2010 Poll: How do you fill/refill your cooling loop?

T-Line here installed at the top with a DD fillport. Easy to fill the line up and when I need to drain I just open it up and flip my case over. Pretty easy other than the flipping part, dang Corsair 800D case is heavy as shacrap.

i use a WetVac (a small one) and just suck out the water from the res, im doing it this weekend, anyone want a video on it?

this is the wetvac
http://www.homedepot.com/Tools-Hard...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

I've always used a reservoir. In my older setups I had plenty of room to stick a funnel into the res without having to unmount it, but now I have a new res and it was larger than I thought so I have unmount both the Res and the pump in order to fill it with a water bottle and funnel. I tried using a funnel with a tube connected to a barb on the res but I accidentally filled the funnel too quick which caused the water to overflow out of the tube and nicely on to my GTX 480, thank God it wasn't plugged in. Still works thankfully.

Pic to show how tight it is, practically touches the rad:

I voted another method. With my new reservoir, I decided to also add a T line at the highest point of the loop, It's mainly for filling, while I top off in the reservoir. The reservoir has top and front fill ports so I can drain b y tipping the case forward, then I open the T line to let air in for quicker draining.

||Console|| said:

T-line , It takes up much less room for me vs a rez.

Click to expand...

Not all reservoir setups take up a lot of room. This is how I rigged up a Swifty MicroRes in my TJ07 case.



That was on the setup with the P5Q Pro and Q6600 before I rebuilt that system. It's still set up the same way though and it's dead easy to bleed the system down.

muddocktor said:

Not all reservoir setups take up a lot of room. This is how I rigged up a Swifty MicroRes in my TJ07 case.

View attachment 91337

That was on the setup with the P5Q Pro and Q6600 before I rebuilt that system. It's still set up the same way though and it's dead easy to bleed the system down.

Click to expand...

lol, i thought it was being held up by the tubing for a minute there!

Heh, that would have to be some pretty rigid stuff then.

Like you noticed, it does have a bracket holding the front of the res up.

muddocktor said:

Heh, that would have to be some pretty rigid stuff then.

Like you noticed, it does have a bracket holding the front of the res up.

Click to expand...

I was really confused as to how you got the tubing to just hold that bend and not smack the res into the side of the case...it was a baffling couple second

Since my setup is a closed system with only one water block, I first empty the water from the tube going to my water block. Then I use compressed air to blow through the radiator and force the fluids out. This often also drives out any gunk, and vegetable and animal residue. These end up in the reservoir with the remaining fluid. I then use a turkey baster to remove the water. If needed, I can wipe the reservoir out to remove any final gunk.

If I've seen signs of a lot of gunk, I'll often flood the system with a garden hose.

After all fluid is out. I do more compressed air to dry. The extra pressure here provides a good opportunity to look for leakage. This usually shows up as bubbles.

My total system holds about 33.5 ounces of fluid. I use about 31 ounces of distilled water, topped off with 90% isopropyl alcohol. I've never used water wetter products or antifreeze. Never seemed to need them. After several years, my system is still performing well.

BO

Alcohol has a nasty tendacy to crack acrylic. So it's not used anymore. Times have changed a lot now. We have silver coils and purpose made cheap liquid biocide that fits our needs perfectly.

And yep, water wetter and antifreeze went out the window once the aluminum was banned to the dark side.