[SOLVED] Liquid cooler gone bad?

[Tschrom]

Hey all, just need to get some verification that my CPU cooler might have finally gone bad. I have an h100i v2, have for years now. Lately my idle temps have been pretty high for an AIO, hovering around 45-50c. Almost like it's passively cooling. Also, the pump seems to run full throttle constantly, and there's a weird dark residue on the back of my GPU which I can't be positive, but I believe it's some fluid from the AiO. (Thank God it's non-conductive fluid). Anyway, just want to verify whether or not my suspicion is correct and the AiO went bad. Thanks!

 

[Gjstills]

I don't know what that residue might be, but I would try cleaning the thermal paste off and re apply it. If you have already don't that replace the cooler because liquid coolers are only rated for a certain amount of time.

 

[Phaaze88]

Some pictures would help tremendously here...

 

[Tschrom]

Some pictures would help tremendously here...

Sorry, couldn't get the images to insert...

Don't know if you can see it, but there's a dark spot of residue below where the AIO tubes are, on the GPU. Just above where it says GeForce in light gray on the backplate. GPU still works great thankfully.

AiO Pump
Residue on the GPU

 

[Phaaze88]

You clearly have a leak somewhere.
I believe it's time to retire that unit.

 

[Darkbreeze]

(Thank God it's non-conductive fluid)

You think the coolant inside an AIO, ANY AIO, can't harm your other hardware?

LOL. It can. Replace it immediately.

 

[Phaaze88]

I'd say you're lucky that the fluid appears to dry up on the gpu backplate.

 

[Tschrom]

You make a good point. I did just have to replace my motherboard and CPU recently. I didn't think anything of it at the time, just chocked it up to a bad overclock or the silicone lottery, but maybe that was when the leak originally occurred and my GPU was just fortunately spared.

 

[Darkbreeze]

CPUs almost NEVER fail, unless they are significantly volted outside of spec and beyond what is considered to be safe, or are cooked repeatedly due to a lack of cooling, or get short circuited, as when liquid contamination occurs, for example.

Motherboards are a different story. Those can fail out of the box or still be running 15 years later. If they are used daily though, it is not uncommon for them to start seeing signs of fatigue at around five years, especially if they've been an overclocked daily driver for that entire time.

A leak, is a very high suspect in an early failure such as you've experienced.