Anyone had disaster or near disaster accident with watercooling?

[windwind]

I wanna do a poll but couldn't figure out how, so just ask the question here.

I had mine very early on. I was stupid enough to NOT using any hose clamp with those big 1/2" ID clearflex tubes. The first warning was corrupted screen and I immediately powered it off. I noticed my maze4gpu had a little leak and my 9700 was wetted. Took the block off from 9700 to have a better look, but before I could do anything suddenly the tube between cpu waterblock and maze4gpu SLIPPED away from the barb! Even worse that happened at the cpu block end, locating high and deep inside my case. You know what happened next, water rushed out from 2 openings! Before I could even recover from the shock to stop them with fingers all's gone! Seeing the whole rig got wet in seconds was the worst nightmare about computer in my whole life. Nothing had been spared, up from northbridge fans to hdds at the bottom, everywhere! The only thing save me from total disaster was the power been cut.

Hard lesson learnt, hose clamp is important. Always pull the plug before doing anything with tubes. And yes, water wetter really stinks, I can still smell it at this second.

 

[cack01]

There was a thread exactly like this a long time ago.

Anyways, I've had a few. Had a small leak take out the fan controller on my ti4200. I have also had my pump split in half during a lan party. At the time the pump was mounted at the top of my case below the PSU. Despite everything getting wet, there was not one death.

 

[AMDninjaboy]

leaks

I had my first leak last week. Was playin away when screen started goin funny, blue lines, red lines, blue squares all sorts of neat stuff and I was like what is goin on. So I just looked around the side of the puter to see green water drippin on my vid card and HDD so I immediately go for the power bar switch. Turns out poly top on WW block cracked on the end drippin on the vid card and suckin in enough air to foam up my water/water wetter enough that it overflowed my t line. I lucked out though, took put HD and TI4200Turbo, dried everything and washed vid card in alcohol. Put back together next day and everything is fine.

Ive been very lucky, been w/coolin for about 1.5 yrs and this is the first time ive had a leak.

Shane.

 

[skahtul]

Never killed anything yet. One time however I was messing around with my system. When I put it back on my desk I forgot to plug in my pumps. They don't have any switches, they just plug into the power strip. OOPS! Luckly I have MBM5 and noticed that the temps were slowly going up. It took a while and I was using the system for several minutes before I noticed.

 

[RockerII]

It was the third day for me when I had my first accident. I didn't have my gpu block on yet and so I left the tubing from the wye for the WW block a little long and just sitting on the bottom of the case. Anyways, I was watching a movie and I noticed that the tubing slipped out of the case. Didn't think about it at the time but about 10 seconds later, the computer shut off and the speakers started crackling like crazy. I quick shut off the power supply and looked for the problem. Didn't see it right away so I turned the ps on again and the speakers went cracklin' awasy again. After shutting it off a second time, i noticed water on the sound and the vid card (a brand new 9800 that was only 2 days old!).

After I looked closer at the situation, I noticed that the water was coming from the top barb of the WW block. When the excess tubing pulled the wye back a bit after it fell out of the case, the top tube to the top barb started leaking; didn't bother to put a clamp on because it didn't leak before and was too hard to put one on. BIG mistake.

After I got things cleaned up, I put my 7500 back in and turned the thing on again. This time, it booted and I went into the BIOS to check things. Moments later the computer shut off, and the ps started squealing. Then all of a sudden a HUGE arc of light and a loud bang came out of the ps. Then, the smoke and the oh sh*t smell. That was it for that enermax 350 whisper.

Turns out that the 9800 was fine, although I can't play dvd's with hardware decoding. Don't know if I could before anyways.

It was a crappy but profound lesson. And did it change my ways, maybe somehow but I still don't have a clamp on that barb one month later.

 

[sixshot666]

Never killed anything yet. One time however I was messing around with my system. When I put it back on my desk I forgot to plug in my pumps. They don't have any switches, they just plug into the power strip. OOPS! Luckly I have MBM5 and noticed that the temps were slowly going up. It took a while and I was using the system for several minutes before I noticed.

i went ghetto and put a 2nd surge protector on my main surge
for my pump and pc.no problems yet knock on wood(knock on my head).
i check everyday for leaks.

 

[kanuuker]

I had only been wc'ing for about 2 weeks when we had this nasty storm where everything flooded and the power was out. I was staying at my girlfriend's (now my wife) house that night. I go home the next day to check my rig and the graphics are all screwed up and it kept shutting down. My dumb *** kept turning the machine on so I could figure out what happened. Well, after closer inspection, it turns out that it wasn't the storm at all, I sprung a leak in the seal between the tube and the barb on the water block. I think I would have been alright if I hadn't kept turning the stupid thing back on. I also think I would have caught the problem sooner if I didn't think the storm was the cause. I ended up frying an ATI 9500 and an Athlon 1600. Oh well, it was a good excuse to upgrade my processor. Live and learn.

 

[deeppow]

One death, unfortunately it was the best NF7 I've had and OCed to 221 with no mods. The problem was me. The death resulted from a bad connection of one of the hoses to my water block when I didn't get the hose down secure and it leaked onto the mobo while powered. Hate it when I do dumb things.

 

[kevin_bouchard]

about a month ago, it was my 18 birthday, went to the bar, had a couple drinks, came home about 3am and plugged in my pump and turned on my pc. To my amazement there was a waterfall over my motherboard and vid card. Turns out I left my keys in the pc(used key swith to power pc) and someone in the house wanted to use my pc but didnt know how to turn it on. So they ended up figuring out that you had to turn the key to power up, but didnt know about turning on the pump. So the cpu block cracked and gave the nice waterfall effect. Surprised that nothing was broken, used tap water(that is exceptionally hard). I figure it was alot of luck. Thats the last time I'm leaving my keys there!

And now I'm building a new watercooling system, custom block and all. And I'm not using glue, hopefully this and a relay will prevent this from happening again.

Almost had an excuse to upgrade.


Kevin

 

[Lammy]

DIY copper cap WB. Submersible pump in the res (big bucket of ice and water) yea... condensation. screen flickered as water flowed over the back of the gpu of my brand new geforce 4 440mx card.
The whole system got a little wet, it took awhile to dry all parts.
Nothing died.

 

[IdreamofDSl]

Yes, damn Via 1300 started leaking like a gas tank on a Pinto and filled the botton of my case with water. Luckily it did not touch anything but the case.

 

[Shadow_9]

I lost a WD hardrive and floppy drive when my Swiftech kit sprung a leak at the pump...

 

[MRip]

I dropped my huge plastic tub res on top of my comp. Luckily it splashed in such a way so that the only stuff that got wet were my cd and floppy drives. The cd drives were fine, but the floppy never worked again. Next day I bought a small sealed resevoir. I was so lucky that the only thing to get ruined was the cheapest part of my system.

 

[Xymurgy]

I haven't had any disasters yet, but every time I do anything to the inside of my rig I give my motherboard a nice bath.

 

[MuEagle05]

Haven't had any leaks yet. I turned my rig on last night though to copy files to another HDD i popped in quick since i was reinstalling XP. Everything is transferring ok, then all of a sudden the power cuts out. I'm confused, so i waited like thirty seconds, pushed the power button again. Half-way booted up before the power cut again. I was like, wtf is going on? Then i turned my head and my jaw dropped. I forgot to plug the pump in. Man was i ****ed at myself. Luckily my mobo shuts off at 85C, so all is still well. I have a relay being shipped as i write this.

 

[-Incantation-]

I drilled through a round IDE cable when I was installing my T Line LOL

 

[will_maltby]

I've had 2 incidents in the past, one fatal, the other just a near miss.

Near miss:

Tightened hose clamps on my waterblock too tightly and they cut into the tubing causing a leak. The water dripped down onto my Geforce2 and the problem only came to my attention when I started noticing corrupt graphics on my desktop and in games.

I was using de-ionised water and water wetter and the card was fine and worked perfectly having dried it off.


Fatal:

I forgot I had set my computer to turn on at a set time (bios lets you set time but only per month so it'll come on at that time every month).

Well, the PC powered on while I wasn't there, but the pump wasn't plugged in. The CPU got literally fried and popped. The heat melted my thermal probe and the rubber holder on my waterblock clamp. The alraldite used to glue the barbs on had baked and cracked causing water to yet again leak onto my Geforce2. The Geforce2 lived, the athlon did not.

Here's the damage;

Lesson learned: Don't use PC as a funky alarm clock.

 

[windwind]

I run the pump and rad fan 24x7. They are powered by AC, don't use a lot of electricity, and probably last longer without power up/down from time to time.

 

[Hawker-rider]

the first decision I made, even before going water, was that IF I did it, it had to have a relay, and the decision to put the pumps and everything in a box underneath my case was a pretty good one too, i've had a few little leaks at the radiator, but that's in a plastic box, on the bottom of the system, so didn't wet anything electronic, heck, it didn't even wet the carpet.

knock on wood

 

[Archangel8]

Few small leaks here and there, and a dribble out of the cpu block after making some changes, but with a lot o precautionary measures and last minutes checks before powering up I avoided disaster. I have lost 1 Hard drive and a nexus tempmonitor fan controller after I sleeved my psu, and didn't hook them up correctly, Also lost an AMD palimino 2200 this past summer to a defective Volcano 7+.


I now Konformal my boards and cards just to be on the ssfe side