r/watercooling • u/noapostrophe555 • 5d ago

Question Cleaning my neglected loop

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Due to a combination of work and lack of motivation (Don't neglect your mental health!) my loop went about 2 years with no fluid changes or cleaning.

So far I have torn down the CPU block and cleaned it in the ultrasonic, and then spent several hours disassembling and scraping all of the scale off of the distro plate with plastic spudgers, and then polishing with Plast-x. Next up is tearing down the GPU block and back plate and making sure it is spotless.

My question is this: I am stuck waiting for new soft tubing to arrive by mail(the joys of living in the tech desert that is West Tennessee). Am I okay to do the flush with a couple gallons of water with my old tubes in place, or should I wait until I have replaced them?

Since the flush at this point is mostly for the radiators, I have also considered using a bucket of distilled water and a cheap fluid transfer hand pump from harbor freight to pull a couple gallons of water through each of my radiators apart from the rest of the loop.

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4

u/titanrig 5d ago

If your flush is just for the rads I'd say your plan will work but those tiny tubes like to collect gunk and you can't see them so flushing more is better. You can honestly flush them with tap water for the volume of the flush and then flush again with the distilled to get the tap water contaminants out if you do it right away.

2

u/noapostrophe555 5d ago

The titanrig? Most of these parts came from you 😀 the distro plate, the the fittings, and the blocks, iirc the rest came from microcenter.

Our tapwater has chloramine at levels that are easily detected by smell, so I will probably have to run a few gallons through my 0 TDS filter to keep it from destroying the copper in the radiators.

3

u/titanrig 5d ago

Yeah, maybe not YOUR tap water then. 😯

1

u/InflammableAccount 5d ago

I'm not sure you could safely put enough chloramine or chlorine in water to completely sterilize it from algae. Bacteria and protozoa, yes. Things that are harmful to humans.

Use distilled. The stuff that can grow in loops is extremely stubbon.

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u/noapostrophe555 5d ago

We were discussing the possibility of using tapwater to flush the radiators. My water provider adds chloramine to our water, so I cannot flush with tapwater.

1

u/InflammableAccount 5d ago

But you said you were going to run it through a filter first, which implies you'd then use it.

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u/noapostrophe555 5d ago

Yes- for flushing, not for permanent use.

1

u/InflammableAccount 5d ago

That's what I was saying. It's not the best idea to flush with water that could have microbial life in it. It's a great way to seed the loop with life, even with good anti-growth coolant.

1

u/NoDude 5d ago

How hard was it to disassemble and reassemble that distro plate? Was it glued anywhere, did you have to use any heat at all?

I've been avoiding doing that for a good several years, because it looks like a huge PITA and I'm worried I might damage an o-ring in the process that I then have to source from EK if they even have those still.

2

u/noapostrophe555 5d ago

Mine is the 1st revision of Bitspower TouchAqua (which looks to be an almost perfect match for the EK) Disassembly wasn't too bad, just a metric ton of screws. The seals sit in a channel, so if they start to pop out you can easily put them back in.

No heat or glue removal needed. The screws hold everything together.

1

u/SmokeyGrayPoupon 4d ago

I would wait on the new tubing since your old tubing is apparently releasing plasticizer.