Question Advice on good custom loops to teach my daughter how to ?

ConfusedCounsel

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Jun 10, 2021
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My daughter wants to build a custom water cooling loop. (Not sure she needs it with a only an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3070 TI.) I am trying to be a supportive father. Any advice on good intro components. Her goal is to hide the reservoir in HHD enclosure, next to her PSU. With M.2, it is not like they are being used for hard drives.

On a side note, I am more comfortable sweating copper pipes than bending acrylic.
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Update your post to include full system specs and OS information?

PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition?

Drives: make, model, capacity, how full?

This:

"(Not sure she needs it with a only an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 3070 TI.)"

All in favor of being supportive.

Start by helping her to determine if a custom water cooling loop is actually needed. Research accordingly.

Pros, cons, trade-offs, what is to be gained or lost....

As for "hiding" - that would be the least of my requirements. And sooner or later "hiding" will likely get in the way of future expansions or (playing devil's advocate) likely cause more issues if there is a leak or other problem.

Never let form get in the way of function.
 

ConfusedCounsel

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PSU is a new Asus Strix 850G white edition (859 watts, 80 plus gold).

Drives are 2 M.2 drives (PCIE 3.0). Both are XPG,

As for form over function, I agree but giving her pink case with tacky RGB in kindergarten got her interested in computers. She learned programing, joined the robotic team, and over clocked her Old FX 8370 to 4.75 GHz on a budget all this because ofa little girl friendly pink case. So, sometimes form is more important than function.

BTW, last year she begged me to replace the pink case with a white cooler master TD500 mesh. She was too old for pink.
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
There are a lot of good videos on YouTube which do cover quite a bit of what you are looking for. I also have a watercooling sticky I wrote several years ago (which likely does need some updates) . I've linked it below.

Also, Jayztwocents is pretty much word for word how I coach/teach/do watercooling work myself (about 20 years or so).

You don't have to use all the same brand of anything, you can mix and match whatever components you really want...just remember that mixing aluminum with copper, brass, bronze and nickel is usually bad and often results in galvanic corrosion unless you have some really good inhibitors.

 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
EK does, yes, so does Corsair and Alphacool...among a few others like XSPC.

Swiftech used to, but does not as much anymore.

All of those names are very good for kits or individual components, though.

Just thinking off the top of my head of really good brands to look at:

EK
Swiftech
Corsair (Hydro X)
Alphacool
Aquacomputer
Magicool
Koolance (copper/brass only)
Bitspower
Phobya
XSPC
Bykski (relatively newer)
Barrow (relatively newer)
Watercool
HW Labs / Black Ice
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
To clarify - you can mix copper, brass, nickel, etc just fine.

Aluminum is the one which starts causing the real issue when it is used with anything except, well, aluminum. Some EK kits had all aluminum components but not sure if they discontinued these. I tested one for Tom's Hardware a couple years ago....its good stuff, just can't mix with copper or nickel which is what most other components use.
 

ConfusedCounsel

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There are a lot of good videos on YouTube which do cover quite a bit of what you are looking for. I also have a watercooling sticky I wrote several years ago (which likely does need some updates) . I've linked it below.

Also, Jayztwocents is pretty much word for word how I coach/teach/do watercooling work myself (about 20 years or so).

You don't have to use all the same brand of anything, you can mix and match whatever components you really want...just remember that mixing aluminum with copper, brass, bronze and nickel is usually bad and often results in galvanic corrosion unless you have some really good inhibitors.

Thanks for the Advice. Ironically, I sent my daughter the same video to watch.

As for the Galvanic Reaction, I used to represent some high technologies companies before the USPTO. Galvanic reactions are something I would have to explain to patent Examiners with Ph.D's in chemistry. I am trying to teach my daughter about them using good analogies.

If you ever want to do an article on patenting technology, apps, or just how patents work in the tech space, feel free to PM. My way of returning the favor.
 

ConfusedCounsel

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Jun 10, 2021
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To clarify - you can mix copper, brass, nickel, etc just fine.

Aluminum is the one which starts causing the real issue when it is used with anything except, well, aluminum. Some EK kits had all aluminum components but not sure if they discontinued these. I tested one for Tom's Hardware a couple years ago....its good stuff, just can't mix with copper or nickel which is what most other components use.

The reason Aluminum (Al) doesn't play well with Copper (Cu) and Nickel (Ni) is the charge imbalance. Aluminum has charge of 3, while Copper and Ni each have a charge 2. Nature hates imbalance, so it wants to get rid of the charge, causing electrons (negative charge particles orbiting atoms) to move to Aluminum to make it equal to Copper and Nickel. This movement of electrons creates current and leads to oxidation So, the bottom line, if you want to know if you can mix metals just Google the charge on their ion. If they are the same, it should be fine.

Alloys, like brass, get a bit more complicate because the metals used to create them can balance each other out. For the most part, though, brass is made of Copper (charge of 2) and Zinc (Zn; charge of 2). So, when paired with Nickel, you get metal with a charge of 2 paired with an alloy with a charge of 2.

Not sure if this is the appropriate explanation for a child. Thoughts.
 

ConfusedCounsel

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To finish the story. The metal (Copper / Nickel) which lost its electron to Aluminum wants its electron back. So, it starts looking for an electron. The water in loop just so happens to have an Oxygen atom with two pairs of electrons just hanging out to be grabbed. The metal grabs it to replace its missing electron. Oxygen, however, doesn't want to let it go. Instead of giving up the electron it shares it with the metal, creating a chemical bond between the metal and the Oxygen. That is, the metal and Oxygen from the water become attached via the shared electron. This attachment creates oxidization of the metal.
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
Glad that ConfusedCounsel was able to include a bit of that - I'm not a chemist and it has been a long time since my high school and college chem classes, so I wouldn't have done as good a job of explaining. I have, however, seen this happen many time on this forum as well as in real life in both automotive cooling applications as well as PC ones, especially when there are corners cut in the PC instance.

In PC cooling, this is often seen around cheap fittings, usually where they contact other metals like the threads on brass radiators.

For automotive cases, the glycol coolant used in your car radiator is designed to prevent corrosion, but you can still find it around aluminum components like water pump and radiator for cars who also use a cast iron block and/or heads. Many newer cars have all aluminum blocks and heads, so this isn't seen as much.

There are corrosion inhibitor coolants for PC cooling use and they function in the same manner which makes them safer overall than just plain distilled water. However, plain distilled water carries heat better than coolants, although there is an argumen to be made that it is likely far less than the average user could indicate or measure in PC cooling use.