Distilled Water Cooling Discussion

This thread is for Distilled water cooling only. No other coolants or systems, please.

 

Recently, I have been interested in this subject, and I am very eager to learn more about the pros and cons of such systems. I have taken notice that bacteria and algae growth is common in such systems, and I would very much like to focus on maintenance and various preventative measures associated with it.

 

-What are my options in preventing and disrupting the growth of those pesky organisms?

 

-How and when should I clean the system?

 

-What are the portions (radiator, tubing, etc.) that attract more growth?

 

These are just of the few questions that I would love to have answered, and hopefully through personal and professional experience this community can help! Thanks in advance, and I will be awaiting your answers.

You can add a silver coil to the loop, as silver prevents algae growth (dont ask me how).

Cleaning a loop with algae in can be done with a vinger/water (50/50) mixture gradually getting weaker with each pass (40/60 etc). Blocks can be disassembled and scrubbed clean. If tubing is affected, just replace it.

Growth tends to occur where the water is moving slowly. Radiators and reseviors are an issue.

 

IMO you are better off to get a clear coolant such as 'Mayhems X1 Clear' As it has anti growth/corrosion already mixed into it.

-zanginator

Just get a Silver kill coil, or a Biocide (which can also have anti corrosives in it)

Just use highly distilled water and a silver kill coil or plug, I change them out every year and have no issues with algae growth.

I second the suggestion for Mayhems X1 clear. Distilled water is great in its own right for cooling, but improvements can be made for thermal conductivity as well as corrosion resistance and anti-fungal/algae. With most premix or additives, you don't have to follow their proportions exactly, if cost is a major issue when it comes to the liquid, but these mixes and additives really help to improve the lifespan of a water cooling loop. As far as cooling with deionized water, unless you happen to have every single piece of the loop plated with nickel, it is going to rapidly strip the copper or aluminum out of the loop and become less efficient at cooling and also electrically conductive. I mean, once it is contained within the loop, this doesn't matter, but it would if you had a leak. Most mixes have additives that help to create useful bonds with the water moluecules, since we all know that water is the universal solvent, it is better to give it something to do so that it doesn't find things to do with your copper radiator. To prohibit algae growth in a cooling loop you can either add a heavy splash of bleach or add a silver kill coil or silver bullet plug. Either one works in a similar way to how zinc works to disrupt the ability of yeast to move molecules through their cell walls via low-energy methods.

Is it possible to only use silver in the system and not worry? If so, for how long does it last? Or at least how long will it be an effective deterant?

You shouldn't be mixing in anything else, the best option is distilled water and a silver kill coil. The fewer contaminants in your loop the better. From my experiance it'll last 6mo-1yr, I usually just do it once a year and haven't had any problems.

Yes it is possible to use just silver and deionized water, although I would recommend instead just going with a premix or a concentrate from Mayhems or another company (Alphacool, EK, etc.) as they can last years before anything begins to grow in your loop. The only other suggestion I would have is to choose your tubing carefully as the softer, more flexible tubing has more plasticizers in it, which over time will leak out of the tubing and foul up some of your parts. The best way to remove this is to replace all of your tubing when you empty your loop, then assemble a temporary loop outside of your case and run a mixture of either bleach or vinegar and relatively hot water through the loop for about an hour. Make sure that you keep an eye on the temp of the water to make sure it isn't getting too hot, or you may burn out your pump. After that you should empty the temporary loop and run plain deionized water through it a few times to purge it, then you can disassemble everything again and put your new loop together. You can avoid all of the plasticizer issues by using some Bitspower multilink fittings and either crystal link or some similarly sized acrylic tubing from a hardware store... You can also heat the tubing with a heat gun and bend it up to 90 degrees if you don't want to spend money on a huge quantity of fittings.

This is great! Thanks so much for the responses, guys. It has been a really big help. I'm still open to more of your opinions and experiences, so I will continue to check for more responses. Thanks again!

Also, I can't seem to find pump speeds or how much volume they will pump on average. What is too fast, and too slow? Can any of you help with that?

Depends on what you need to be pumping coolant through. If all you have is a CPU loop, then around 400 Liters an hour is good enough, although there is always something to be said for overkill. If you plan on adding a motherboard cooling kit and RAM cooling and a GPU block as well as the original CPU block, then you might want to consider either running multiple loops with inexpensive and thus less powerful pumps, or just go with one really robust pump. Like a D5 variant pump which puts out anywhere between 800 and 1200 Liters per hour. These are the ones that everyone makes replacement pump tops and mod kits and tube reserviour mod kits for. They can get very expensive to buy when they look all nice and pretty, but you get sufficient power for just about everything you can imagine short of triple or quad GPU configs. I suggest checking out www.frozencpu.com for liquid cooling products and specs. I've checked the majority of their pumps out and most will tell you what their flow rate is. Also, if you are just running a CPU loop, and you happen to be okay with bay-type reserviours, then you can find those made by EK or XSPC with the latter being significantly cheaper and uglier, but offering better pump options. Either, though, would be more than sufficient for a CPU loop.

Pure liquid colloidal silver would be too electrically conductive to use; stick with a deionized mixture, such as Mayhems or DI water with dye in it.

Thanks, Mndless, you've been more than a great help. I love being apart of this community for that reason. Thanks again to all of you!

you dont want de ionized water.

that can cause the fluidds to pull ions off your metal surfaces
and thus break them down over time

distilled water is your best and ultimate bet, + silver kill coil.
some metals are naturally anti microbial, silver is one of them. its a physical attribute.
it just kills small cells

I don't know anything about watercooling computers, but I do know a lot about water cooling other hotter things.

You are right. DI water is the absolute worst choice.

Distilled would be a second choice. It will leech too.

What I would pick for a small scale cooling system is aquafina

It's the highly filtered and refined water used in making soda.

i find it amusing that Pure water isn't even electrically conductive, and is used in high end capacitors, as the di-electric layer

Now I am understanding why you would want 100% non conductive fluid. In case it leaks. The fluid will obviously become conductive to a certain extent, but long after the system is proven.

yea, the more STUFF that gets into the water
will make it more and more conductive
and it will pick up stray particles and whatnot just from the tubing and the resovar and stuff and the pumps over time anyhow
when you build a system, they reccomend that you take your rads and boil up some water and fill em half way and take pot holders and shake the ever living shit out of them to clear out any random shit left over from the solder in creation of the part
in my other post for my build log for MY current pc you can see one of the first photo is my radiators sitting there at the sink, with a funnel in them where i was doing the "radiator dance"
"they" (the community) generally says fill shake drain repeat untill you are gasping for breath and dead,
as the more junk you can get out the better
the less shit in your loop MINUS the water you fill it with and the silver kill coil
the longer your loop will last,
also take into consideration all of the different metal types that the water will come into contact with
IE, in my gpu
http://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-fc670-gtx.html

This water block directly cools the GPU, RAM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module)
The Base is made of electrolytic copper

in my CPU,


the plate that touches that i believe is precision-machined from C110 copper.
then
anything else the water touches, is the radiator material, which includes in my case a brass, and whatever solder material, and whatever is in the pump
the tubing
and the water resovar

when you use different metals, in the same loop.
they WILL corrode to some degree, over time.
you can google up a little graph of the exact numbers.
but the more different the metal type the more it will react with the rest

https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/the-monster/74938

for those wondering why silver kills stuff.

silver interrupts the bacteria cell’s ability to form the chemical bonds essential to its survival. These bonds produce the cell’s physical structure so when bacteria meets silver it literally falls apart.

now you know why in past ages it was used in past also (silverware)

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Does the silver need to be in the reservoir, or is it just as effective in the tube? Also if my system has a small reservoir, is that an issue?