New Intel Build Since After Waiting Six Years

Been running Danger Den Dreamflex 1/2"ID x 3/4"OD blue uv tubing with EK Coolant Blue UV since Nov 2011 without flush. I upgraded my GPUs last month so I drained my loop, installed and connected the GPUs, and filled it back up. Upon starting the pump, I almost immediately noticed little flakes swirling around my res. I thought nothing of it, and left it alone.

Yeah, guess what happened to me this past week?

CPU all of sudden spiked to 95C on load for no reason... causing all sorts of BSODs while gaming. After inspection, flow was completely stuck at CPU block. Googling around for possible causes, plasticizer kept on popping up (it was the first I ever heard of it). This is my second water-cooling rig, and I never had to flush my previous rig that ran for 7 years (clear tubing from hardware store + distilled water & MCT-5 coolant additive). I proceeded to do a complete tear-down. I am shocked that any vendor selling PC water cooling components would allow such products to be released. As a result of plasticizer leeching from tubing and having not flushed my radiators prior to installing them, I am now having to RMA two cards (because I can't clean the GPU blocks without voiding the warranty), clean CPU block, and completely flush rads with soap + hot water w/ distilled water rinse.

Because of this incident, I decided to redesign my loop (new Durelene tubing, distilled + silver only, new higher flow CPU block, and scrubbing every fitting). Here are some of my plasticizer buildup + possible radiator flakes, and what it did to my EK Supreme block. I hope everyone can learn from my mistake of using Danger Den Dreamflex blue UV tubing + EK coolant blue UV reactive (or anything of the sort). Don't use that combination unless you want this to happen to you:


Severe plasticizer build up from faulty tubing






Complete blockage from plasticizer and radiator flux










Plasticizer samples from CPU block and tube



This one I scraped off a single tube.


I used these plasticizer samples to see what would dissolve them. Vinegar doesn't do anything to it. However, a de-greaser does dissolve it. I put a couple d drops of Arctic Thermal Material Remover on a small sample, and it immediately started breaking it down. I'd like to know what effect degreasers have on nickel, copper, rubber orings, and plastics.


GPUs are blocked too. But, opening the GPU blocks voids the warranty so I RMA'd them both.



EVGA swiftly shipped me a new pair of GTX 780 Hydro Coppers. Too bad I don't have a 4-way SLI board (and too bad 4-way doesn't scale well)





Cleaned the EK Supreme HF blocks nickel top with lime juice soak and scrub + distilled water rinse






BUT, after more thought I wanted a block with lower resistance, so I upgraded to the EK Supremacy Clean CSQ nickel top, which had a jet top with a much larger gap for high flow

Ah, the legendary 2600K, cleaned and ready for the new block





Thoroughly flushed both radiators with hot tap water and dish soap w/ distilled water rinse. I used a pond pump and a hollowed out Britta filter




Redesigned my loop to reposition radiators between GPU and CPU for optimal cooling. Also added external flush routing for easy maintenance.




Durelene clear tubing with Mayhem Pastel Sunset Yellow - black n' yellow. Looks great. Flow is high, temps are back to normal - (CPU: 32/62, GPUs: 28/42)





External flush routing - turn the valve, and hook up to external pump for system flushing.


Added aquarium pre-filter to reservoir to prevent plasticizer, flux, and oxidation plates from going into the blocks again.



I gotta say, the Mayhem pastel yellow sunset just pops out of the black components - looks amazing.











 
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Jpongin,

Just read your post (double in some areas), and I'm sorry about your plasticizing problem. That just plain blows. Sweet build though. I'm currently in the works on a project using a Mountain Mods Ascension CYO. Thier cases are just sick. My build is going to house no less than 9 Aquacomputer Airplex Modularity radiators.
 
9 Aquacompeter rads?! Dude, you have to log this. With that much surface area, I'm very curios to see what your temps are with fans at a dead stop.
 
Oh definitely. I'm eyeing 4K gaming next, but want the technology to mature just a tad. Will definitely need to go Tri-SLI w/ at least 4GB VRam at those resolutions.
 
It took me a second when you said you had to RMA your 780's... and that is the suck!

Great looking build even 2 years later.

What kind of mouse wrist pillow is that and how does it perform? My wrist has been killing me lately to where I haven't been gaming much.
 
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* WHY IS MY MOUSE SO LAGGY?: 02-04-2014
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So after upgrading to Windows 8.1 from 7, I noticed that my mouse is stuttering and lagging both on the desktop and in-game. It was so noticeable that spent two days researching all sorts of W8.1 mouse lag hot fixes, updated my bios (perhaps the USB chip doesn't have the latest firmware?), installed latest mobo drivers, etc.

None of them worked. I was *positive* my Logitech MX Performance that was at the time, the best mouse you could buy, would last forever. It was the only mouse I ever needed... great for gaming, great for everything right? WRONG.

The culprit? Mouse polling rate. The MX Performance polling rate was 125Hz. That seemed like plenty for me for a 1500DPI. It turns out that if you have a high resolution display (2K, 4K, etc), that's not even near enough.

After a lengthy process of elimination, I decided to purchase a new mouse with a higher polling rate and higher DPI to test my theory. I went with the Logitech G700s (which is basically a badass version of the Performance MX). It has a polling rate of 1000Hz and 8200DPI... it's theoretically a 10x better performing mouse. In practice? It a 10x better performing mouse! EVERYTHING, and I do mean everything was much much smoother. No matter how quickly I try to twitch my mouse, it never missed a position. My in-game experience has improved DRASTICALLY. I even noticed it being much smoother than the Performance MX in Windows 7. Overall, very glad with the upgrade, and very glad my mouse stutter problems are solved.





 
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* WHY IS MY MOUSE *STILL* LAGGY?: 09-17-2014
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So believe it or not, the G700S started becoming unresponsive and stutter-y. At first I thought it was the 2.4Ghz receiver because I noticed that certain places on my desk it would be very responsive, but other places it would not.

After several hours of research, it turns out that just because it's a laser mouse, and just because it'll work on "any" surface, doesn't mean it will work well on any surface. Far from it, on some surfaces, the precision is horrible. Sure it'll work, but the precision is so bad.

After watching this video:

Logitech tunes their mouses (mice?) lasers and optics, especially the G700S, on their gaming mouse pads. So I decided to purchase the Logitech G440 gaming mouse pad. That made an insane difference. The precision is SO EXACT it's like night and day. I wish I knew this when I purchased the mouse months ago. Gaming is so much better with the insane precision improvement.



 
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