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Water Turned Gold?

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mikecentola

New Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2015
Location
Rochester, NY
Hey everyone! New here, but not new to overclocking and water-cooling. Just been out of the "game" for quite some time. Just built a PC and used the new Thermaltake DIY kit. Everything worked great. I'm stable at 4.6GHz, 4GHz Uncore, and 2666MHz DDR4 on an X99-Pro mobo. Anyways, I just came home from work today and saw that the red Thermaltake coolant is now like gold colored. The only thing I can think of is that the couple drops of PT-Nuke (copper sulfate) that I added reacted with the fittings or the coolant. I'm assuming I should flush it out and replace with coolant again? What's the best way to flush it? Just run it with distilled water through it and keep draining it?

Thanks in advance!

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copper sulfate changed the ph of the coolant, ie made it more acidic. many coolants especially those derived from car coolants, have ph indicators that turn the color of the fluid yellow/green if the ph becomes slighlty acidic, vs the more favorable slight basic ph to avoid corrosion.

And never add copper sulphate or any other additive to a coolant with glycol/inhibitors. The glycol/inhibitors are a potent biocide, even more so than copper sulphate, so all you do is acidify the solution and possibly cause a precipitate reaction. The color change is harmless, and likely ph is 6ish, so not a problem, but sludging your waterblock is more a concern from a possible precipitation reaction. Though if you need inhibitors, by acidifying the solution, you made them less effective.
 
copper sulfate changed the ph of the coolant, ie made it more acidic. many coolants especially those derived from car coolants, have ph indicators that turn the color of the fluid yellow/green if the ph becomes slighlty acidic, vs the more favorable slight basic ph to avoid corrosion.

And never add copper sulphate or any other additive to a coolant with glycol/inhibitors. The glycol/inhibitors are a potent biocide, even more so than copper sulphate, so all you do is acidify the solution and possibly cause a precipitate reaction. The color change is harmless, and likely ph is 6ish, so not a problem, but sludging your waterblock is more a concern from a possible precipitation reaction. Though if you need inhibitors, by acidifying the solution, you made them less effective.

Ah that's what I figured. I guess I'll either order another 1L of the thermaltake fluid and flush it with some distilled water. thanks for the help.
 
Yeah, colored fluid will cause staining of components anyway.
 
I agree withe members as well. Just grab some distilled water. Make sure the thermal take components you're using, don't have any aluminum that comes in contact with the loop.
 
I ended up flushing it with almost a gallon of distilled and then filled it. Added two drops of PT nuke. Seems to be running well and all air is most likely out and I shook the crap out of it and moved it all around.

Running about 36c idle and ~60ish load. Might swap back over to the thermaltake fluid without adding anything to it.

Thoughts on those temps?
 
Temps sound fine.

Distilled will give better temps than the other fluid.
 
Stick with distilled water and a coil or dead water. If needed, add a biocide for corrosion, in case that thermaltake has aluminum in it. They've been known in the past of working with aluminum, hence my sheer warning.
 
I would assume the rad is annodized at least.

yep, annodized aluminum. I ran a gpu block with annodized aluminum with just distilled and biocide that was the old 8800ultra back in ?2006, worked well for about 6 months, but did get some mild corrosion, the aluminum had visible pits...ended up getting rid of everything because couldnt inspect inside of rad, and wanted new stuff anyways :D I bought it, not even realizing it was anodized aluminum...it was preassembled waterblock/8800 ultra, someone asked me when I posted a pic of my loop.

You could use feser base corrosion blocker (concentrate), I use that when running EK nickel plated blocks... just add 1 small bottle to to 2 liters of distilled water, ends up 98% distilled water, 2% anticorrosion/biocide. Cooling is same as distilled. But really will depend on how well the anodizing was done, but it wont hold up forever. Dont use copper sulphate with feser base though.

I use distilled and biocide when all copper, but use 2% concentrated inhibitors for biocide when using nickel plating, so it lasts longer.
 
yep, annodized aluminum. I ran a gpu block with annodized aluminum with just distilled and biocide that was the old 8800ultra back in ?2006, worked well for about 6 months, but did get some mild corrosion, the aluminum had visible pits...ended up getting rid of everything because couldnt inspect inside of rad, and wanted new stuff anyways :D I bought it, not even realizing it was anodized aluminum...it was preassembled waterblock/8800 ultra, someone asked me when I posted a pic of my loop.

You could use feser base corrosion blocker (concentrate), I use that when running EK nickel plated blocks... just add 1 small bottle to to 2 liters of distilled water, ends up 98% distilled water, 2% anticorrosion/biocide. Cooling is same as distilled. But really will depend on how well the anodizing was done, but it wont hold up forever. Dont use copper sulphate with feser base though.

I use distilled and biocide when all copper, but use 2% concentrated inhibitors for biocide when using nickel plating, so it lasts longer.

Cool man. Thanks for the info. I'll keep it as is for now, and just keep an eye on it. Can always expand or change things later on. For now I need to get to work on making some of the CAD tutorials LOL
 
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