If you are not going to return your TR4 II, I would love if you were to pull it apart and post what you find underneath the copper plate. This is a pic of a First gen
The white part near the inlet port (lower right) is where it appears that over use, the gunk or whatever is gathering in the system was able to wear away the anodization and allow direct fluid contact to non anodized aluminum. Here is a pic of the gunk that was found inside
The gunk has some hard parts, and some soft organic looking parts. Unfortunately I forgot I have a microscope at work, and didn’t take a sample to look at.
My hypothesis is that the fluid in both the version 1 and 2 have some sort of organic problem. The block might not be anodized thick enough. from the continued circulation, the organics make large enough concretions that they get stuck on the inlet side, and if they don’t just straight up clog the microfins, they jostle and wear down the anodization at the inlet side of the block. This causes increases corrosion, and eventually the whole thing fails.
I just replaced the fluid with some distilled water and some PHN Biocide. I flushed it out pretty good with distilled water before re-assembling. Will tear it apart again in a few months and see how it looks.
Thanks for the input. I’ll keep an eye on it, and probably switch back to my Air Cooler if it gets worse. If I end up taking it off, I’ll open it up and post photos here.
Maybe someone in here should write to Gamers Nexus.
What i understand of what is said in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1XwvUdcjQ
Is that Steve only thinks its the first generation of the AIO that has a problem.
Just wanted to follow up and say that I switched back to my Noctua NH-U14S cooler from my Enermax TR4 II 360 AIO. The idle temps of my AIO were climbing up to about 48-50C at idle/light use. Put the Noctua cooler back in, and I’m now Idling at about 28-30C (20C cooler!) I also was noticing that I think the radiator may be clogged with this gunk that people are noticing in under the coldplate. I had my radiator exposed, and the tubes to the radiator, and the tank on the end of the radiator, and perhaps one inch into the radiator was quite hot, and then the rest of the radiator was perfectly cool. Seemed to me like the liquid was not flowing properly through the radiator properly. Might see if I can flush out the radiator, and re-fill the system with new coolant, and install again, and see how it goes.
Hard to see, but in the bottom right of the pic of the inside of the waterblock, it looks as if the anodization might be completely worn through. Wich I think is coomon on the liqtech tr4. Version 1 or 2. If that is the case, you have bare aluminum in the system with copper. But after dismantling 2 of these, I think the root problem is some sort of organic growth. It gets caught on the inlet side of the waterblock, and churns and abrades the aluminum. This then gets past the anodization, and causes faster corrosion.
If you clean it out and flush the rad real good, and add corrosion inhibitors, it should be fine. Just watch the temps
@MtKingsnake Yes, I realized that when cleaning it. in the bottom right it has eaten into the metal quite a bit. Think I’ll clean it out as best as I can and refill it with some EK Cryofuel coolant. If I can get it working well, I may use it again, but this is making me realize how much more reliable and effective this noctua cooler I have is. @wendell You should do a video opening up your TR4 II cooler!
Are there any AIOs with full IHS coverage? The other ones I saw for TR4/TRX40 don’t fully cover the IHS and their cooling performance is similiar to good air coolers.
It’s for a 3960X, applications include rendering, 3D-photogrammetry and other heavily multithreaded software. I was intending to slightly overclock the cpu but I hit the 95° mark fairly quickly (tried both the Dark Rock Pro 4 and Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3).
