Don’t think I flushed my HW labs rad enough. Cleaning tips?

Endgame

Gawd
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
951
For the first time in... wow... 18 years I used a new rad in a loop. I gave it the boiling hot water flush with a gallon of distilled, but nothing else (no vinegar or anything like that). About 3 weeks in, my tubing has gone slightly cloudy white, and I have a bit of build up in my block and on my res. Coolant is just distilled and a kill coil.

It almost looks like plasticizer, but I used primo flex, which is supposed to be plasticizer free. I’m guessing it’s actually something left over that was in the gts 420 xflow, but I’m no expert. Any thoughts on what it might be, and the best way to clean it out?
 
Ugh the dreaded white film.
It may be a dirty rad but white crud is most likely algae growth if you didnt use a biocide. Ive had it happen from accidentally touching the insides of tubing, fittings, pumps or the res. The only way to get rid of it is to break down your loop. Scrub your blocks,pumps,fittings and res until theres no trace of white crap. Replace your tubing. CLR your rads and start over :(
 
silver kill coil should be sufficient biocide, but I was planning on tearing down the loop as soon as I snag a GPU. I could always put in some utopia that came with the tube - the primo chill website has a warning about over saturating the loop with biocide if you use utopia and a kill coil, but I’m going to go on a limb and guess it wouldn’t be all that bad? At the very least, if it is alge and the silver isn’t enough, it will prevent it from getting any worse till I can tear down and clean.
 
I cant say how effective a kill coil is against growth tbh. The only time ive had issues with white crud was with silver anti microbial tygon tubing and distilled. It took a couple of times before i realized what i had been doing wrong.
The tygon was supposed be algae proof but it wasnt obviously. After that i switched to petras/distilled and havent had it again.
It wont damage anything permanently or anything to leave it for a while. It will just get more pronounced where you can see it. Its easy to clean up except for the whole taking everything apart thing of course and cleaning the tubing is a pita. Its easier to just toss it and go new. You could add some utopia but it probably won't make a difference one way or the other. If your going to add a new gpu block soon i would just wait for that to do the complete clean and just go with it as is.
 
The kill coil has been pretty stellar in my other loops, through I had a heck of a plasticizer problem with old danger den tube I had lying around for a while. I ended up pulling apart a loop and scrubbing it and then changing the tubing.

after some googling, I’m seeing a number of people recommending long vinegar baths or blitz on these HW labs rads to clear out deposits. Probably should have done that, and have even seen some reports of white particles coming out of rads. Ah well, no real loss, just some extra clean up and some tube. Someone needs to sell precleaned rads (maybe ultrasonic cleaning?) - at least then I would know if it bio or not.
 
Try clr, i know alot of people are paranoid in using it but ive been using it on my rads since the thermochill 120.3 days with great success. It takes one 5 min. fill and flush until no more bubbles come out and thats that. My rads are clean as a whistle. No flux chunks or little black specks in the rinse bowl. I swear by it now. Matter of fact my 120.3 looks just as good today inside as the day i bought it.
 
Is that flexible tubing you're using? I flushed my RAD but all I used was distilled water and used only less than half a gallon because I didn't see anything coming out......so far it's been 1.5 years since I installed the loop and I'll clean it someday this spring or summer. I used all Corsair stuff.
Yep, primoflex LRT. I have plenty of extra, and I plan on replumbing anyway so no big deal on replacing. The only part that will annoy me is taking apart the block.
 
Is that flexible tubing you're using? I flushed my RAD but all I used was distilled water and used only less than half a gallon because I didn't see anything coming out......so far it's been 1.5 years since I installed the loop and I'll clean it someday this spring or summer. I used all Corsair stuff.
HWLabs makes them for corsair and does a really good job of cleaning them. Ive got four hwlabs and a corsair 360 rad. I havent used the XR7 yet but when i flushed the hwlabs i didnt get anything out of them prior to installation. A few black bits out of my gtx360 was all. I expect the XR7 will be about the same. EK is the only other brand ive used that was really clean. Ive used others that took 10 or 12 flushes to get completely clean(swiftech mcr320). That was a loooong time ago tho. Most companies do a pretty good job of cleaning their rads now. Altho alphacool from what ive heard isnt the greatest but ive never used one of their rads yet.
 
I have to agree with others here. The rad is the last place I would point fingers at if it was new. I know you seem loyal to the kill coil, but I would look to some kind of growth as the culprit. Biocide or clear premixes is what I would use. It is not the old days, premixes are well made now.
 
I suppose it could have been the 120.3. It sat unused on the shelf since, 2017ish, and I didn’t flush it prior to using it. I wouldn’t have guessed it would grow stuff in the mean time, but I can’t rule it out either.
 
LRT is as good as it gets for tubing of any kind. I used it for years with excellent results and never had any issues with it of any kind. Its actually the only soft tubing i would recommend.
Ive never heard of this fogging issue your mentioning before? Hes running a cpu only loop with a 420 rad so temps were likely not an issue. I could be wrong but i doubt it. Straight distilled with kill coil so theres no chemicals in his loop.
Have you ever used primochill lrt tubing before Nasgul?
 
I have had LRT get cloudy with just distilled and a coil. However I have also had LRT stay completely clear in the same system/same components, for over a year. I really just think it comes down to the batch.

I started to use their colored tubing because the clear seemed to randomly get hazy. The white LRT was great.

I switched to Mayhems Ultra Clear a couple of years ago, only because LRT was not available in 3/4" at the time. I have had no issues with UC other then it seems to stain easily.
 
I use Mayhems Blitz for my radiators and haven't had any issues whatsoever.
 
I use Mayhems Blitz for my radiators and haven't had any issues whatsoever.
Yeah, I probably should have blitzed / whatever my rads just to be 100% sure they were fully clean prior to the firing up the loop. I never did that with my oooooold rads, but I was changing my loop so frequently in the old days that I probably flushed all the crap into the loop but never really noticed when I changed it out again 3 months later.
 
I had quite a bit of tiny black bits coming out of both of my Corsair XR7's (240mm versions) when I flushed them out before use. I went through around 1-2 gallons of hot distilled water and lots of shaking to clean each of them out. And just when I thought I got every bit out, after plumbing all my lines together and connecting my CPU water block, I have noticed some tiny black flakes build up in my CPU water block within the first week of use. Not enough where I believe it is impacting flow or cooling capability, it is just not very pretty to look at when the top of the block is clear and the coolant I am running is clear. I don't see any debris anywhere else. Going on about 4 month now and there hasn't been any change.

If and when I decide to make some changes to my cooling setup, I will flush out the block then to get rid of any remaining debris. But for now, I will leave it be. I don't feel like taking it apart since it doesn't appear to be impacting anything negatively, it is just aesthetics at this point.
 
Silver killcoils have gone out if fashion. I use distilled and ptn nuke and haven't had a problem once in over 10 years. Even left one loop going for 3 years without a drain and it was perfectly fine.
 
Silver killcoils have gone out if fashion. I use distilled and ptn nuke and haven't had a problem once in over 10 years. Even left one loop going for 3 years without a drain and it was perfectly fine.
Regardless of fashion, it either works or it doesn’t. Being popular doesn’t change the amount of silver ions in the water. I also think pt nuke is pretty out of fashion as well ;)

When I land a gpu (I’ll take almost any at this point), I’ll break it down and see how bad things look. It seems quite unlikely that after multiple loops and many years just this time the kill coil doesn’t work, but we will see if after a good cleaning the same thing happens again.
 
Yeah regardless of popularity weve basically been doing the same things, with the same metals and additives for the last 20 years pretty successfully. More recently wcing fluids are all kinds of pretty colors, dont kill the family pet, wont foam up, cool better than water, stain your teeth green, curl the old ladies hair and only cost $50 an ounce! Haha i kid, a few are actually kind of useful. Everything else in wcing has pretty much stayed the same save for aesthetics, fittings, tubing rgb etc.
Ive got a sinking suspicion that your (Endgame)issue may have been the flux used in that rad. I swear i remember there being problems with white film before that ended up being attributed to the kind of flux used? As in too much flux? Im not sure. I probably need to get some sleep.
 
Yeah regardless of popularity weve basically been doing the same things, with the same metals and additives for the last 20 years pretty successfully. More recently wcing fluids are all kinds of pretty colors, dont kill the family pet, wont foam up, cool better than water, stain your teeth green, curl the old ladies hair and only cost $50 an ounce! Haha i kid, a few are actually kind of useful. Everything else in wcing has pretty much stayed the same save for aesthetics, fittings, tubing rgb etc.
Ive got a sinking suspicion that your (Endgame)issue may have been the flux used in that rad. I swear i remember there being problems with white film before that ended up being attributed to the kind of flux used? As in too much flux? Im not sure. I probably need to get some sleep.
Yes, I read about flux problems with the 420x flow, and I only did a single hot distilled water rinse (maybe 15 mins total). I should have cleaned it much more thoroughly. That said, I also am having a heck of a lot of problems with micro bubbles in the loop. Part of what I thought was white film was definitely bubbles after I did the whole "tilt and shake the whole box in every direction" thing. There are still areas where its an issue, but after tilting it every direction, switching the pump speed from 30 -> 100 -> 30 -> 100 a few times, the res is back to being quit clear, the tubes a little less so. The end result of flux or algae is the same though - I'll have to break it down and clean it.
 
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