Warning on LEPA water cooling

[JacFlasche]

I am an overclocker and have been since the days when you had to cut leads on the CPU and insulate with silcone tape. I an highly in favor of watercooling but:
The LEPA 240 destroyed my $2500 gaming laptop. It is well within the two year warranty.
I went to their site a week ago and contacted them explaining how this thing leaked all over my computer and you couldn't even tell it was leaking until it shorted out, blew up all components except cpu and memory, and burned out a breaker on the side of the house.


Damn I never got so many responses before. Please excuse my errata, no big mystery. It was my desktop, not a laptop.
They have yet to respond. I investigated a bit.
several people have reported the same problem.
I was a fool to put this in my computer. It has black hoses in a sealed system and you cannot tell if it is leaking even if you look in the case. Because it is just an intermittent drip that drys out almost immediately because of the heat of the system itself. But it did get wet enough to cause a short.
This company is Ecomaster. They own Enermax and LEPA
please do not buy any sealed water cooler with opaque hoses that does not allow you to see if the system is leaking. Aviod the heart ache I am experiencing.

I am going to ask you guys to boycott Ecomaste/Enermax/LEPA
to support the people who had their gaming systems destroyed by this type of CPU cooler.

Their crappy product destroyed my gaming computer and they don't even respond to my inquiry. Such a company should go out of business quick. Don't gamble, save your system, avoid LEPA and all sealed water coolers that have opaque hoses.

Wow, I never got so many responses to a post. Maybe I should always make a boneheaded mistake. Yes you guys are correct to question the use of a 980ti in a laptop, it was in a desktop. But that doesn't change the fact that it was destroyed by a leaking LEPA 240, or that you could not tell that the darn thing was leaking until it shorted out and put me in the dark all night, also destroying an great Antec 1000 watt PSU, and a Gigabyte gaming 7 board along with the video card. And the fact that they only responded at LEPA after I started contacting them through my email, instead of their internet site, so that I would have a record of them not responding, and then only after I threatened to take them to small claims court. Which I may yet have to do.
Please do not make the same boneheaded mistake I made: a water cooling system that you have no way to tell if it is leaking because everything is opaque and you cannot see inside is a catastrophe waiting to happen. If you or a friend notices temps rising on your system, do not continue using it. I had no such warning, but this may indicate a weeping leak at the junctions of hose and radiator. Even now though the radiator is almost dry inside, while maneuvering it around to take some photos, both places where the hoses attached became wet. It your computer has a lot of air moving around and with the heat, it can leak for sometime before it gets wet enough to short out. And you will not be about to tell because it will be dry every time you check until bang, no computer.

 

[patrick47018]

You were using the AiO with your laptop?

 

[greens]

How did a 240 rad destroy a laptop? That makes no sense to me... why is there are 240 rad near a laptop at all?

What do the hoses being black or opaque have to do with seeing a leak? Its not like the hose leaked - the fitting did.

In fact I would presume black hoses would cause improved warning as with a tiny leak, you should see some build up of additives around the seal, similar to when a pipe in your house has calcium build up - you can't see a leak - but its leaking enough to build up that mineral deposit.

 

[rubix_1011]

1) You installed this AIO on a laptop? "The LEPA 240 destroyed my $2500 gaming laptop. It is well within the two year warranty."
2) This is one reason why I never recommend closed loop coolers. They are cheaply made and almost all are designed not to be serviceable by the end-user.
3) You'll find that a large number of closed loop coolers are actually made by the same patent companies with the same components but sold as different brands.

 

[JacFlasche]

NO,, no, it wasn't my laptop, I must have been half asleep when I typed that. It was my gaming desk top.
I would edit it but then your responses wouldn't make sense.

 

[JacFlasche]

How did a 240 rad destroy a laptop? That makes no sense to me... why is there are 240 rad near a laptop at all?

What do the hoses being black or opaque have to do with seeing a leak? Its not like the hose leaked - the fitting did.

In fact I would presume black hoses would cause improved warning as with a tiny leak, you should see some build up of additives around the seal, similar to when a pipe in your house has calcium build up - you can't see a leak - but its leaking enough to build up that mineral deposit.


It would make sense to you if you just realized I made a mistake and wrote laptop instead of desktop. Maybe because I am shopping for a new laptop and it was late? Anyhow your assumptions are dangerous. If the hoses were clear you could tell if the system is loosing fluid. that answers your first question. If the weeping leak is subtle until too late it could easily drip down on the side of the hose that is not visible. That answers your second mystery. There was no build-up of residue and even now after the fact the residue is minute and almost unnoticeable. I thought these things could be trusted but they are junk, never again with the cheap all in one water systems. There will be a deluge of shorted out computers just after the warranties run out, I will bet on it. We have tens of thousands of systems that are going to have catastrophic failures if people don't switch their cooling. Wait and see. . . .

1) You installed this AIO on a laptop? "The LEPA 240 destroyed my $2500 gaming laptop. It is well within the two year warranty."
2) This is one reason why I never recommend closed loop coolers. They are cheaply made and almost all are designed not to be serviceable by the end-user.
3) You'll find that a large number of closed loop coolers are actually made by the same patent companies with the same components but sold as different brands.

 

[JacFlasche]

Somehow I get the feeling that a few readers are assuming that I just missed the evident evidence of a leak. Well there was no evidence. Even after the machine blew up, and it did blow up with a bang, the professionals at Santa Cruz Computers, like myself saw no evidence of a leak. They saw a PSU that was blown in a way they claimed they had never seen before, everything dead on testing. So it was really assumed by everybody that there was a surge in the line, and my protecition failed because of a line fault in the circuitry. It burned out a circuit breaker on the side of the house, not knocked it off, burned it out. It had to be replaced. So the PSU got replaced, but the motherboard wouldn't post right and the video connector was burned out, so the motherboard got replaced, they thought it was ok at that point but the motherboard had switched to onboard graphic and the videocard had to be replaced even though the fans were running it was not. It was only then while waiting for a new video card that one day I decided to just use it with onboard graphics and it shut down after ten minutes that I suspected that the water cooler may be defective. It was mounted on the outside of the case very securely so you couldn't tell how lite it had become from losing water, until I removed it, it was almost empty. The residue on the tubes was very subtle and looked like a little dust. Anyhow it was on the side of the tube that was not visible until it was removed. So it actually took months to determine that it was the water cooler at fault. And two professional techs, held in high regard by the community failed to realize the leak, as did I.

I am just saying: don't be surprised if your cheap all in one water cooler shorts out your system at any moment, and the longer you use it, the more chance there is of this happening. At the very least look on all sides of the tubes for subtle residue, use a strong light: it will be hard to see and it will be dry. You should probably check them every time before you start your computer.