New to water cooling - now I've got the water-cooling bug!

[MackTheKnight]

Actually the thing does work. It tells you if there foreign particles in the loop. Low 20ish is distilled water. If your 30+ you got some particles in your loop. Figures with mayhem are 90-100 and dazmode protector is 120-130. Mayhem XTR 4nm is 50-70 as of now.

Can’t imagine any particles left in the loop as I flushed it with over 10 litres of distilled water after running the mayhem blitz part 2 cleaner through it for 12+ hours.

When it had the plain distilled in it, it was reading between 4.9 and 6.5.

The measurement jumped to around 38 after putting in the Mayhem XT1 Nuke clear concentrate. Maybe it’s seeing the additives in it as some sort of pollutant. Flow rate dropped a bit too after adding the concentrate. Was around 180 and now down to around 155. The concentrate must add some viscosity compared to plain distilled water.

-Mack

[section31]

Thanks Bart!

Yea, I did a premix my first time around but quickly realized it’s better to stick with distilled plus an additive. Thank you again for your insight!

I guess this is Aquacomputers way of trying to sell their premix coolants as the user guide says you should only use their coolant products. LOL

Actually the thing does work. It tells you if there foreign particles in the loop. Low 20ish is distilled water. If your 30+ you got some particles in your loop. Figures with mayhem are 90-100 and dazmode protector is 120-130. Mayhem XTR 4nm is 50-70 as of now.

[MackTheKnight]

I am the same honestly. These fans look great in white. Only issue is they are too wide.

Caused issue when installing on my watercool mo-ra3. I heard from people using watercool new internal rads same issue . One end of the screw holes doesn’t align.

yea, I can understand that. I was lucky I had spare fittings I could use to make it work. I do like the overall look of them and how quiet they are, but you are correct - they could really do some work to optimize the overall size of the bezels/mounting holes for rad users.

[MackTheKnight]

For the coolant quality detection, I turned all that bunk off, otherwise it just alarms like crazy. I have never once cared about the conductivity of my coolant, and I'm not about to start now, LOL! Aquacomputer has a habit of coming up with things like that, things that no one ever asked for or needed. Distilled water + additives is my main jam, I rarely use bottled coolant, and that's obviously conductive, and makes that Next sensor very unhappy. Build looks great!

Thanks Bart!

Yea, I did a premix my first time around but quickly realized it’s better to stick with distilled plus an additive. Thank you again for your insight!

I guess this is Aquacomputers way of trying to sell their premix coolants as the user guide says you should only use their coolant products. LOL

[Bartacus]

For the coolant quality detection, I turned all that bunk off, otherwise it just alarms like crazy. I have never once cared about the conductivity of my coolant, and I'm not about to start now, LOL! Aquacomputer has a habit of coming up with things like that, things that no one ever asked for or needed. Distilled water + additives is my main jam, I rarely use bottled coolant, and that's obviously conductive, and makes that Next sensor very unhappy. Build looks great!

[section31]

I am the same honestly. These fans look great in white. Only issue is they are too wide.

Caused issue when installing on my watercool mo-ra3. I heard from people using watercool new internal rads same issue . One end of the screw holes doesn’t align.

[MackTheKnight]

Don't know why it is, but I always go back to plain white LEDs. Just looks the best to my eye.

[MackTheKnight]

The rebuild/evolution is complete. My idle temps are back to normal. (30C on cpu and gpu). Under load seems to settle in at around 55C but sometimes my cpu spikes into the 70’s. Based on what I’ve read it’s pretty common on the 5800X. Can anyone comment on this?

The new active backplate for the 3090 makes a serious difference for the GPU memory temps. They were high 80's and sometimes into the 90's. Now sitting at 40 idle/60 max.

Coolant temps idle in the mid 20’s and under synthetics (Heaven looping for around 2 hours) settle in and hold at 40C. (My Ambient temps are around 22C). Under a normal gaming load, the coolant seems to level off around 35C. This is with the 6 rad fans running at their lowest speed, as I prefer silent operation and they are far quieter than the old 120mm Typhoons I was running.

The rebuild was not without some challenges. The LianLi modular fan design is nice but has some downsides, in that they really limit your choices of fittings on the radiators.

My dark side 16mm hard tube fittings were a tad too big to fit so I had to make some sacrifices. Namely had to use my old soft tube barb fittings between the two cross flow rads, which I wasn’t overly happy about, but it works and it’s out of the way enough that you can’t really see it unless you’re really looking close.

Love the new flow meter/temp sensor recommended by Bart. Didn’t realize it could also measure coolant conductivity. Sort of a nice touch to have. To that end, is it normal for the Mayhem XT1 nuke coolant to have a higher conductivity then plain old distilled water? XT1 Nuke reads around 39.8 us/cm versus distilled water I got from the drug store which was only around 4.9.

Haven’t settled on an RGB colour yet. Just messing with the different options. The reviews on the Lian Li SL140’s said the lights were dim… I disagree. They are very bright at least when there are six running. Will likely keep them toned down to 50% or less once I decide on a colour.

Anyways, all in all, I’m quite happy with this next evolution of my build.

Current system specs are as follows:
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII HERO (WiFi)
64 GB Gskill TridentZ RGB 3600 Mhz CAS16 memory
Ryzen 5800X
EVGA XC3 Ultra RTX 3090
EVGA DG-86 Case
850 Watt Corsair PSU
Currently running the latest Win11 Dev Preview.

WC parts:
EK D5 Pump W 250 Res
EK Vector XC3 GPU Block and Active Backplate
Heatkiller IV CPU block
2 X Aquacomputer Xflow 420mm x 30 rads
6 x Lian Li SL140 Modular Fans
Aquacomputer flow/temp sensor
Bitspower in-line filter
Lots of Darkside 16 MM HT fittings plus a few EK fittings.
Lots of various darkside fittings. (90's, 45's, etc)
16 OD PETG from Daz
Mayhem Xt1 Nuke clear coolant mixed with Daz's pure distilled water


Let me know if you have any thoughts/suggestions.

Pics are from my phone, as I loaned my sd card reader out and it never returned.

-Mack

[MackTheKnight]

Bends complete and now running sysprep.

[MackTheKnight]

Made a bit more progress. 2 more tubes to figure out.

[section31]

I use mostly soft tube myself. Also mixed in hard tube on visual area. Its probably best way to do it. I just did drain to start testing out mayhem xtr 4nm. My Modular design really does help maintenance a lot (i tinker a lot)

[MackTheKnight]

Thanks Bart!

[Bartacus]

Never be ashamed to mix tube Mack, most of us with large rigs do that all the time. I'd lose my mind trying to hard tube a Case Labs case with 5 or 6 radiators, with a pedestal compartment. Soft tube just makes the most sense, particularly in the 'dirty areas'.

[MackTheKnight]

Well this is as far as I got before covid shot #2 started kicking my butt…

Can’t imagine that little bit of gunk in my cpu block caused the temp issues I’ve been having. The thermal paste I used last time may have sat too long. It was an old tube of MX2 and was slightly chalky when I cleaned it off. Put some new MX4 on this time.

I wasn’t sure if I’d like the white fans, but I think they look good in combination with the new cable extensions.

I may cheat and use some soft tube in the basement between the pump, filter and drain valve. Should I be ashamed? Lol. Not much wiggle room down there, and I think having flexible lines will make cleaning the filter easier.

[MackTheKnight]

Some updates coming to my build. Yet another evolution.

It started with an active 3090 gpu backplate that EK sent the wrong screws for. (Finally have the right ones now and ready to complete that install.)

Recently my 5800x has been running rather toasty at 75C under load, which has gotten me concerned. So I figure it’s time for a full loop rebuild to see if the block is plugged up or something.

While I’m at it, I figured I’d put in new 420 rads, Lianli SL140 fans, aquacomputer temp/flow sensor, bitspower filter and finally some nice looking power cables!

all of this of course means… new hard tubes.