiator drained out. I still have the remnants of a 5L jug of Koolance that was opened 3 years ago. That's beyond the shelf life for and open container, but I'm going to use it anyway, at least for leak testing. I may drain it either way after that as I have a new jug waiting. It would be one expensive system flush.
 
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