White Water Waterfall.........

Today I finally got around to rearanging my tubing, cutting some of it off to make the loop smaller and less congested in my case.... Finished that and put it all back together, filled it and bled it, then proceeded to play hl2, then my comp reset. so i booted it back up and got into windows, it reset again. I shut everything off and started probing around my computer with a flashlight when i found a puddle of water on my 9800 xt. i almost crapped a brick. It was leaking from a cracked poly top on my dtek white water cpu block down onto the nb and onto my card. I immediatly took everything apart and gave it an alcohal bath. i let it dry and it looks fine, no corrosion or anything. I dont know how in the world it worked with a puddle of water on top of it. The leak was slow, so obviously it had water on it for a while and then finnally hit something that made it bomb. the funny thing is, it still works fine(tried it in a freinds comp)! pretty sweet. but yeah, the point of my post >> is there any good way to seal a cracked poly top? I looked around the forum and the only answer i could find was to buy a new poly top and o ring. I would like to try and fix it myself before i buy something. How would epoxy work? or some rtv gasket maker(sealant)? i think i could just seal the crack with it and create and o ring out the the gasket maker. has anyone had any luck with this type of approach? thanks for the help!

Why would you gamble your whole rig on the block leaking again? Sounds like you skated by real lucky as it is. I would be afraid to push my luck. Just get the new top and o-ring and be done with it.

buy a alu-top or a new poly top.
distilled water is supposed to be non conductive

Senater_Cache said:

buy a alu-top or a new poly top.
distilled water is supposed to be non conductive

Click to expand...

No, it isn't.

That'd be De-ionized. IIRC, anyway.

nope
minerals in the water are whats cionductive about it.
distilled has no minerals, thus it should be non-conductive.
I may be wrong.

Once the distilled hits the metal in your block and radiator, it becomes conductive. Also most additives would probably ruin the non-conductive quality.

Merlin, I would not try to repair that top. In fact I would not get another poly top. IMO, it is totally worth not having the bling factor of a poly top to have the mental security of an aluminum top.

http://www.dtekcustoms.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=96

Happy shopping.

Distilled water conducts about 85% as well as my own tap water, through my own experiments...just about the same as my home brewed distilled water.

Personally, I'd try to hunt down that copper top that's been linked here a few times. The poly top you have already has invisible stress fractures all over it, so fixing is out of the question, and there's no way in heck I'd use aluminum at all, ever, period.
If you like taking risks, you might try US plastic's web site and get their thin glue. It should leech into the entire crack via capillary action to seal it back up well enough (maybe, no promises from me).

Just buy a new top. I lost an AIW 9800 PRO due to a water leak on my WW.

E-commerce closed for VACATION?!

That's why I didn't reccommend the Logic Cooling copper top. They are out of business.

the minerals don't conduct the electricity, its the ions, thats why de-ionized water is non conductive.

but it ionizes when it comes incontact with air...

What I wonder is, what did they charge for them when they were in business? And can I get a picture, w/ a good metric ruler in it, of bottom of the WW's top? Since ones can no longer be bought, I guess I will find a place that will make them for me. Probably something like www.emachineshop.com where I will just publish the cad file so people can just order one from them directly.

well, i didnt fix it, one of my freinds got crazy and used super glue and some epoxy and sealed the thing up tighter than a monkey on crack. it doesnt leak at all, we hooked a high pressure water line to one end of it, and plugged the other and it works great. no leaks. nothing. sooo i popped it back on and am leak testing it for a good 24 hours at least. no leaks so far, everything seems nice and tight, i will see if i can post some pics of the block asap. i just got extremely lucky with the card imo. i really dont want to ever put any type of aluminum in my system, doesnt mixing copper and aluminum create corrosion and such? I thought i read something about that. poly is nice for aestetics, but i think next time i get a wb im going to get an all copper wb.

Thermal expansion will pop that off in no time....

Xenocide said:

the minerals don't conduct the electricity, its the ions, thats why de-ionized water is non conductive.

but it ionizes when it comes incontact with air...

Click to expand...

I suggest that you look into what a mineral and what an ion are.

afaik what he said was true greenman100, please explain?

Yeah, I wouldn't trust that fix. It may last through your 24 Hr. leak test, but sooner or later it is going to come open again. Like you said, you are lucky that your card still works. Do you want to take that gamble again?

Aluminum will corrode in a copper system if you use straight water. All you need is an additive with anti-corrosion properties. A little antifreeze, Zerex, Hydrix, ect will prevent it from corroding.

sun runner... are u sure, especially with the screws holding the block together? it should hold it well. I have used that epoxy in the past and it has worked amazingly well. Im actually writing this on the computer that blew up... im very suprised it all works, there was some corrosion inside te agp port, so i cleaned it off with alchohal and q-tips, but for some random reason my ps2 mouse and ps2 keyboard dont work at all... my keyboard worked for about 4 minutes then it didnt work, it was getting power and all, but the keystrokes werent registering. how wierd is that? do you really think it will come apart again? think i can let it work for the time being and replace it over christmas? cause im a college student and have little to no time. this accident this weekend took set me back real far in my assignments. i could always put something under my block to catch the water just in case. any suggestions?

Yes, I am sure. It may not leak anytime soon but the epoxy does not have the same thermal expansion properties of the polymer top, so they will expand and contract at different ratios and eventually pop off. The compression because of the screws may keep the plug in place, but I would not gamble with a poly top. Especially since you just survived a leak. When I first get my WhiteWater it will have a poly top, but I will take it off, measure it, draw up a CAD drawing for a copper top and order it.