Black coating(film, etched?) on parts

H

hairytoez

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 16, 2008
Messages
187
Adding a new gpu into the mix, so full teardown and clean time. Trying to figure out what happened, only ran distilled water with a biocide. It seems to have coated any metal part in the loop. Tubing was slightly fogged, but still clear. The black whatever it is comes off plastic easily, and any other plated part, but exposed copper it seems that it is pretty much dyed black at this point.

Anybody ever ran into this? Temps didn't seem to affected.

PXL_20211223_221033458.jpg
 
Liq U didn't do that in my loop, nickel and copper, d5 pump, no other metals afaik.
 
hairytoez said:
Thats exactly my setup. Primochill says it's a corrosion inhibitor and algae protection.
https://www.primochill.com/products/primochill-liquid-utopia-15ml-bottle

I'm at a loss. I've never seen it in 20 years of watercooling. Tempted to take a brass brush or wheel to the cpu block to clean it up a bit. Really don't want to buy nor wait for new gear.
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maybe the mix was off. edit: maybe an old bottle "Shelf Life: 2 Years, Unopened"
use copper polish. reg toothpaste would prob work too.
 
pendragon1 said:
maybe the mix was off. edit: maybe an old bottle "Shelf Life: 2 Years, Unopened"
use copper polish. reg toothpaste would prob work too.
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It's quite possible that I messed that up. It was bought and used right away, but not out of the question.
I guess its off the the hardware store.
 
pendragon1 said:
it might be the mixed metals with no corrosion inhibitor.
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Yeah, this is my guess. Nickel and Copper are close enough that they are not a problem

Generally the rule of thumb for high humidity environments (which I presume the inside of a water loop must be) is to keep things at an Anodic Index difference of 0.15v or below.

Copper is at -0.35v, Nickel is at -0.30v, so that is fine. Only a 0.05v difference.

Stainless steels vary by their composition, and thus their anodic index will vary. Typical average for stainless is -0.50v. That's right on the border for Copper at exactly 0.15v difference, but with Nickel that's a 0.20v difference.

And it could be greater than that, depending on the stainless steel composition.

This would be my guess.

You could probably have avoided this by using a coolant that contains a corrosion inhibitor. That makes it more resistant

If you can clean them, your copper and nickel parts are probably fine. The stainless parts may have corroded and that is likely what is gunking up your system.

I'd take everything apart. Replace all the tubing because it is cheap, and do your best to clean the rest (blocks, radiators, pump, reservoir, etc.)

Then put it back together again either without the stainless parts, or with a coolant that has a corrosion inhibitor or both. I'd examine the stanless parts to see how much they have corroded, and consider not using them anymore.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
with a coolant that has a corrosion inhibitor or both
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seems he was using one, just called it "biocide" in the op but named liquid utopia a few posts up. either the mix was off(15ml/g) or the bottle expired, would be my guess.
 
I been using liquid utopia for years now and never had a issue like this. All my loops have been basically spotless with it and distilled water. Were the rads new when you built this loop and did you flush the rads? You didn't just dump the entire bottle into the loop? You suppose to mix it with a gallon of water. The stainless impeller shouldn't have caused this. We all have similar pumps in ours systems and don't experience this.
 
Soak your block in CLR for 5 mins it should take the staining off. If not, you'll probably have to polish it :(
P.S.
Use it on your rads as well. If your block is stained, most likely they are too. Use a flashlight to look into the openings.
 
hititnquitit said:
Soak your block in CLR for 5 mins it should take the staining off. If not, you'll probably have to polish it :(
P.S.
Use it on your rads as well. If your block is stained, most likely they are too. Use a flashlight to look into the openings.
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He can also use Evaporust. That shit is generally safe for use with almost anything and works faster than anything else I've used. Beyond that, I would bet the mix was off. I've been water cooling for decades and I've only ever run premixed coolants. I've never had any issues with Koolance's fluid or EK's clear Cryofuel. I've had trouble with some others, but those two have been perfect.
 
Update:
Was able to clean the blocks and pump. Seemed like it was almost painted on. I did pre-mix the Utopia with a gallon of distilled water before filling. The pump wasn't corroded. A magic eraser took care of it pretty easily. Rads look ok and flow fine.
Using EK-CryoFuel Blood Red premix transparent coolant so hopefully this won't be an issue again. Unfortunately I bought the wrong size tubing, so I have to wait for that so I can finish and test.
 
evaporust is for ferrous metal only. looks like the crap that came out of this modified AIO i took apart last weekend. i assume it was corrosion of some sort since they used distilled water. but wouldn't coper oxide be blue? i know primo rad clean came out blue after soaking.

for my personal rig i got uv yellow pee green old school WC looking fluid from koolance. haven't heard anything bad about thier stuff. cleaned my stuff and ran primochill pre prep with distill water through once or twice then put in the koolance. i don't think i'll ever run distilled water.
 
cdoublejj said:
evaporust is for ferrous metal only. looks like the crap that came out of this modified AIO i took apart last weekend. i assume it was corrosion of some sort since they used distilled water. but wouldn't coper oxide be blue? i know primo rad clean came out blue after soaking.

for my personal rig i got uv yellow pee green old school WC looking fluid from koolance. haven't heard anything bad about thier stuff. cleaned my stuff and ran primochill pre prep with distill water through once or twice then put in the koolance. i don't think i'll ever run distilled water.
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It depends on how bad/old it is. My 8800gtx blocks(solid copper) were black at the worst, biggest spot then went all thru a range of colors from purple to yellow until back to the copper. That was 5+ years of never changing the distilled/petras mix. If i can find them ill post a picture. No promises tho, its been a long ass time since I remember where I put them.
 
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