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Easiest, fastest and most effective way to clean a copper CPU/GPU water block

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I will be adding few drops of HCL in my loop as suggested by someone on my next maintenance.

I realize this is a few months old, but I hope you didn't do this. Acidifying the water in your loop will help in some ways, but could have the major drawback of causing corrosion since it will be in constant contact with the metal. Shoot for a pH as close to 7 as you can. As Silver Surfer mentioned, an inline filter of some sort is a better option.

A water - water heat exchanger could be a good bet as well. Closed loop for the components, open loop for the cooling. These would do the trick.

http://koolance.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=119
 
I realize this is a few months old, but I hope you didn't do this. Acidifying the water in your loop will help in some ways, but could have the major drawback of causing corrosion since it will be in constant contact with the metal. Shoot for a pH as close to 7 as you can. As Silver Surfer mentioned, an inline filter of some sort is a better option.

A water - water heat exchanger could be a good bet as well. Closed loop for the components, open loop for the cooling. These would do the trick.

http://koolance.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=119


Thanks for posting that.
In fact I am developing an idea that may put such a piece in a good use.
We use to have water reservoirs at home in my location, it would be nice to use it for heat dissipation instead of filling our rooms with hot air and overwhelming our AC units.

WaterCoolerIdea.jpg
 
That's similar in theory to a few other ideas I've seen. Sort of a mix between geo-cooling and the large reservoir theory which says you don't need fans if the reservoir is big enough and can dissipate the energy passively. Just make sure the pump you use has good head. One of the larger AC powered pumps might be a good choice simply because you could move the bigger pump to an area where it's less likely to be heard.
 
View attachment 186254

This is not created by me but this demonstrates how a bong works.
We are actually evaporating the heated water from the loop.
Just to ad to knowledge no radiator ( no matter how pure and big amount of copper is used ) can beat a bong in price and performance. But bong required lot of maintenance a lil example is my above post :)

I did some evaporator experiments running bong style cooling basically taking everything tried at Overclock.net and incorporating some of my own ideas and it worked but IMO not good enough to replace my chilled water cooling, which was what the experiment was actually for to see if a below ambient cooling could be accomplished close to what I had but cheaper?

I had 4 main goals to confirm in my testing:
#1 Enclose and return the stack so the moist evaporated air would not exhaust out of the top of the bong tower into the room, but be recirculated and used back into the cooler. (Success)
#2 Increase the interior wall surface of the main stack for maximum accumulated cold value. (Success)
#3 Use a radiator heat exchanger to create a closed loop to keep trash out of the cooling water block. (Success)
#4 The entire test had to result in supporting the 5ghz overclock I was running at the time. (Failed)

You know what they say, "Curiosity killed the cat.", which in my case just cost me money to find out the hard way.

I absolutely wanted to keep trash out of my loop so I used a chest style cooler at the base of the tube that allowed enough water in the chest to submerge an all copper radiator as a heat exchanger which worked but not good enough.

Easiest way to show that I am not just running my mouth a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

An Evaporative Loop Experiment copy.jpg

As you can see #1 was accomplished by routing the water feed line inside the right side up the return tube the intake fan is on, the branch port above the intake fan was for adding water to the cooler. The intake fan is a high speed 120mm 1.68a server fan with a speed controller to control the airflow up the cooling tube. (The server fan was overkill but I had to know for sure at what point the airflow was sufficient to achieve to cooling effect so my thoughts were since this is a test having too much that can be controlled, is better than not enough to get the job done.)

I had been researching bong cooling for years before my experiment and from one of the builders that actually performed temperature tests, he said the coldest water temperature was actually coming down the interior wall of the tube. Which totally made sense as the water falling through the air was not in contact with the air as long as the water coming down the interior tube wall. So I had an idea to increase the interior wall surface by filling the open interior with numerous smaller pipes this is located in the water spray tube below the spray head.

#2 Below

Increasing Cooling Wall Area.jpg

And #3 was the copper radiator used as a heat exchanger.

Copper 240 Rad used as a heat exchanger.jpg

To clarify the failure which by the way may not be a failure to some!

My experimental tests were to replace the already functioning chilled water cooling I am running which has my coolant temperature down to 10c, 20 minutes after pushing the power button from coolant temperature that has risen to ambient.

The bong chiller using a radiator heat exchanger took way too long to drop the water temperature in the cooler with the added heat from the radiator the equilibrium point was many hours not minutes, so to me the end goal of the experiment was a failure.

But the information gained was not a failure at all, to me!
 
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So you are using evaporation cooling, and getting way too much trash in the system, you need a filter and if you are using one I isn't working well for you at all.

The inside of your water block should never look that bad I was using a Coleman Cooler with distilled water and ice before the chilled water cooling I am running now and I used the filter below.

Even the water jugs I was freezing were distilled water in case the jug leaked, which they eventually would do after being frozen and refrozen over and over.

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Gasket-9706-Universal-Clearview/dp/B00068OR8M

You can snag this filter from any auto parts store and the replacement mesh filters, this type of mesh filter is much better than the paper type as it doesn't break down over time.

Better to trap your problems in a filter than in your water block.

You can check out this link below to see how I used that filter.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1244073/thermal-mass-below-ambient-cooling-solution#post_16991800

I have a friend that was running a similar setup and he was also using a gas fuel filter but it was the paper type of filter and it failed and started deteriorating, for some reason the paper filter was strong enough for gasoline but not the water he was using with zero critter protection. (If memory serves correctly he was using tap water not distilled water.)

I no longer have a need for a filter with the chilled water cooling I am running now as it is completely closed to outside air and dust.

Oh, for cleaning inside a copper water block, you cannot beat Ketchup, the trick is leave it on for a while like at least 15 minutes before rinsing it off and inspecting to see if you need to do it again if you still have a problem apply it fresh for another 15 minutes, once the water block looks acceptable use a dish washing soap and clean off the ketchup.

It is safe and cleans the copper as ketchup has an acid base and works great, tastes good on Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers too!

NO doubt about ketchup.

We can even use lemon or vinegar or vinegar+salt or ketchup or orange. All these can do the job but being less acidic they take more time. So to reduce the time one can use diluted acids or one can even use pure acid too for SSD kinda of speed work i guess, but just like u mentioned safety, the stronger the acid the more risky it gets.
 
NO doubt about ketchup.

We can even use lemon or vinegar or vinegar+salt or ketchup or orange. All these can do the job but being less acidic they take more time. So to reduce the time one can use diluted acids or one can even use pure acid too for SSD kinda of speed work i guess, but just like u mentioned safety, the stronger the acid the more risky it gets.

Too strong of an acid may require a neutralizer like baking soda.
 
Well currently i am giving rest to my bong. The issue got actually worse over time and its all about the supply water we get. The white precipitate or whatever that thing is ( minerals etc etc ) increased to a whole new level. As far as filters are concerned, i actually added a steel gauze ( very very small holes ) to my system. Now within a 2-3 days that filter/gauze was all gunked up. This bong eventually became a head ache instead of fun and performance. And as i moved to socket 1155 i had no stock cooler at hands. Also the stock cooler performance on 4 cores ( 8 threads ) is awful. so i did this. At max load is noisy as hell but m not touching even 65s during 100% normal load. (100% normal loads mean 100% utilization without priming or intel burn tests ) Mostly when m compressing and compiling videos i reach 100% load.


But thats not it. I am working on my water cooling project as well but the progress is very very slow as i am working on my CNC now a days. Though no more bongs m making my own rad now. The other reason for not using bong is my room is really running out of space due to so many pending projects plus bong isnt that good looking too. But i know one thing for sure no rad can beat bong in performance and price
 
The other reason for not using bong is my room is really running out of space due to so many pending projects plus bong isnt that good looking too. But i know one thing for sure no rad can beat bong in performance and price

They do take up quite a bit of room!

Cooling performance wise, Bong vs Radiator with no bong cooler reservoir, I'll give you that one!

But you do have to take into account the time it takes to reach a point of coolant equilibrium which from ambient room temperature, a properly fanned radiator will reach first.

That time period is also an overclock limiter because what may be 24/7 stable with the below ambient temperature the bong can produce, will not be stable at the ambient temperature, unless you power the bong system independently and allow it time to drop the temperature.

Unless of course as some have admitted to at Overclock.net you add ice to the coolant to jump start the temperature drop results, (which they conveniently left out of their temperature performance bragging until pinned down and asked about it.), and in my experiment I did not do that.

But in my experiment I had a thermal mass of at least 5 gallons of water in the base cooler the bong tower was mounted on.

At least taking into consideration to problems you faced opening this thread, a radiator loop running distilled water won't have the gunk problems you've experienced unless of course you run tap water in the loop.
 
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They do take up quite a bit of room!

Cooling performance wise, Bong vs Radiator with no bong cooler reservoir, I'll give you that one!

But you do have to take into account the time it takes to reach a point of coolant equilibrium which from ambient room temperature, a properly fanned radiator will reach first.

That time period is also an overclock limiter because what may be 24/7 stable with the below ambient temperature the bong can produce, will not be stable at the ambient temperature, unless you power the bong system independently and allow it time to drop the temperature.

Unless of course as some have admitted to at Overclock.net you add ice to the coolant to jump start the temperature drop results, (which they conveniently left out of their temperature performance bragging until pinned down and asked about it.), and in my experiment I did not do that.

But in my experiment I had a thermal mass of at least 5 gallons of water in the base cooler the bong tower was mounted on.

At least taking into consideration to problems you faced opening this thread, a radiator loop running distilled water won't have the gunk problems you've experienced unless of course you run tap water in the loop.

Yup the gunk is the major problem that is making me switch to closed loop. Though as i do ghetto mods m not sure where my new rad will stand in performance.
 
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