Noob question about water cooling

[JD]

Tank sponge will help stop it from sucking in air by preventing some of the turbulence. If it's missing at the moment, I'd put it in.

Not sure what set of fittings you have there, is that a quick disconnect? Can it be mounted directly to the radiator? Would help clean up that bit of tubing between the radiator and reservoir too.

 

[moocow]

I can probably put the sponge back into the tank and order an automatic vent later. Just a bit concern since I read some people have problem with the sponge breaking up and clogging their system.


I could move the quick disconnect directly to the rad but would need to drain the entire thing again. One other thing I noticed after my previous post is that it's not draining at all after attaching the other end to a draining hose to bucket that is sitting lower than the case. Is that normal even without a quick disconnect? Some kind of air pressure preventing it from draining even with gravity?

 

[Lysrin]

If you have air trapped somewhere it can cause the loop to not drain. You end up having to do the "drain dance", tipping your case in various orientations to get things to move. Just be careful not to drop anything!

I only have one custom loop experience but I did have small bubbles when running at the beginning that eventually just disappeared. Another option that I did, not sure if you are able to with that set up, is to run for a while with the top off my reservoir. That gave trapped air a place to escape. But I don't think you have a reservoir in that build...? Not sure.

 

[clshades]

OK I put the loop together but got a few noob questions.

• Bubble keep developing and I can see it at the vertical tube
  • Left the fill port open to bleed, don't know how long it will take to get rid of all bubbles
  • Noticed that if I change the speed with the fill port open, large bubble develops
  • Water in the res is already pretty filled when bubbles redevelops
• Do I need the tank sponge?
• Do I need to reduce the slack at the blue vertical tube? This is the return to the res line

View attachment 38116

You have a trap by the PSU.

 

[Izerous]

The best use of QDC's is having an extra set to be able to open the installed ones for filling and draining. With small res's like this one sometimes bleeding can be a pain as your at a higher risk of sucking up bubbles.

But with the machine off work the bubbles to a point near the QDC fittings. Break apart the QDC and take your spare and a length of tubing and install it on the spare. Work the bubble up to the QDC now and install the spare you can now fill extra fluid into the spare length of hose until the bubble is past the spare QDC and disconnect them.

Can be often easier that messing the with res fill ports especially one installed so low.

 

[JD]

If you don't want to use the sponge, then I would say run the pump at a low RPM. You have a pretty low restriction loop at the moment paired with a small reservoir. Do you see a vortex/tornado forming in the reservoir? If so, reduce the speed until you don't see that happening.

 

[moocow]

OK I added the sponge back in and I'm not seeing vortex but foaming instead. A few observations now that I flushed the system and filled it with EK premix.

• The water level in the res goes up and down as I'm bleeding
• If I turn off the power, it would overflow with the filler cap off, wondering if I overfilled
• With the power at full, the res water level look a bit low

I'm going to leave the loop powered on with fill port open to bleed more bubbles for another 6 hours and then cap and power off. I shorten the rad to QD section to avoid a trap and it seem to be doing better than my last post.

 

[Lysrin]

That shortened run looks better I "think" the foaming will work itself out over time.

 

[Izerous]

If your fluid level changes with pump speed it means you still have air in the system

 

[clshades]

Can you put an air bleed cap on the fill port? These caps act like a thermal expansion tank and work really well. Dazmode had a couple options when I used to water cool. The hotter you can run the loop the more air you'll get out of the system.

Something like this

All you need to know is the BSP thread size for the fill port.