OK, so you might wonder if your wb is going to need some cleaning sometime, running in an open system and getting dirty..
well. i can tell you that mine did get serious deposits of something salt like substances..
here's a longer version of my story.
i bought the drilled block i had about 2years ago and have ran it since in 'open' setup, it's a very simple aluminum block, basically 3 holes drilled into it, one hole blocked and hose-connectors on the other 2. (i paid around 5 bucks for it, not a bad deal, and there werent too many commercial blocks available back then).
around that time i also bought a fluval 2 pump from a pet store.
i used to have a bucket of water below my window on the 'patio', the bucket was open so all kind of dirt got into it, including some leafs, insects & etc. this system i ran for about 5 or 6 months.
then i moved into my own student housing flat, bought some copper tubing and put it on my window and went merrily on my way to abuse the 10mbit 5euros/month internet.
this setup i used for ~12 months, during this time i once even accidentally boiled water in the wb for (my guess, i wasn't at home 'cuz of Finnish army service) 2 days, the block and tubing were arranged so that the boiled(evaporated) water would flow back to the block once it condensed again in the tubes.. my athlon classic survived this btw.
then i read about 'nuclear tower water cooling' aka bongs, and so i decided to build my own, i tried several designs(for fun) and ran so until recently(about 1 month ago, also i switched my athlon for a newer duron because either my athlon gave up or the mobo died). i was not satisfied with my wb's performance so i took it off and replaced it with a traditional heatsink+fan.
i decided to do some testing and made a crude test bench from this 'about 80w' (i'm not sure since i can't remember which pelt i have is which, and i can't even remember it's power) peltier i had around, i attached the wb to the hot side and a k6-2 heatsink on the cold side. quite quickly the wb would get WARM(more like HOT, guess about 50-60c), the cold side got to around ~17-15 c.
it was obvious it wasn't transferring the heat to the water running through.
i took the block with me to our familys summer house since i had to do some work over there, and the tools are much better there.
when i took out the tube fittings and the one hole blocker, i found out that the walls of the holes were covered with salt-like deposits that were 1.4-2.5mm thick, NO WONDER the block didn't work too well. i did some crude cleaning with screwdriver to remove the salty-like stuff, attached the fittings and went to sleep and eventually got back to my own flat again.
another test with the same 'testbench', the cold site got now to 6.3C and the block didn't even feel warm..
the point of this story? when buying a waterblock i would make sure that it can be taken apart for easy access to clean the insides, or not run an open system. i myself am going to look that the blocks i buy in the future have a removable top.
also i would guess that the roughness of the insides of my block made it easier for the dirt to attach, so this is for those of you who wish to have it rough for turbulance too, you might want to consider whether you want it to be easy for stuff to stick to.
there was no indication of this stuff that was in the block on the tubing.
i've never used any additives on my water, i dislike having stuff like them in open system. and yes, i did have a copper with aluminum system for quite some time with no additives, no signs of any battery effect or corrosion that i could tell happened, so one shouldn't worry about that when running with tap water, distilled might be another story.
btw, i have been running the same pump for all this time and it's still running great, it didn't even break when the boiling water fiasco happened and it ran dry for that time(2days?). i also got a new block in the mail coming to me, along with a shim and a proper clamping device.
well. i can tell you that mine did get serious deposits of something salt like substances..
here's a longer version of my story.
i bought the drilled block i had about 2years ago and have ran it since in 'open' setup, it's a very simple aluminum block, basically 3 holes drilled into it, one hole blocked and hose-connectors on the other 2. (i paid around 5 bucks for it, not a bad deal, and there werent too many commercial blocks available back then).
around that time i also bought a fluval 2 pump from a pet store.
i used to have a bucket of water below my window on the 'patio', the bucket was open so all kind of dirt got into it, including some leafs, insects & etc. this system i ran for about 5 or 6 months.
then i moved into my own student housing flat, bought some copper tubing and put it on my window and went merrily on my way to abuse the 10mbit 5euros/month internet.
this setup i used for ~12 months, during this time i once even accidentally boiled water in the wb for (my guess, i wasn't at home 'cuz of Finnish army service) 2 days, the block and tubing were arranged so that the boiled(evaporated) water would flow back to the block once it condensed again in the tubes.. my athlon classic survived this btw.
then i read about 'nuclear tower water cooling' aka bongs, and so i decided to build my own, i tried several designs(for fun) and ran so until recently(about 1 month ago, also i switched my athlon for a newer duron because either my athlon gave up or the mobo died). i was not satisfied with my wb's performance so i took it off and replaced it with a traditional heatsink+fan.
i decided to do some testing and made a crude test bench from this 'about 80w' (i'm not sure since i can't remember which pelt i have is which, and i can't even remember it's power) peltier i had around, i attached the wb to the hot side and a k6-2 heatsink on the cold side. quite quickly the wb would get WARM(more like HOT, guess about 50-60c), the cold side got to around ~17-15 c.
it was obvious it wasn't transferring the heat to the water running through.
i took the block with me to our familys summer house since i had to do some work over there, and the tools are much better there.
when i took out the tube fittings and the one hole blocker, i found out that the walls of the holes were covered with salt-like deposits that were 1.4-2.5mm thick, NO WONDER the block didn't work too well. i did some crude cleaning with screwdriver to remove the salty-like stuff, attached the fittings and went to sleep and eventually got back to my own flat again.
another test with the same 'testbench', the cold site got now to 6.3C and the block didn't even feel warm..
the point of this story? when buying a waterblock i would make sure that it can be taken apart for easy access to clean the insides, or not run an open system. i myself am going to look that the blocks i buy in the future have a removable top.
also i would guess that the roughness of the insides of my block made it easier for the dirt to attach, so this is for those of you who wish to have it rough for turbulance too, you might want to consider whether you want it to be easy for stuff to stick to.
there was no indication of this stuff that was in the block on the tubing.
i've never used any additives on my water, i dislike having stuff like them in open system. and yes, i did have a copper with aluminum system for quite some time with no additives, no signs of any battery effect or corrosion that i could tell happened, so one shouldn't worry about that when running with tap water, distilled might be another story.
btw, i have been running the same pump for all this time and it's still running great, it didn't even break when the boiling water fiasco happened and it ran dry for that time(2days?). i also got a new block in the mail coming to me, along with a shim and a proper clamping device.
