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How safe is water cooling?

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Floppyman

New Member
Joined
May 29, 2001
Hey all,

I'm all excited about water cooling, but in general how safe is it? If I clamp all hoses down with hose clamps, use a high quality pump (eheim) and check the reservoir regularly, what are the chances that something might bust and water goes all over my computer? How about in the long run, 6 months to a year plus, what's the risk something will go wrong? Thanks in Advance!
 
tell you what...
i just got my pump today...
just keep on seeing how i am doing and you can find out how long i am fine for :)

in reality, it is faily safe, many people have done it, and with great success.
pumps can last for years...
leaks and a pump going bad are the only problems that you deal with when watercooling (genraly) so always test your setup for at least 24 hours before putting into your computer
 
Outside of Rio pumps in the testing stage, the only problems I have had in the last six months were caused by me not tightening a clamp. Not only do I consider my system reliable, I have considered building a few for local packing sheds that need to operate computers in the high summer heat.
 
i would say that water cooling is about as safe as oc'ing...if you know what your doing there is nothing to worry about....naturally adding water into the mix with electronics can be a bad thing but its a risk that you have to decide to take or not...generally if the system is tight and secure it should remain that way the pressure in the lines isnt really lagre enough to blow anything apart. so as long as you make sure everything is running ok on regular inspections you should be fine....to me the biggest worry about a water cool is pump failure, i leave my box running 24/7 i can only imagine what would happen if it died...but to put your mind at ease of all the systems ive seen and looked at i havent heard of 1 failure that wasnt a human error.. ;D
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I read a couple other guides that also said watercooling is fairly safe. One more question: Would it be better to use distilled water since it doesn't conduct electricty? Thanks again.
 
I bought a gallon of distilled water at a local grocery store. I figured it was cheap insurance at 89 cents a gallon. I've read numerous places in my research on watercooling that it's not the water that conducts the electricity it's the mineral in the water. Distilled water is fairly free of these minerals (to my reading knowledge) and thus cuts down on the chance of electrical conductivity.
 
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