Weirdest Water Cooling Thing I've ever experienced.

B

Banko

Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Messages
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So today I get back home at around 4 PM, and notice my freaking CPU temp is 74c, I'm freaking freaked out completely, I shutdown the pc as quickly as possible, but the strange thing is, I noticed that 3/4th of my coolant just disappeared. Where? I have no freaking clue, there was no leakage or anything. Now I know everything was working because as I went to shutdown I could hear the pump trying to suck in water, but there was not enough water so stuff was hardly moving. Anyone have a freaking clue to what happened to my coolant?
 
When was the last time you refilled it?

My vote goes to the gnomes drinking your coolant :p
 
Well one of three things could have happened:

1) Lay off the psychedelics and other assorted concoctions for a few days. ;)

2) You really do have a leak. IF you have UV dye then I suggest you get out a black light and start looking around. :eek:

3) Someone is playing games with you. Piss someone off lately or played a practical joke or two? :confused:
 
CAD OC'er said:
You should be banned for that comment!!!
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Definitely in poor taste (no pun intended), but probably okay within the context of [H]ardForum rules. Still...:mad:
 
natekoz said:
well if your dog or cat keels over you know where it went.
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Thing is my room is locked, and I do have UV dye, and I do have UV cathodes, and there is absolutely nothing. I really have no clue where it went.
 
Maybe you just had a blockage in part of your radiator (vapor Lock) and it just now worked it's self out. Only thing I can think of.
 
I still want to know when the last time you refilled or checked your loop was. Even in a closed loop with no leaks you lose coolant over time.
 
is you pump still working and do you have a res that is open. a couple things I can think of could have happend. mybe your pump died or stopped and the cpu started boiling off your water and if your res wasn't closed the vapor would boil off into the air
 
Erasmus354 said:
I still want to know when the last time you refilled or checked your loop was. Even in a closed loop with no leaks you lose coolant over time.
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I refilled like 2 weeks ago. Oh and Umbra my pump is still working, and like I said it was working at that time, I could hear it and you could see it trying to get the water to move as I went to shutdown the PC. Also if it boiled off, the fact that it is water and anti freeze the boiling point should be higher, so at that point my CPU should've died, but it didn't.
 
Banko said:
Also if it boiled off, the fact that it is water and anti freeze the boiling point should be higher, so at that point my CPU should've died, but it didn't.
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Maybe not boiled off but say much more gently evaporation of the water... when I was using WC about 3 years ago my reservoir wasn't perfectly air tight (I was using a 45 litre tub of water which was shared across 4 machines) I was losing 3~4 litres a week due to evaporation and the water was never more than 23C.
 
I've also found similar coolant disappearances when I move my system from place to place. But the loss has never been as large as yours. I assume it's a vapor pocket which cleared from the loop or a different angle of the platform which the case is standing on. These are only hypotheses because I haven't found any conclusive evidence. It's just as likely that the water slowly evaporated from a small hole in the loop.

Did all this coolant disappear at once? It could simply be evaporation that you're just noticing now. The best way to find out is by refilling the system, but only do so if you're certain there is no leak near any of the computer components. Monitor it closely for a few days.
 
I laugh at Top Nurses comments towards Psychadelics, lol.

Now that you mention coolant disappearing, as I look into my case, it appears that the water level in my T-Line is dropping, but not as fast as yours did. This is good for me because I can change my shit soon.
 
Top Nurse said:
Well one of three things could have happened:

3) Someone is playing games with you. Piss someone off lately or played a practical joke or two? :confused:
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Wow, sucking off a guy’s coolant when he’s not looking would be a low blow indeed :rolleyes: ;)
 
Cavitation?

when a pump cavitates it basically converts the water into a gas

http://www.mcnallyinstitute.com/01-html/1-3.html

Cavitation means that cavities are forming in the liquid that we are pumping. When these cavities form at the suction of the pump several things happen all at once.

* We experience a loss in capacity.
* We can no longer build the same head (pressure)
* The efficiency drops.
* The cavities or bubbles will collapse when they pass into the higher regions of pressure causing noise, vibration, and damage to many of the components.

The cavities form for five basic reasons and it is common practice to lump all of them into the general classification of cavitation. This is an error because we will learn that to correct each of these conditions we must understand why they occur and how to fix them. Here they are in no particular order :

* Vaporization
* Air ingestion
* Internal recirculation
* Flow turbulence
* The Vane Passing Syndrome
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each is covered in detail with remedies ;)

not to get back on topic or anything :p
(a subtle hint)
 
I'm not sure how cavitation could cause coolant loss in a closed system. Especially if the vapor collapses when leaving the pump. So cavitation might be the cause of a loss in pump performance, not in coolant loss.
 
1. its only closed in theory

2. not all the vapor recollapses


if its not leaking its out gassing
barring the formation of a miniature blackhole in the reservoir :p

air traps and reservoirs being the leading suspects for airleaks

the other possibility is the same, coolant boiling
(which does occur in the boundary areas of the convection interface, to what extent dependent on the turbulance, pressure, flowrate, T1\T2, coolant composition ect.)
Phase change isnt always a good thing :p
 
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