Best way to re-fill a reservoir? - 1st time owner

[toshibitsu]

I recently obtained a new custom built gaming pc(someone else built it). It's the 1st non "aio" water/liquid cooling setup I've owned. It is using distilled water & I noticed after gaming for a few hours yesterday that the water level inside the reservoir has gone down slightly. I suppose I should have asked questions about this from the person who built the system... but I figure you guys here would know!

Anyway, I bought a gallon of distilled water & now thinking about how to refill the reservoir. Are there special funnels I need to get or some sort of squeeze bottle? I don't want to accidentally spill water inside of the system. Furthermore, is just using distilled water ok?

 

[mortemas]

If the level is not too low then it was probably just some air bubbles working themselves out of the system so the water level went down as a result.

 

[Barty1884]

True liquid cooling requires relatively frequent maintenance.

Under the circumstances, you should drain the loop entirely, and fill with 'new' fluid this time around. Depending on how it looks going forward, you *may* be able to reuse.


Distilled water is perfectly fine. You can add dyes etc to it - but that can increase the potential for gunk to build up in the blocks. I would actually suggest a teardown and cleaning of the blocks if you were comfortable doing so - that's the biggest issue (IMO) of buying a custom loop from someone else.


As for filling/draining, it'll depend how it was implemented. Rads should have fill/drain ports, but whether they've been incorporated in smart, easy to access areas is unknown at this point.

 

[toshibitsu]

This was a desktop that was just built last week with all brand new components. I'm perfectly comfortable just using distilled water then(don't care to add dyes). I'll have to take some pics of the system when I get home this evening. Not sure how often I'm supposed to add water or for that matter, when.

 

[coozie7]

Don't overfill it, though, leave about 1/4 to 1/2 inch air gap otherwise the system can over pressure when it warms up and everything expends.
Using just distilled water is fine but keep a close eye out for algae build up, left alone this stuff can clog the system, particularly the fine water channels in modern cooling blocks. Using a silver coil or biocide additive won't harm performance but will keep the bugs at bay and can significantly reduce maintenance.

 

[toshibitsu]

Are there particular ones you recommend? Something I can get off of Amazon, Ebay or perhaps even locally at a Fry's or such?

 

[1LiquidPC]

Look forward to pics later, please provide when possible. Been running distilled and silver coils myself for years. Literally just finished a drain/fill cycle and cleaning a few hours ago. What folks use for coolant is argued all the time. Anyways, given it's a new build as mentioned above, it's likely just air bubbles working themselves out while system is running due to recent filling. It can also evaporate over time, but this should be slow. I change the water about every 6 months average, and in that time the level in reservoir may drop 1/4 to 3/8 inch, and this includes the air pockets working themselves out during first week or so from refilling.

 

[toshibitsu]

Here are the pics:

 

[1LiquidPC]

Nice build in the pics. Thanks for the upload. What are the specs? Also, your reservoir is fine. You want the air gap to allow for heat expansion. It's plenty full. If it continues dropping after another week or so, that may require investigation.

For watercooling needs, may vary depending on your location. I generally use in the US (no particular order) Performance-PCs and ModMyMods. FrozenCPU seems to be up again, but not sure how things are there since the meltdown years back.

 

[toshibitsu]

This is the specs on the system:

ThermalTake View 71 RGB Edition Case
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU
Gigabyte X470 Gaming 7 Wifi Motherboard
EVGA SuperSC 32GB DDR4-3200 Memory
Asus Strix GTX 1080 Ti OC Edition Video Card
Samsung 960 Evo 250GB NVMe SSD (2 x 250GB RAID)
Toshiba X300 4TB 7200RPM HDD
EVGA SuperNova 850 G2 850w 80+ Gold Fully Modular Power Supply
Swiftech Maelstrom D5 X200 Reservoir
Phanteks Glacier C350A CPU Water Block
Phanteks Glacier 1080 Ti Water Block
XSPC RX240 Dual Fan Radiator
XSPC RX360 Triple Fan Radiator
Corsair 140mm RGB Case Fans (x6)
Windows 10 Pro

I ordered a silver coil off of ebay yesterday. Going to dump it in when it arrives.

 

[1LiquidPC]

Yep, that's a high end enthusiast build alright Just be sure to do the watercooling maintenance time to time, and enjoy the low noise and temps.

 

[WildCard999]

Nice build.