Stainless steel in the loop?

GTXJackBauer said:

Been running 2 silver kill coils in my loop for the longest time. Been running them for 5 years now but the only issues I might have had were the koolance QDCs going to hell fairly quick or the oxidization getting a bit nasty on the Swiftech CPU blocks. have gone through 3 CPU blocks, not because of oxidization but for less restrictions and looks.

What would you guys recommend for a biocide and would this biocide need to be maintained over a certain time?

All these anti-silver movement is making me to start thinking this through. Down the road I might be grabbing a 1080 Ti, if it should show it's face with most likely EK being the WB, I wouldn't be able to use these silver's in the loop.

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If you are running an all copper loop then Copper Sulfate and 100% pure steam distilled water is all I have used for years, with no parts loss due to the solution, and the only time I added more is if I added a new component and drained the loop, and after disassembling the water blocks and inspecting inside they were in excellent condition.

I see from your builds you like the EVGA Hydro Copper series and I would like to share my experience with mu EVGA GTX Titan Hydro Copper graphics card.

You would think after investing that much money that EVGA would have their very best employees mounting the water blocks to the cards, but obviously a monkey assembled mine.

The Watercool corporation suggested using citric acid with the MO-RA3 radiator, I had never heard of using citric acid before, but I figure Watercool knew what was best for their radiators so I got some citric acid and started running it and all seemed OK at first, until I dropped a Silver Kill Coil in the reservoir, the next morning the clear coolant was an ugly looking blue/green the injection nozzle inside the Bitspower reservoir looked like it had been copper plated as also did the Silver Coil. (Still have that Silver Coil by the way)

Obviously I freaked out, shut everything down and drained the loop, my greatest concern was the Hydro Copper water block because it is Chrome Plated inside, so I pulled the graphics card and removed the water block and what I saw was so shocking for the longest time I just looked with my mouth wide open, the GPU die was only 75% covered with thermal compound 25% of a solid corner had nothing on it at all.

Two of the thermal pads on the memory chips were only partially covered, there was a good reason for that but I did not know it yet, the reason was when the card was manufactured the memory chips were not on a level plane, if you held the card up and sighted down it the memory chips instead of looking flat, looked like a roller coaster.

Of course at that point I did not realize the memory chips were not level until I ordered a full coverage Heatkiller water block for the card and could not mount it on the card without warping the card so bad it would not make contact in the PCI-E slot, after pulling the Heatkiller block back off and thoroughly inspected the graphics card actual board itself, then I discovered the problem with the memory chips not being level.

Not only did it cause the card to warp it also would not allow full coverage of TIM on the GPU die unless an excessive amount was used.

Then the monetary reality slapped me in the face, I had already spent over $1,300 on the GTX Titan Hydro Copper another $100 plus on the Heatkiller water block, so I was not going to spend anymore than absolutely necessary to resolve these issues!

I had 2 shelved Alphacool CPU water blocks brand new in the packages, so I modified one of the CPU water blocks to mount on the GPU die, bought copper ram sinks and used thermal adhesive to permanently mount them to the GTC Titan and the picture below is My EVGA GTX Titan Hydro Copper today.



Personally, I will never ever buy another Hydro Copper, I will buy the air cooled card and mount the water block of my choice!

I adopted a personal policy of never overclocking my graphics card until I inspected under the hood, but since it was at the time the absolute Top of the line graphics card especially the Hydro Copper line, I thought it would be OK to overclock it, but it was seriously limited, but now it rocks!

Broke my own overclocking rule and was extremely lucky I did not hurt the card.

That's true of all GPU manufacturers. First thing I do is pull off the HSF and replace the TIM. Sometimes they get it right, but I'm always glad I go through this step. Insurance.

EVGA has some of the best CS in the market place. If it was within it's warranty, I would have contacted them and complained on the issue at hand. Its nice to see a work around but you should get what you pay for in that price range nonetheless.

I also re-Tim'd both GPUs, made sure everything looked right and applied some MX-4 which reduced a few degrees on both GPUs.

I like their Classified series. Do I bench as I should, nope but like having the bells and whistles if the time arises to do so. For $30 more, you get a beefier PCB and more phases. It was the obvious choice and haven't looked back. I would keep them a bit longer if it weren't for the limited Vram.

As far as the Kill coils, I might look into something else for a biocide but in the mean time, I'm going to leave it as is. My fittings look good as new since day one and most of the other parts. Can't see what the rads look like internally but my flow is coming along just fine. Just recently dusted off my filters as I saw my temps rise a bit. Not enough airflow was being fed to the rads but that was fixed within a few minutes. Comes in handy having a small portable powerful vacuum at hand.

I been following this. Stainless is shiny ohh. There are SOOOO MANY OPTIONS for a standard GPU-GPU SLI tubing available. Some are clear, some colored to match tubing, some are modular. Way plenty choices. Pages and pages of choices. Performance PC's.

If you take a piece of stainless steel, what is the OD of the tubing? The OD of the tubing has to match to the fittings you buy that will have an o-ring. I tried to find the simple shiny SLI fitting I used long ago on line. Think it was Danger Den back then, he quit when his wife died from cancer. Sorry.

If you want these old shiny SLI fittings as real as a cookie and milk, as shiny as the hassle of making your own, just message me. As long as you ain't overseas I'll cover the postage. It comes with 3 tube lengths to cover differences in mobo spacing.

I do have some unobtainium modules for fittings, but they are not cheap.

Itachiii said:

If it's 99% stainless steel then there is no corrosion threat. Even if you mix it with other metals, steel ions don't mix with water in order to react with copper. It's safe... but it's pricey if u want to buy it and it's not worth the trouble for me.

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stainless steel is not a metal you mine. Therefore there is not a thing like 99% S/S. Its man made from iron, chrome, carbon, etc. etc... lots of grades. You want a least a grade that is used in food or medical industry to get a good qualty.
S/S CAN RUST... (dont argu, just go tke a cheap grade stainless an throw it in the sea, an check for yourself.)
The amount of chome (more) in the mix takes it to a grade that "can't" rust. Carbon % control hardness / wellability, etc....
Google "Stainless Steel Grades" and you will get articles explaining the grades. From the explanation it will be clear what grdes should be suiteable or not.