Cleaning Water-Cooled Loop

[Ejjman1]

My system was having troubles keeping my North bridge & CPU Temps cool on idle (~75C and 55C, respectively...) and I wanted to figure out the problem. It turns out my 3 fans below my Thermochill 120.3 were all "gunked up" and would not spin fast or even at all.

So since it had been ~1.5 since installing the water loop, I tore it all down to clean up all the gunk that had been forming on the side of the tubing, as well as cleaning on the radiator. This also gave me a chance to order 3 new Razer fans that will hopefully not go bad like the 3 Yate Loons previously had.

My question is, can I stop this gunk from building up inside the system? It is a thin layer of whitish film that was lining all the tubes. I put PT Nuke in Distilled Water in my loop, and continued to change the water out every ~4 months, but is this still natural?

 

[Sean W.]

did you ever use any dye? also, a lot of people get " silver kill coil " and put it in their resevior, that also helps from build up occurring.

 

[Ejjman1]

did you ever use any dye? also, a lot of people get " silver kill coil " and put it in their resevior, that also helps from build up occurring.

No on the dye.

Hmm...I could see if I could get some locally, .999 Pure Silver Strip, except, how does it stack up against PTN? Seems like a personal preference, and maybe I didn't put enough in last time.

And how much is required? Barely any or what?

 

[Slaymate]

I've got one of these in my loop

IandH Silver KillCoils - Antimicrobial .999 Fine Silver Tubing / Reservoir Strip Products Model: IANDH-KILLCOIL [IANDH-KILLCOIL] : Performance-PCs.com, ... sleeve it and they will come

 

[Ejjman1]

Ah, after finding out my rad had around 6+ holes, I replaced it with another one,

Black Ice Xtreme III Rad, with 3 RAZER fans on it

Under 100% load, now sit around 45C and 30C idle, very very happy.

 

[Sean W.]

sounds good, nice job!