No Nonsense, Long-Term Watercooling At Home: Guides, Cleaning Old Parts & Preparing New Loops

Hardware Hub Cooling
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Some time ago I heard @wendell lamenting the reliability of long-term watercooling loops and I molested him with my personal experiences, my longest running watercooling loop ran 8 years without having to do any maintenance on it. The only reason I disassembled it was the hardware just becoming too slow and wanting to upgrade it.

COMMON SENSE WARNING

CAUTION: THIS THREAD WILL DISCUSS THE USE OF CHEMICALS, PHYSICS LIKE HEAT AND OTHER TOOLS THAT WHEN USED IMPROPERLY MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO PARTS, THE ENVIRONMENT OR LEAD TO SERIOUS PERSONAL INJURY. ANYTHING YOU DO, DO IT WITH COMMON SENSE AND AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Introduction

I. Introduction

What’s the purpose of this thread?

  • This thread is supposed to become a long-term blog thread where users collect and discuss ideas how to operate watercooling loops with the least amount of headache.

  • This means that discussions about the matter of personal “taste” should be done elsewhere. For example stuff like colored dyes in the cooling medium most of the time don’t help long-term reliability and won’t be recommended here.

  • While I have quite a few experiences with watercooling (my first watercooled system was an AMD Slot-A K7 Athlon with 750 MHz @ 1 GHz and a GeForce 2 Ultra with DIY copper heatsinks) I definitely don’t claim to be the pinnacle of absolute knowledge.

  • If I recommend a procedure I try to explain why I made the specific choices. I would want the same from other people that might contribute in this thread to increase the knowledge, please take the time to explain your concrete tip and don’t just spam it out into the aether.

Details Of The 8-Year Loop

II. Personal Annecdote: The Parts that ran for 8 years

  1. Radiator: Watercool Radiator MO-RA3 360 Pro - white (cp. https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/Watercool-Radiator-MO-RA3-360-Pro-white_81815.html )

  2. CPU Cooler: Watercool Heatkiller IV (cp. Watercool Heatkiller IV high-end waterblock copper, 99,95 € )

  3. GPU Cooler: Watercool Heatkiller GPU-X3 R9 290X (made from the same materials as the CPU cooler)

  4. AquaComputer aquastream XT (cp. https://www.angela.pl/p9882,aquacomputer-aquastream-xt-usb-12v-ultra-version.html ), bought in 2011, still okay to this day.

  5. Tygon R-3603 laboratory soft tubing. Compared to current tubing its diameter is a bit small. For current builds I use EK ZMT Soft Tube, but only have about 2 years of experience with it yet - no issues so far.

  6. Coolant: Real sterile distilled water from medical suppliers. As corrosion protection I use “AquaTuning Innovatek Protect” which is just 1,2-Ethanediol ( Ethylene glycol - Wikipedia ), Ratio: 3 parts (water) : 1 part (1,2-Ethanediol)

Personal Nomenclature

III. Some personal nomenclature I use:

  1. Pressure: If I’m mentioning pressure I don’t mean the absolute pressure but the relative pressure over the ambient pressure. For example if I mention “1 bar” then I mean 2 bar absolute pressure (1 bar comes from the nominal atmosphere, the barometer shows 1 bar over-pressure within a loop, for example)

  2. Cold water: Temperature range from 0 C (above freezing) up to room temperature (ca. 20 C).

  3. Warm water: Temperature range from room temperature up to 60 C.

  4. Hot water: Temperature range from 61C temperature up to 99 C (non-boiling).

Clean An Old Radiator

IV. Cleaning out old gunk out of an old radiator without damaging components’ materials

Personal sad story: In the distant past I had destroyed nickel-plated parts with citric acid (didn’t know any better). Temporarily this was a while before I built the 8-year loop system.

Randomly around that time I had a coffee maker defect, the heating group had an electronic fault. While disassembling it I noticed that the mixture of different metals, plastics and silicone ring seals in the coffee maker that were in contact with the hot water and brewed coffee looked pristine, even after years of almost daily use.

I then looked up the cleaning solution I used for that coffee maker, it’s a product by the Swiss manufacturer Durgol that sells many pricy cleaning liquids with varying criteria. The one for the coffee maker is called just generically called “Spezial-Entkalker” (“Special Descaler” in English).

That stuff claims to clean as well as descale and that it’s less aggressive than citric acid and vinegar (it’s based on sulfamic acid). Be careful if you choose this one, that manufacturer sells MANY different but similar sounding stuff.

It’s designed to be used diluted in hot water, ratio 8 parts (water) : 1 part (special descaler).

  • In chemistry for every 10 K in increased temperature within a certain range you can basically increase a chemical reaction’s speed 2x to 3x. In German this has the charming term “Reaktionsgeschwindigkeitstemperaturregel” ( RGT-Regel – Wikipedia ).

The actual radiator cleaning

  1. Find out the approx. liquid volume the radiator that’s about to be cleaned can hold.

  2. If possible close all the access ports and leave two open on the same side. Attach one short piece of tubing to one access port and a longer piece of soft tubing with a funnel to the other access port.

  3. Have two silicone plugs ready for the very end when everything is done that can be used to seal the open radiator ports.

  4. Get a clean stainless steel pot, large enough to hold the radiator’s volume, then add 20% to that since many manufacturers lie.

  5. Calculate how much distilled water you need for a 8:1 mixture with the special descaler.

  6. Place the radiator in a tub with the soft tubes attached and fill the tub with warm water (in my home the warm water reaches 60 C out of the faucet) until the radiator is covered completely, but be careful that no water gets into the open ends from the connected soft tubing. The purpose of this is warming up the radiator to avoid rapid temperature change stresses in the materials. Don’t skip this step, it’s to reduce the risk of damage to the radiator. Also, without submerging the radiator in warm water it will also quickly radiate away the heat of the following hot descaling/cleaning solution, decreasing its effectiveness.

  7. Heat the distilled water only up to around 80C.

  8. Add the calculated parts of special descaler to the hot water in the stainless steel pot and stirr it a bit with a wire wisk.

  9. Carefully fill the hot cleaning/descaling solution into the radiator access port with the funnel at the end (DANGER: RISK OF BURNS), until it comes out at the other end with the shorter piece of soft tubing attached to the other access port.

  10. The cleaning/descaling solution creates gases, don’t seal the openings.

  11. Let it sit for 24 hours.

  12. Empty out the used cleaning/descaling solution from the radiator.

  13. If compressed air that outputs clean air without any oils etc. in it is available: Use it to help getting traces of the used cleaning/descaling solution out of the radiator.

  14. Be careful with pressure! Many radiator manufacturers lie about how much pressure they can handle. I pressure-tested an AlphaCool radiator for leaks where the manufacturer claims that every unit is pressure-tested at the factory with 1.5bar BUT it got destroyed with around 1.0bar. Was pretty angry about that:

  1. Get around 5x the volume of distilled water to flush the radiator out of any traces of the used cleaning/descaling solution. After you’re done seal the radiator access ports with silicone plugs.

  2. From now on until you use it to build a loop treat it carefully to avoid any contamination inside the radiator.

Rubber Seals

V. Rubber seals in a watercooling loop

  • I check every rubber seal/gasket ring of every fitting and cooler when building a loop, even from completely new parts and apply a bit of OKS 1110 Silicone Grease ( OKS 1110 - Multi-Silicone Grease | OKS Spezialschmierstoffe GmbH ) to it, it’s non-toxic and even after years it doesn’t decay or get disgusting. This step significantly reduces the aging process of rubber seals which is one of the most likely causes for leaks after long-term use of a watercooling loop!

What’s coming next?

VI. What’s coming next?

  • I’m doing a deep-cleaning of old parts again soon and will try to take high-quality photographs of every step.

  • I’ll also document everything I do with new parts.

  • I’m also planning a multi-room watercooling loop where the heat of quite a few computer parts is used in a bathroom, a shower and a room where I dry laundry.

Hope that this thread will help someone avoiding any unnecessary frustration with watercooling!

(This thread will likely be edited quite a bit in the future!)

11 Likes
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I changed the formatting for ya :slight_smile: if you want to reference for future posts. You only need the table of contents div 1 time, then headings are denoted by # (heading) ## (subheading) ### (sub subheading)

Now that the pieces are there just adjust as you see fit :+1:

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Thank you very much!

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Welcome! Great post btw :smiley:

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Just to make sure I get it right, did you run that loop for 8y without maintenance?
And then you cleaned your radiator afterwards?
Or did you clean your loop at an interval?

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By stating “without any maintenance” I mean:

  1. Prepare the loop’s empty components.

  2. Fill the loop.

  3. Use the system.

  4. Never had to do anything to the loop again, that includes not having to add extra liquid to it since the evaporation through the tubes had been so little over the timespan.

Note: Had been using Liquid Metal sheets as TIM there.

  • Another loop I haven’t touched in almost three years is using Kryonaut Extreme, haven’t seen any temperature degradation so far (5950X with unlocked PPT, the CPU by itself is using around 240 W under all-core loads).

What I’ve learned from experience over the decades:

  • The very first step is to absolutely only use components that don’t cheap out on the used copper alloys with cheaper metals. Only then you have a chance of not getting “surprises”. That includes EVERYTHING the cooling liquid touches, including such banal things like fittings. As always: Unfortunately many manufacturers lie.

  • What then becomes crucial: Disinfect all parts and treat them as sterile as possible until you fill the loop, microorganisms that produce biofilms as a byproduct of their life cycles are in my opinion the most generally overlooked factor that F over watercooling loops that are supposed to run for years. These biofilms cause increased friction in pumps leading to accelerated aging and also “clogg up” the micro fins in watercooling heatsinks, leading to higher temperatures of components.

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That’s impressive, those Tygon tubes are just PVC which lets water escape faster than EPDM tubing that seems to be the favorite now. I suppose tube wall thickness is a big factor in how fast the water escapes.

Santoprene is an even better than EPDM if higher temperatures are expected to be encountered.

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Thanks for that Santoprene tip, will have a look at it!

The actual coolant temperature also plays a significant role: The used radiator was massively oversized for the system (intention: silent cooling even under full CPU+GPU load), lower temperatures reduce the evaporation process and permeability of soft tubing significantly.

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I think good preparation - like cleaning - goes the longest way to a maintenance-free experience. I’m still using the same CPU block, pump and radiator I bought in 2017 (EK KIT S360) and the only thing I’ve done is thoroughly clean all the components the first time I used them and the second time I switched from a 1700x to a 5600x.

So I have only cleaned everything twice in 7 years… :smiley:

Oh, and I have only used warm and distilled water for cleaning. No additives or chemicals. Just made sure I rinsed everything well with distilled water and did not touch anything with my greasy oily fingers.

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That’s how it should be. Also try to never use tap water for cleaning even if you intend to use distilled water for flushing out everything again later. Tap water can have microorganisms and other impurities in it that can be used as a food source for stuff growing in a loop.

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Wow, that is seriously impressive.

I don’t particularly like igorslab, but he has some great reviews about that topic.

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That is a good point, the vapor pressure goes up exponentially with temperature, and even humidity affects the evaporation rate.

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Do you happen to know of a trustworthy retail end customer source for around 30 meters/100 feet of Santoprene soft tubing with approx. 10 mm inner diameter and 16 mm outer diameter?

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I think I’ll just buy another cooler before taking a bath with my radiator…

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I got mine from mcmaster, but there isn’t really an equivalent distributor over in your neck of the woods.

You might have to import it from somewhere like omega

Its fairly expensive. Also its naturally tan colored so you have to make sure to look for the black colored version of it.

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“Save the planet one radiator at a time, man!”

In all seriousness: There isn’t a reason why you couldn’t use a high-quality radiator for your “entire life” if you take care of it.

It’s also a good idea to clean and flush out completely new radiators. The QA/QC in many factories isn’t great, sometimes they have solder flux residue inside which isn’t great for the metalls long-term wise.

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