Why are dyes bad for your system????

GTXJackBauer · May 28, 2015

Someone should make some reservoirs made out of acrylic. One should have dye in it and be at a stand still. No loop nothing to see after a couple of months if it stains w/out heat introduced to the liquid. I guess at this point you'd want different dyes and tubing from popular companies. One with heat. One without. One with flow and no heat and one with flow and heat. There are too many variables.

Silver_Pharaoh · May 28, 2015

GTXJackBauer said:
Someone should make some reservoirs made out of acrylic. One should have dye in it and be at a stand still. No loop nothing to see after a couple of months if it stains w/out heat introduced to the liquid. I guess at this point you'd want different dyes and tubing from popular companies. One with heat. One without. One with flow and no heat and one with flow and heat. There are too many variables.

I can do flow and heat. I've got the Bitspower Acrylic res in the loop right now

t1nm4n · May 30, 2015

I have a spare res I was gonna use in another build later this year, I planned on doing a test with it, let it sit out of sunlight so it stays ambient with little temp fluctuation and then let it sit in a window that get sunlight for about 4 hours each morning to let the water heat up, I would think a colored liquid would absorb heat from sunlight better than clear water, so it might heat up pretty well, that should increase a particular dyes staining ability, might just attach a couple clear pieces of tube to se if that adds anything.

I hate being away from when I have ideas of things I want to try.

@Silver Since most dyes are found in powder mode, I'm not sure if the pump would do much, I wonder if I could just put some Royal Purple in it and see how that would work, should worry about friction or the pump not being lubricated.

dyckah · May 30, 2015

most of the computer liquid cooling dyes come in a liquid concentrate, as far as I understand, so pure dye would just be pure concentrate, expensive at $8-25 per 250ml

t1nm4n · May 30, 2015

dyckah said:
most of the computer liquid cooling dyes come in a liquid concentrate, as far as I understand, so pure dye would just be pure concentrate, expensive at $8-25 per 250ml

I knew that :sly:

still be funny to some poor shlub poor powder in the loop :screwy:

. Those concentrates are pricey, I was thinking about going with mayhems blue and red dyes to try and get a nice match without having to max out red, I think they were like 9$ each, and combined should make like 10liters or something like that. I think that should be able to clean loop once or twice a year for awhile unless you got this insanely large loop, would two UT480s' be considered insanely large or just enough overkill? :shrug:

So if theories are correct (keeping temps under control, clean components and plasti-free tubes are used) minimal staining will occur and no clogging (fingers crossed). Here's to the brave few who try to prove something, either everyone is right and dyes are the devils hand, or just a lot of people got in over there head and didn't approach foreign materials in their loops wisely enough. Been a good discussion either way, nice to see people sharing ideas without the

here

there and

everywhere.

GTXJackBauer · May 30, 2015

Additives in our fluids will break down, this should be of no surprise, the piece not discussed on those gunk/clogging threads is that the coolant breaking down contains more than just water and color dye. I am of the opinion (opinion because I have no hard data on the matter) that the additives besides the dye are the real culprit.

Coolants also come with their own set of drawbacks though, dyes and colors stain as well as eventually break down, and glycol tends to show signs of breakdown as well.

Knowing full well what the potential issues are with any fluid that contains additives, yes, I am referring to tube staining and chemical breakdown among others, your coolant choice really comes down to whatever you want to put in your loop and price you are willing to pay.

Just remember, all dyes/color will breakdown and fade over time. - SkinneeLabs

Source

Distilled Water is the King of Water Cooling

Day 1

Day 2

This is how it looked at Day 1 after changing the fluid out. While I was happy with the looks, I noticed that this bright “UV” effect was mostly gone within about 3 weeks to a month of use and I also noticed staining of the tubes particularly with the blue and red dyes. I went along with this for several months to a year and pretty much had a 2-3 month must flush and clean my blocks out routine. The Hydrx didn’t have any problem with sediment dropping out but the red and blue dyes both left little chunks of blue and red in my blocks that required regular maintenance and cleaning.

Over time, the 2 weeks of color “Bling” just wasn’t worth the maintenance for me… Looking back now I realize that most “Dyes” are actually based on a solid powder solution. If you think back to high school chemistry, you might recall the “Centrifuge” in which tubes are rotated at a high speed to make those solids precipitate and collect in the bottom of the tube. Well, I think your average water cooling loop is not all that different, there are twists and turns and areas where velocities are low that creates that environment where those solids stop moving and collect. Bottom line, UV reaction is temporary and any suspended solids will eventually stop and build up somewhere. This is responsible for many “What is this GUNK in my loop forum discussions”.

Source

SkinneeLabs and Martinsliquidlab are by the far the best places for any information. These are the experts I boost about as they used to do the testing to water cooling gear but unfortunately they both seem to have retired for some time now. They did leave up great information for us all, especially for beginners to water cooling. Fortunately for me, these guys were around when I started my research before I took the plunge for water cooling. Now that I realize it, I've been in the H20 business since 2011. For some reason I kept thinking it's been 2 years. Wow,, how time flies. Anyways, back on topic.

Silver_Pharaoh · May 30, 2015

That's a good point - most dyes are powder at one point...

Well, I suppose my loop will confirm that in a while since there's no plastizier in my loop at all. Just water, kill coil and soon, dye.

Whatever happened to Martin anyway? All I found was some blog style website...

Flat-6 · May 30, 2015

Silver_Pharaoh said:
Whatever happened to Martin anyway? All I found was some blog style website...

Martin has moved on to other pursuits...!

While he still frequents the forums he is not performing any in-depth testing any more.

He recently moved the majority of his website content over to a new domain only just recently... https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress.com/

Silver_Pharaoh · Jun 1, 2015

Got my stuff in.

I'm... Disappointed. The UV LED isn't enough to activate the UV in the dye.
So I'll be switching to a bright white LED as it looks much better

Anyways, I added 20 drops to the loop to get the colour I want:

So when I tear down this loop I'll be flipping the res upside down and install that white LED. The res looks better wit the LED shining upwards.
Also, PEX really shows off the colour of the dye nicely! :thup:

Well, guess we shall see how things go from here eh?

caddi daddi · Jun 1, 2015

these were clear at one time, no dies please.

wagex · Jun 4, 2015

ATMINSIDE said:
Good info there

The first paragraph makes me wonder why all antifreeze was originally green since dyes were introduced to designate long life product from normal product.

read a line further... " With the introduction of this totally new concept, antifreeze
manufacturers wanted to differentiate this new product from existing antifreezes.
To accomplish this, they introduced different colored dyes for their LLC /
extended life coolant products. Orange and red dyes were used first; now it
appears there may be virtually no limit to the different dye colors that may be
used. "

ATMINSIDE · Jun 4, 2015

wagex said:
read a line further... " With the introduction of this totally new concept, antifreeze
manufacturers wanted to differentiate this new product from existing antifreezes.
To accomplish this, they introduced different colored dyes for their LLC /
extended life coolant products. Orange and red dyes were used first; now it
appears there may be virtually no limit to the different dye colors that may be
used. "

Right, and that line is what makes me wonder why the original was green.
Orange/red was used to determine which was "long life" antifreeze.

t1nm4n · Jun 4, 2015

ATMINSIDE said:
Right, and that line is what makes me wonder why the original was green.
Orange/red was used to determine which was "long life" antifreeze.

Most likely so that you wouldn't try and drink it (I know, too simple to be the right answer)! I mean I would be a bit concerned if someone were to give me a nice shiny green drink.

ATMINSIDE · Jun 4, 2015

t1nm4n said:
Most likely so that you wouldn't try and drink it (I know, too simple to be the right answer)! I mean I would be a bit concerned if someone were to give me a nice shiny green drink.

Absinthe? LOL!

dyckah · Jun 9, 2015

got some of this in the mail today.
once i get a chance to tear down my loop, i shall be trying it out!

Silver_Pharaoh · Jun 13, 2015

Well the dye has already faded quite a bit.
From a nice tropical water blue to a very faint sky blue in just a few weeks... :-/

Adding in 5 more drops brings it back to the colour it was a few weeks ago.
So there's now 25 drops of dye in my loop.

ATMINSIDE · Jun 13, 2015

And you know it's going somewhere...

Silver_Pharaoh · Jun 13, 2015

ATMINSIDE said:
And you know it's going somewhere...

Outer space!

t1nm4n · Jun 14, 2015

So I thought I would do a test with another dye, Mayhems non-stain. I have a res I won't be using for anything (I screwed up and bought a res too large and waited to long to send it back) so I thought I would see how this stuff lasts over time, will be one of those long expirements.

First here the candidates:

The colors they say will lead to ruin, Blue and Red.

Here I did a lil mixing to get a nice color, not really my cup or tea, but looks nice with a white light behind it. was 10drops red and 4 drops blue.

The first is with the flash and manual focus; couldn't get it to focus any other way, darn canons.

The idea is to see how they act with the tubing and res over a period of time, there won't be any movement (seriously doubt there will be enough heating in a small enough space to create natural movement). I will place in sunlight a couple of time a month to see if that has any affect on the dye or tubing and res for that mater, I know if I leave it in direct sunlight the acrylic will deteriorate. Should be interesting to see how this plays out, I think so at least.

Edit: experiment started 6/12/2015 @ 9pm CST gave it 24 hours sitting to make sure it wasn't leaking, not like the fittings needed to be all that tight with only the pressure of water alone.

dyckah · Jun 14, 2015

oh, now thats a funky shade of purple!
if i wanted a purple, thats the purple i would want!

Why are dyes bad for your system????

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