I'm an idiot. How to kill your R6E monoblock...

[Marko911]

If you have ever used Mayhem Blitz it actually comes with those PH papers. Is an enclosed loop of a PC as PH dependent than an aquarium? No. Can any closed loop environment using water, even distilled water, grow bacteria? Yes. Heat, microbes from the tubing that was exposed to the air prior to installation, natural evaporation through the plastic/acrylic (there is some and it has to be replaced with something like air), are all things that can start growth. Lets also not forget, that even if you flush your rads 100%, dried them and blitzed them, there is still potential crap in there. As they would say in Jurassic Park, life finds a way, so that is why PC builders have been using things like silver kill coils from the beginning of watercooling, because no matter how hard they tried, bacteria would get in, somehow, someway and they had to stop it.

That's why you need to use coolant concentrate's or premixed coolants,they have inside substance's that inhibit bacteria and fungus growth and they are chemically inert towards all kind of metals.Pure silver and some silver compounds do not react with pure water.*no antibacterial protection,because their is no free Ag ions*

[Brighttail]

That's why you need to use coolant concentrate's or premixed coolants,they have inside substance's that inhibit bacteria and fungus growth and they are chemically inert towards all kind of metals.Pure silver and some silver compounds do not react with pure water.*no antibacterial protection,because their is no free Ag ions*

My original post was that the cleanest, most simple loop has distilled water and a silver kill coil. No dyes, no concentrates, no additives, just pure, distilled water. I still think it is the 'best'. That being said I use Mayhem's pastel.

[Marko911]

My original post was that the cleanest, most simple loop has distilled water and a silver kill coil. No dyes, no concentrates, no additives, just pure, distilled water. I still think it is the 'best'. That being said I use Mayhem's pastel.

Well,this is high school level chemistry :P Better to use Mayhems Pastel than distilled water and silver coil You did a good job for using coolant

[Abaidor]

Well too much worrying about "bacteria" growing in our loops...I am not that concerned as I never had this problem.


My 10 years old loop (yes 10) has been running unmaintained since I built it - that is I have only added water (top-up) once every 6 months.

It still has a danger den chipset waterblock attachet to it that is doing nothing but I was too bored to remove when I changed motherboard so it's just there hanging on its own. It has a plexi to so I just peaked and to may surprise it is relatively clear. Yes the primochill tubes (red) have some plasticizer of course but other than that no algae. The loop has some PT Nuke in it + WFI (water for injection that I get for as cheap as distilled - could not find distilled here).


Sometime in the future I will take it apart and decomission this PC so I will have the chance to see the fins of the Swiftech Apogee GTZ block it uses. We are talking about watercooling relics here...hahahahaha... (1X 360 + 1X 240 Thermochill Radiators).

[Abaidor]

And for the sake of completeness in this discussion I asked the manufacturer of my rad which is "Watercool" that makes Heatkiller blocks.

My rad is a MO-RA 420 Pro - Stainless Steel Edition.

I asked about cleaning and here is the answer :

Our Radiators (and especially the MO-RAs) are praised for being very clean in all the reviews. Since we don't use any internal soldering, there is almost no soldering flux residue. We'd suggest flushing with hot tap water, followed by a flush with regular distilled water. That should, in our opinion, be more than enough to clean that rad.

So this settles it for me and won't have to do anything special.