Let's hear all the EVIL leak stories!!!

I'll start with what just happened to me

I went to install a new Tbred A 2000+ chip to replace my old Pally 1800+ and also installed my newest, home-made, dremel cut-out, WWclone water-block. When I had everything installed, connected and ready to go, I plugged in the PSU and hit the power button just to get a 2-tone, ambulance immitation, beep-code. First thought in my head: "damn guy on the classifieds ripped me off" (turns out I'm just an arse)
After reseating the RAM, GPU, and the CPU 3 or 4 times, I went to reseat the CPU one last time before I completely gave up, and what do I notice??? The top of my Radeon 9000pro 128Mb video card is slightly damp!!! Turns out the middle hose-barb wasn't as tight as it should have been. :
As I'm writing this, my mobo is sitting infront of a box fan, drying out from it's distilled water shower, then Isopropal rubdown.

I'll update on the success of this wash-down when I put it all back together and attempt another reinstall tomorrow afternoon.

Now let's hear some other horror/success stories about those leaks.

While hooking up my water cooling on my old motherboard it sprung a leak and killed everything. Killed a few video cards from condensation and broke a few sockets with the tab hold downs. Now when I do the waterblock it must bolt to the motherboard or I won't use it.

I have had lots of leaks and spillage, but no deaths. like 3 motherboards had water on them, a few video cards. nothing died. One leak made stuff act all crazy, I thought I lost something, Just make sure to completely dry it out. If you dont, your most likely screwed.

Wipe up all the water you can, then hair dry it on cold(no heat) and then let it sit for a day or 2


Jon

1) Make sure you've got those metal belt fastener things from homedepot(forgot what they're called)
2) Make sure they're tightened all the way
3) Seal all the tubes with silicone that you can get from Orchard Supply and I believe Homedepot.

4) Make sure to leak test

never had a leak yet out of 75 watercooled systems i have built

( not counting the very first test run for oem designing the systems because i was suposed to make it leak)

make a checklist of every possible leak spot and every possible other problem and then test your system 3 times with the list (you can also put dish soap on the outside ofthe most probable spots and let it dry before doing the test because when the water hits dry dish soap it makes it much easyer to detect
)

i am just going to copy+paste what i wrote on another thread...


so i was playing some quake3 on lan... and without knowing i shut off my radiator fans by hitting the rheobus switches with my knee. Within 10 minutes my CPU temp hits 60+; and my MBProbe alarm didnt go off because i disabled it the day before (my room temp was always 100 degrees F+ and my cpu was overheating because of summer heat). My 600gph eheim pump wasnt made for such hot water temprature so one of the big fat capacitors inside the pump burst, causing battery acid to leak into the cooling system. The acid circulated fast and started eating away at the tubing and poly/plasic parts. 10 minutes after that my reservoir cracked in many places because of the hot water and acid. Water leaked down all over the system onto motherboard, cpu etc... Q3 started lagging really bad (20FPS) and thats when i looked at the computer and noticed the fans were off. I instantly unplugged whole system and ran for toilet paper to clean everything up.

Thats where i am right now pretty much i got the computer in many parts, cleaning it up and scrating off the water which has become solid from the acid. Looks like my W/C system needs to be rebuilt from scratch. The tubes are a dark orange and have big buildup in places and i have a bad feeling about how watertight the maze3 will be now. BIX radiator flow is really bad there must be some kind of buildup in there too.
I just tested the motherboard and everything seems to be working still. This is the 4th time my mobo has been water-abused and it lives on!

I just killed a motherboard, and I think my 9700Pro in a spillage. My hose popped off the pump output barb even with a hose clamp and sprayed distilled water and antifreeze all over it. I dried it and did my best to clean it but it wont POST. Then I got my Soyo KT400 board out so that I could have a system while I replaced my Abit, and I get tons and tons of artifacts and problems with my Radeon. I took it out and cleaned it as well as I could with Isopropyl Alcohol and it still is having trouble. I will try to clean it again tomorrow, It wont even run any games it is in such bad shape.

that really sucks!
how did your hose "pop off"? is your pump really that powerful? i am using a 600gph pump and ive never had that much preasure that a tube with hose clamp pops off. were you installing something or doing something inside the computer?

i hope your board lives happily in its afterlife/heaven!

Best I've done is to let the T-line overflow. Made a little puddle on the bottom of my case, but no damage or anything and I continued with the system on. The water didn't touch any internal component so it was pretty harmless.

It happened to me the other day. I had it all setup and leaked tested for like a weak. Then I drained it to put in new water and coolant. Then I put it in the case and the tubing that went from the pump to the center inlet (dtek ww) was too long. So I cut off the cable tie, removed the tubing, cut the tubing, reattached the tubing and refilled the system. I ran it for about 15 minutes, and it was fine. Then I had to readjust the pump placement and then 10 minutes later I noticed a puddle on the video card . I quickly turned off the pump and wiped up the water with a paper towel, and then took out the card and wiped off the agp slot and the gold connector on the video card. I put it back in and put a cable tie on the tubing for the center barb that I forgot to put on when I trimmed the hose .

I booted the comp and it seemed fine then the display went crazy and I turned it off. Then I tried booting with no go. I thought I either fried the card of mobo. I cleaned my card with alcohol, and took a paper towel with rubbing alcohol and cleaned my agp slot as best as I could. Then everything was fine. Whew

Update on mine:

After rinsing everything off with distilled water, then alcohol, and letting it dry out for 24 hours with fans blowing on it all, I am now sitting here typing this on my main rig!! Although I had to use my old PVC cap block, it's working just fine at 36c full load, and has been for the past 2 hours

I've never really had a leak, but i did have a tube pop off my waterblock. I had got a new radiator in and i had all of my computer components on a table so i could easily mount the block. i never used hose clamps, so when i was playing some TOD, the hose just popped off and a geiser shot into the air as my resovoir was drained onto my desk.

my mobo and everything on it was soaked. my HDD's and media drives were good sense they were on a different table.

i took everything apart, layed all my components on a sheet and took a blow dryer to everything. after i let everything dry, i put my computer back together and it all worked! wooohooo, that was a relief.

the only thing that was really hurt was my UV paintjob i did on my mobo. that was ruined

I was jst sitting there after a 5 hour long Quake session and it jst all came out....I couldn't help it!!

when i was leaktesting my setup, the fitting between the top hose barb and the pump was spraying water out (not alot, but any amount is enough to kill a part). So I drained the system and too out the pump and gave the hose barb one more turn to tighten it down... unfortunatly that was one turn to many and the pump literal fell apart in my hands, so I had to wait another week for a new pump to arrive, and I sealed that one with silicon. Fortunatly I have had no troubles since and no components die as a direct result of water cooling (although I did kill a mobo trying to install a waterblock by crushing a resistor).

I've been running my watercooling for 3 months no leaks and move my computer a lot. I guess I've been lucky so far and I hope it stays that way.

I had one of my waterblock connections leak and drip water down onto my old geforce. It didn't kill it, but games started showing crazy artifacts like when you overclock your vid mem too far. I was using distilled water with water wetter.

The reason for the leak was that the metal hose clamp cut into the tubing and created a slit.

So hose clamps aren't all good


The other time I got a leak was when my pc powered on by itself when I wasn't around and the pump was off. The waterblock got so hot that the rubber clamps melted and the araldite I'd used to attach the barbs cracked and water leaked onto my geforce. Again, the geforce survived this, but the cpu did not. It literally blew a hole in it's side.

Here's the post with pics about that;
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=185623

I was getting all the air out of my inline setup... to do this I had to tip my rig upside down (and tilt my tline so it doesnt drain). In the process (and unknow to me), my pumps barb was cracked, and leaked all kinds of water into my PSU!!!

So I tipped it on its side and installed all the rest of the components, then I put it back up on my desk to admire it...

And I turn it on... and what do I see... drip drip drip drip... landing on my video card. I instantly turned my computer off and noticed it was coming from my PSU!

WHAT!! Water coming from my PSU?! HOW! So I checked everything for signs of leakage. I moved around all my tubes... and no leakage... until I moved the tube connected to my water out barb on my pump. Water was leaking at an alarming rate...

Anyway... I let the psu dry over night and havent had a problem since. I still have a damaged barb, but tightening the hose clamp with extreme pressure solved the problem for now. Next time I do H2O maintenance, I will replace the barb. But I'm 100% leak free now.

Ditto about the block leak here.

loose connection / wet vid card

WW nasties all over.

Q-tips / tooth brush - & elbow grease = still works.

2X Now !!

I remember when my crappy danner pump leaked. Whenever I touched my case I got shocked! I unplugged it and STILL got shocked... it was coming through the network cable!

-Rav

Nico3k said:

that really sucks!
how did your hose "pop off"? is your pump really that powerful? i am using a 600gph pump and ive never had that much preasure that a tube with hose clamp pops off. were you installing something or doing something inside the computer?

i hope your board lives happily in its afterlife/heaven!

Click to expand...

This is how the hose popped off:

I was trying to do something...I foget what, but I took the pump out of the case along with the HC, and had them sitting on the sides of the case (it was laying down). I finished what I was doing and went to set the pump and HC back in their places and the hose just popped off. I was in such shock that I didnt react until more than 3/4s of the water/antifreeze mix in the loop had spilled over my board.