Asetek (H50?) Water cooling failure

[Matt²]

so I was given a formerly $1600 computer last night with 3 sata drives (1 a 1tb drive!) and 2 SLI 8800 Nvidia's..this monstrous case, and a 700 watt power supply.. motherboard is a Asus M2n-sli board and processor is a 9750 Phenom. Nice, right?

Well 4 of the capacitors were blown...replaced them this morning.. then put everything back together and got it running..at first. As I sat in the bios I watched in disbelief as the temperature (in Celsius) climbed steadily past 70 and towards 100.. then passing 100 and going to 127C before it shut off. I checked my cables and made sure everything was connected.. it is. Thing is, this is the first computer I've ever had the pleasure of poking in that's watercooled, so I don't know what to listen for regarding the noise of the watercooling...but I'm presuming this H50 is out (looked it up).. I'm now on my way to Fry's to pick up a air heatsink and cooler replacement unless they have another H50 or comparable lying around..

My questions are:

have you done water cooling / do you presently water cool
do the motors often go out
what about contaminants or corrosion in the tubes? (no the tubes are not kinked)
What is the average life of one of these
and is there a better brand than an Asetek LCLC?

 

[Shakey]

1. I used to, before you could buy prebuilt rigs like that. I used aquarium pumps, chevette heater cores(or chevelle, I can't remember it was 10 years ago), and home made blocks.
2. Not too often, but it can happen. They have flowmeters you can put into the tubing and it basically works like a fan speed monitor.
3. There are additives you can put in to the water to keep it from getting nasty in there. The water should be replaced a couple times a year, IMO.
4. Never kept one long enough to find out. It really is a crap shoot.
5. No idea if it is better, but I always thought Swiftech was a good company

If you want to know if the pump is working, just pull it out. Connect the reservoir to the inlet, and just a tube on the outlet. Put it in the tub and if water comes shooting out when you turn it on it's not the pump. The pump is really the only reason it would not cool though, unless you're out of water. Otherwise all you have to worry about is leaks.

 

[PatrThom]

Water cooling systems will always leak.
Water cooling systems are significantly more efficient than air cooling alone.
Therefore you should not use water cooling unless you are willing to inspect it regularly to make sure nothing has happened to it.
In fact, I often recommend using food-grade mineral oil instead of water in these sorts of systems. This makes the system less efficient (due to water having an awesome specific heat), but mineral oil will not short out your system if tubing/connector should spring a leak, nor does it get infested with algae.

--Patrick

 

[Shakey]

My final straw was when a brand new video card got blown by a couple drips. It's fun to play with, but unless you are OK with frying some equipment don't bother with it. From the sounds of it it's just a fun side project though.

 

[Matt²]

well I was gonna bitch about not having a bracket to put ANY new fan or cooling system onto, but I just got that solved. System is up and running now, monitoring heat