Possibly Rust, may need to replace entire loop (minus pumps)

clayton006

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
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So shame on me....

I've ran distilled water + silver kill coil in the same loop for about 2 years without draining or filling (except when I added GPU blocks about half way in)

Yes I probably should have drained it, ran something (vinegar?) through it, rinsed it, and put in a fresh kill coil about once a year?

So situation: My koolance block, upon inspection, looked like it was rusting / nickel plating had come apart. I've decided to junk it as I didn't want to risk anything.

Opening up my radiators looked like they may need to be on the chopping block as well. Not sure if that coloration inside is to be expected or not? Should I be flushing it with vinegar (and if so for how long? Should I let it sit in there?)

OneDrive link to RAD image

I didn't run into any performance issues or leaks, but before I put in brand new 1080ti's in the loop (EK nickel) I wanted to tear it all apart and have a look. Should I be running a silver kill coil and PT nuke? Just the kill coil? I appreciate any insight!
 
I personally think just PT Nuke is fine without a kill coil. There's plenty of people who will tell you a kill coil without PT Nuke is fine. Other people will say use both.

The truth is the types of corrosion you'll see in a good system are all VERY slow moving. If you have all copper, nickel, brass and/or stainless steel parts in your loop, with good distilled or DI water, you're not going to see much corrosion even with no treatment. Especially in a closed-loop system. Most people online will claim the "success" of a particular method after 6 months, or 12 months, when in reality it would take a couple years to see visible corrosion.

If it was all fairly clean, you're not going to see a lot of biologic growth. So running for a year or so with nothing, just a coil, just PT Nuke, or both isn't going to really be any evidence of any of them really "working" for biologics. Remember, to get biologics to grow, you need them in there to begin with, and they also need something to eat. A good clean system should have neither of those. Now if your system IS a bit dirty, then a kill coil OR PT Nuke will kill the biologic growth, so I'd recommend at least one. I don't think there's any empirical evidence that one is better than the other. That being said, I use PT Nuke, since it's cheap and easy to just add a couple drops when filling the system.
 
Thanks for the explanation on the PTNuke / Kill coil.

Based on the image in the OP, is that radiator toast or is that to be expected? If so, should I be flushing it with something (and what is the method of doing so)?
 
I should say that all of my compression fittings look great on the inside. I'm probably going to replace them due to the o-rings being worn out at this point.
 
Update: So I actually tried to look down into the radiator and I don't think it is that bad?

New Radiator Pics (OneDrive)


I've put in vinegar and let it sit there for 30 minutes for both radiators. Nothing really came out (fluid was slightly blueish) but mostly clear. Do I need to do boiling hot distilled water now or should the vinegar be enough? If these rads need to be tossed then I can do that, but rather re-use them if I can.
 
Another update, I emptied out the older (but larger) radiator that had vinegar in it for 30 minutes. The water was much more blue then the smaller (and newer) one. I understand this is normal (esp. since I haven't used something like that in the radiator before).
 
After the vinegar, flush it a couple times with distilled. If it's no longer coming out colored, and emptied through a coffee filter you don't see flecks of crud, I'd call it good.

There is a large amount of controversy on the kill coil, I personally have run both ways. I figure clean copper is just as much a bio-preventive, so I am leaning just good distilled and a few drops of PTnuke or a bit of antifreeze (my pref- cheap and lets me see the water level).
 
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