So I built my rig about 5-7 months ago. When I finished it the coolant and tubing looked like this. Now shortly after that went from pretty damn good looking to wtf? I think the "pretty" stuff in the coolant is stuck in my drainage valve section so the coolant went dark red. But to the question at hand, why is my tubing starting to get green? I was wondering if it is because I bought "Tygon E-1000 "Plasticizer Free" Tubing - Clear " I am about to purchase some new coolant and new tubing and wanted to know, should I stay away from Plasticizer Free Tygon?
If that's Mayhem's Aurora, then you aren't supposed to use that for long term use. It's a showpiece coolant. Not sure what funky stuff happened to the tubing though.
This has to be another problem with your loop, but the tubing isn't. If anything then the tubing leaves a whitish residue and makes the tubes and the water slightly cloudy, but not that. What components do you use in your loop? Mixed metals, additives in the coolant?
It is Mayhems Aurora Tharsis Red, and to my understanding it is good to use for up to 6 months. Only my GPU's and Proc are water cooled with nickel plating. And the loop should be fine. Reservoir->Pump->Proc->GPU 1 & 2,->Radiator->Reservoir. I never added anything to the coolant besides distilled water which it calls for.
Did you remove the jet plate from your CPU block? I believe it's a requirement for the longevity of Aurora fluid. As Tangster says, it is a showpiece coolant and has probably exceeded it's working life.
I left the jet plate untouched. I am not worried about the coolant because I guarantee it is in my drainage section, I will take a picture later today. What I am worried about it the Tygon turning green. I am going to order some new tubing and I think this time I will stay away from the "Plasticizer Free" Tygon. But does anyone else have any thoughts they wanna share?
If your tubing is turning green, then it's algae. You need a biocide or a silver killcoil in your loop to prevent this from happening.
Interesting, can I get it as an additive? If so where and how much would I need? Edit: I just read this on some coolant I bought. I bought the Mayhems Pastel Ice White.
If it is green then it is more often than not algae, there is a slim chance that it could be some separation of colourant in the dye which happens to be green, though for a red colourant it is not very likely. As someone who has and has had cold and freshwater (tropical) fish tanks, getting rid of algae permanently can occasionally be a difficult task, especially when small bits remain which can easily help it all spring up again. Run it with distilled and a biocide for a while as Spreadie suggested to dislodge and bits in blocks and your res. Tear the whole thing down and give it a thorough flushing through, then throw away the tubing and get new stuff and new coolant. I used to run distilled/deionised water with a silver kill coil in my res and that worked very well, never had any growth issues. Deionised water is only really electrically inert for a short time though, as soon as it comes into contact with dust, the air, any bits in the loop it will be pretty conductive again (as with most coolants really). I am not sure what Mayhems pre mixed coolants are like conductivity wise, but to be honest I treated every coolant as though it could kill my system and never had any problems, I was more concerned with having a clean loop than anything else.
Where can I purchase some Biocide? And how much should I use? My loop holds around 1500-1800ml of coolant. I should be getting 6ft of Tygon tomorrow along with new coolant. But I would be fine waiting to install it if it means a cleaner system.
Thanks for the link, but didn't purchase from there since shipping is $19.99. Hopefully this will clean the system and the new coolant won't get disgusting.
If I were you I would avoid dye after this, never seem to have gotten the idea of using dye when you can just use colored tubing and have a hassle free loop. I spose it does look good when done well. Meh
Yeah, but coloured tubing doesn't colour the water in the CPU/GPU block or the reservoir. Also, I've always used dye (apart from a brief flirtation with distilled water) and never had a problem. I think, in this case, its almost certainly down to the fact that its the Aurora stuff being used!
Bad idea. Don't skimp on flushing your loop, or you'll end up in the same situation but in a shorter time. Five seconds on ebay turned up this: mayhems biocide
+1. The cleaner you get it the less hassle you'll have in future. Properly flush the rad, blocks and everything else. I just stripped down and redid my loop couple of weeks ago which had run for 2 years consecutively, Mayhem's Premix clear and apart from clouded tubing everything was pretty much like day 1.
What...... I think you misread what I wrote. All I said is that I didn't purchase from there because they want $19.99 to ship $8 worth of product. No thanks. I did choose the Mayhems Biocide and purchased it from Performance PC's yesterday, which is where I buy my other water cooling things. Somehow I couldn't find a Biocide on there until yesterday, bad searching I guess. But today I did flush the system with 4 gallons of distilled water (84 cents a gallon, why not). This stuff doesn't like to come out easy, especially the metallic **** that looks amazing when flowing through the loop. I will probably do some more tomorrow just to be rid of it. Here is how the system looks now. So whenever I get the other things hopefully I can supply pictures of how she looks with the white.
I use the mayhems bluberry and ice white pastels in my loops. The White does loose its clarity quite quickly, but the bluberry is good because whilst it still looses its colour, the colour it turns lighter blue still looks nice when the tubing clouds. However i will no longer use the Mayhems nano fluid as this has turned the bonded edges of my xspc clear reses to a redish colour, prob from the zinc oxide.