try to change the water every 2-3 days for 2-3 times
always and only (no additives) distilled water
and check if the water still became milky

p.s. I hope that you have a drain- and a fill- port

 

Thanks. I did forgot to put a drain valve in, but there's an outlet on one of the rads which should work if I turn the case face up.

Should I add a little vinegar to the distilled, or would that mess up the hard tubing/o-rings/painted fittings/nickel plating in any way?

 

you should add a drain-port now that the system is in "maintenance mode"

The product page of VoltronicR10 says something like "prevent this, prevent that, ..."
so I think that this product is designed to stick to the radiator to provide those long term "preventions"
The datasheet says nothing about composition but high chance that dish-soap can remove it.

Now I would try first the "intensive rinse treatment"
because remove soap/foam can be more cucumbersome (never tried)

About vinegar : I don't know
- what does voltronicR10 do? it revome only the dirt and clogging or also the radiator's flux ? could vinegar help? could vinegar remove voltronic's residual? I don't know
- do you have nickel plated piece ? they are very weak to whatever agents
- do you have old/new waterblock ? did you check/clean them ?

 

I don't think it sticks to the radiator. The R10 flush looks and smells like liquid Brasso and is dark brown and viscous.
All my blocks are nickel plated, but they're all brand new including the pump/bay res combo.

This actually happened to me before (I have a nearly identical system with the same set of Alphacool rads) which is why I took extra care in cleaning the new set of rads.

I'm staying away from the Alphakool-aid for good.

 

Mayhems Blitz Pt 1 & 2 would do the job for you, and do it very well. It's a little expensive, but worth every penny. I do a Blitz Pt 2 with most fluid changes, as well.

 

https://mayhems.co.uk/cleaning/mayhems-blitz-cleaning-system/
did you read the warnings ? are they over-cautious ?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by chimico9

https://mayhems.co.uk/cleaning/mayhems-blitz-cleaning-system/
did you read the warnings ? are they over-cautious ?

Glad you caught that. I completely forgot that Pt 1 can't be used on plated blocks - I always used Pt 1 on rads prior to install. Sorry for almost leading you down the wrong path. I would still recommend Pt 2 to clean out the system. Or as it is listed on the Mayhems site "Blitz Basic" - https://mayhems.co.uk/cleaning/mayhems-blitz-basic/

 

Thanks guys. Can I use Blitz Basic safely without it affecting PETG/acrylic?

This is the coolant I drained from my loop.


I refilled my loop with just distilled water. It's still a little cloudy and there's some of it clinging onto the walls of my res.


I'll leave that overnight and flush it again.

 

I would try Blitz Part 2 for max duration than flush 1-2 gallons of water thru the loop. This still might not do it, those Alphacool rads seem to come extremely dirty you might have to tear the loop back down and do Part 1 to the rads. But you can try part 2 first and see how well it does.

 

I've ordered the Blitz part2 kit. It'll be a while till it arrives so I'll continue flushing it with distilled. Will part 2 damage acrylic or PETG?

 

Part 2 is safe on both.

 

I drained the loop again and the fluid is looking quite clear, but now the PETG tubing and reservoir walls are lined with a fine powdery white substance I can only assume is flux residue.



It seems the residue can be removed easily with a Q-tip but is stubborn enough not to be carried along the coolant flow even with both DDCs running 100% overnight.


The residue has coated the insides of my fittings and no doubt my blocks. I really hope Blitz part 2 can get rid of it but I'll have to wait a week till it arrives to find out.

 

Blitz Pt. 2 is a surfactant made to get rid of the types of coating you are describing. Hopefully it does the full job for you.

 

It took a while but I finally received the Blitz Part 2 in the mail today.

Draining and topping off the reservoir with the Blitz mix took about 15 minutes but by that time it had already completely removed the stubborn Alphakool-aid powder from the walls of all the PETG tubing in the build.

I am very pleased with the effectiveness of this product, and thanks to those of you who recommended it. Looking forward to finally completing my build!

 

Blitz part 2 is the best loop cleaning agent around. Just know that unless you remove you radiators and run Blitz part 1 theough them, you may continue to have issues with the radiators still depositing this stuff in your loop.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by shimeng

It took a while but I finally received the Blitz Part 2 in the mail today.

Draining and topping off the reservoir with the Blitz mix took about 15 minutes but by that time it had already completely removed the stubborn Alphakool-aid powder from the walls of all the PETG tubing in the build.

I am very pleased with the effectiveness of this product, and thanks to those of you who recommended it. Looking forward to finally completing my build!

Glad to hear it worked well for you man, the Blitz cleaner's are awesome products I wish Part 1 was out when I did my radiators. I will never shake radiators again when I can just use that stuff overnight lol. I wish radiator manufacturers would fully clean the radiators better so we wouldn't have to do this stuff

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iceman2733

I wish radiator manufacturers would fully clean the radiators better so we wouldn't have to do this stuff

Wouldn't that be nice......

Given what we pay for rads, it really shouldn't be too much to ask to get them in usable condition out of the box.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by chimico9

https://mayhems.co.uk/cleaning/mayhems-blitz-cleaning-system/
did you read the warnings ? are they over-cautious ?

Yes! we are "Very" over-cautious. How ever i have cleaned plated blocks in a system that we know have "no pitting" in the plating. If your blocks have any kind of pitting it could be an issue and we would rather cover our assess in our paper work. Acid on Petg and Acrylic is also some thing to be aware of as that could be an issue long term, it might cause micro fracturing if left in to long. This is a reason why we use a Ph neutralizer in the final steps (part 2 of the cleaning system).

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ciarlatano

Wouldn't that be nice......

Given what we pay for rads, it really shouldn't be too much to ask to get them in usable condition out of the box.

Yeah, you would expect them to be much cleaner out of the box, but I suppose everyone is expected to flush their gear first so maybe they are thinking its pointless... hmm

 

Im sure if we can do it and xspc can do it, then why can they not do it ! There is no excuse apart from greed and not caring about your consumers or the fact there QC are so bad they simply do not care. We picked up a brand new Watercooling rad (heatkiller) and my god they even put us to shame how clean they were.

 

Hello Mayhems Rep,

Using Blitz basic (a.k.a. "Part 2") in a loop with nickel plated EK blocks shouldn't be a problem, right?
It's the "Part 1" that should be used solely on copper rads (no pumps and other blocks), correct?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mayhem

Im sure if we can do it and xspc can do it, then why can they not do it ! There is no excuse apart from greed and not caring about your consumers or the fact there QC are so bad they simply do not care. We picked up a brand new Watercooling rad (heatkiller) and my god they even put us to shame how clean they were.

X2

This is what I am talking about, Mayhems goes above and beyond with there products I wish your radiators were available in the US.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shimeng

Hello Mayhems Rep,

Using Blitz basic (a.k.a. "Part 2") in a loop with nickel plated EK blocks shouldn't be a problem, right?
It's the "Part 1" that should be used solely on copper rads (no pumps and other blocks), correct?

I am not the Rep but I did use Part 2 on my loop which has all NIckel blocks and they all came out completely shiny and looking better than factory. The stuff works amazing, I had some pastel build up that it took right out without issues.

 

As above P2 is fine

.

 

Awesome, thanks for putting my mind at rest.

 

Glad that it seems you got the result you were looking for but to me, generally speaking, I have never seen the point of cleaning a system without taking it at least partially apart.

The two main problems we get in water cooling are 'it looks bad' ie, discolouration of tubing or block internals, and particulate or gunge build up that blocks proper flow.

The products people use are generally automotive cooling products.
Anything designed to be strong enough to remove gunge is likely strong enough to do damage to the relatively delicate components of water loops compared to auto cooling systems.
They also usually contain additives that can coat internal parts which is fine for car systems because you never care what the walls of your hoses or rad look look like, just that they work well.

I think its also easy to over estimate just how hard it is to do a basic strip down and rebuild of a water system. Its certainly many times easier than initially building it. Everything is the right length and you know where it fits.

I use hard tubing because I was sick of the small amounts of gunge I was seeing every time I disassembled my CPU block and I didn't want to use black norprene. Hard tube has eliminated that problem for me. Using good quality coolant with an anti corrosive means my coolant is always crystal clean after 12 months but I still like to polish all the blocks inside and out (I don't remove the GPU block from the GPU, just open it up) and the tubing too with some cotton balls pushed through to keep everything looking good as new before it all snaps back together quite quickly.
My system is a long way from some of the very large loops seen around this forum admittedly but I don't think it would change anything for me. Probably the hardest part is having to remount the CPU with new paste. I haven't found a way to do it while still mounted yet