[xHassassin]

I've read in some article I forgot the link to that as distilled water is in your loop, it slowly becomes more acidic due to the bonding with oxygen to form CO2 or something, and it's recommended to add something like 10% of antifreeze to keep the solution more basic. I've also heard that the extra junk in antifreeze clogs up your loop, and it's more recommended to use pure glycol.
Naturally, I went to wikipedia, and it states there are three main components to antifreeze:
Propylene glycol
Ethylene glycol
Methanol

So my question is which of these three should I use?

Thanks.

 

[rpm666]

Propylene glycol is OK to use. I just drained all the antifreeze out of my loops - both running about 50/50 with distilled - temps suffer from too much antifreeze and the loop still froze twice on me.

But really, in a regular day to day loop - you don't need antifreeze. Distilled + Silver coils = happiness!

 

[nckid4u]

None. Stick with distilled water and some kind of biocide (PTNuke, Liquid Utopia, kill coils) and you will be fine. Adding junk to your loop does just that... ...adds junk.

You will likely have your loop torn apart before any of that stuff happens anyway. The longest my (and other will testify to this) loop has been together without draining, cleaning, changing, etc. has been 6 months.

 

[nckid4u]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rpm666 Propylene glycol is OK to use. I just drained all the antifreeze out of my loops - both running about 50/50 with distilled - temps suffer from too much antifreeze and the loop still froze twice on me. But really, in a regular day to day loop - you don't need antifreeze. Distilled + Silver coils = happiness!

That made me laugh so hard beer shot out of my nose when I read it...

 

[rpm666]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nckid4u That made me shoot beer out my nose when I read it...

lol ok I'll clarify.

In tempatures 0C+ distilled is the best way to go. I will idle and almost load at the ambient temp (0c). When I added antifreeze to the loop I began to idle at 2-5C and finally rested on about 7C idle until outdoor temps dropped well below freezing.

When temps reached about -7 C I was still idling around 5-7C, but my 4870X2's were closer to 3C - and were hitting 5-7C at full load.

But with just distilled the heat can be carried away easier, so only use antifreeze if you are worried about FREEZING. Not if your background has a picture of ice on it

 

[ira-k]

You can use any anti-freeze at 10-15% the rest distilled as a biocide, that gets the distilled up on the base side a little. When your coolant starts getting cloudy its time to change it out because that shows it is going back to a acidic state where bacteria can grow.

Distilled itself can be a little on the acidic side, it's not a neutral like some companies claim. So the anti-freeze also works as a anti-corrosive even in a non mixed metal loop acidic coolant can corrode parts. All metals corrode when they come into contact with each other in a loop, it's just that copper and brass do it much more slowly then copper and aluminum.

But really it's easier to just use some PT Nuke or silver now. I still mix my own coolants but that's because I like doing it and I can tweak them to get about the same performance as straight distilled..

 

[xHassassin]

Oh ok, thanks.
I guess I won't bother with it unless I find corrosion to be a problem I suppose. I've already got some silver to toss in the loop anyways.

 

[shurik06_83]

if u run 50/50 then yea u will loose a few deg but if u run 20-30% of antifreeze in ur loop it wont do anything to ur temps but it will help to keep ur pump lubed up and qiet keep evrything from becomeing swampy and keep corosion away for about a 1-2yrs

if ur worryde about the fluid becomeing acidic then u will want to wash ur new rad out really well to get rid of any flux that was left behind when the rad was solderd , flux is an acid paste to help the soldering proses

 

[quentin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rpm666 lol ok I'll clarify. In tempatures 0C+ distilled is the best way to go. I will idle and almost load at the ambient temp (0c). When I added antifreeze to the loop I began to idle at 2-5C and finally rested on about 7C idle until outdoor temps dropped well below freezing. When temps reached about -7 C I was still idling around 5-7C, but my 4870X2's were closer to 3C - and were hitting 5-7C at full load. But with just distilled the heat can be carried away easier, so only use antifreeze if you are worried about FREEZING. Not if your background has a picture of ice on it

Whoa, that's worse than mine, you must have insulated your components...

On the colder days, I start shutting off fans. The lowest I let my GPU get with this setup was 15C under load. I had 1 kaze out of 8 running and I still fired up LinX to try to heat up my water to prevent condensation. Heck, I bet you I could've turned off all my fans and I would've idled at safe temps...