Gadgetory

hey what's up guys J su says here and if you recall I said that my GPU loop kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter all the way up to in the low 60s when not even overclocked and I started to suspect that something might have been happening inside the blocks the GPU loop to see if maybe they were clogging or something so I decided today just for the sake of teaching you guys how to take the block apart we're going to show you how to do some block maintenance how to clean your block and actually see what's going on in here I I don't think the block is clogged at all but I still want to at least open it up and see what the heck is going on inside of there with it's specifically tuned copper base and maintenance free plug and play operations the EVGA 980ti hybrid offers ultra-fast gaming performance at the lowest temperatures possible click the link in the description for more details now the block I'm specifically using here which is a little bit dusty this is the ek water blocks full cover block it is the nickel and acetal the reason why they call that it's because the block is made of nickel nickel plated copper anyway and then we've got an acetal cover on here as you can see it's not actually Nick all the way and and which a lot of people thought that they were they're not they're actually just this portion here which is the same as you know the nickel plexi only they add the acetal cover here now to take the thing apart you are going to need an allen key this is actually included with the blocks so if you have the block bead you should already have the key and you're going to work your way around and undo all of these screws right here and then you're also going to undo the three at the end of the port now one of the reason why I want to inspect this is if you take a look here I was getting this gunk that was actually building up on all of my fittings and you can actually see that see I get this to focus here so you can actually see that there is a little bit of a kind of a white gunk that's been building up inside of there and I'm just curious if that's been making its way into my block it's a little bit here on the end of the fitting and then also put up a picture here of what was happening to some of the ends of my rigid tube I don't think there's going to actually be any buildup in here but for the sake of this video and the fact that I changed all the blocks I at least want to see what the heck is going on in there now when you undo the third screw here that thing might swing away as you can see you want to be careful because right here there are two very small o rings actually more like oval rings something on there two very small oval rings that are creating a seal against the actual block right here so you definitely don't want to lose that but as you can see we have a little bit more of that white it's almost like a powder it's almost like a salt and I'll explain why I think that in a minute I found a very interesting post on overclock forums or overclock net but anyway you don't want to lose those o-rings be very mindful of that now one thing you want to keep in mind too is this is going to void your warranty there is a warranty sticker right here between the two components when you take it apart it will break that which is going to violate your warranty so definitely something you need to do at your own risk but yeah maybe we'll just work our way around and undo all these screws now I pretty much expect whatever is inside this block to be the same for all three all three are going to be clean so I will end up opening up all three but like I said this is just more out of curiosity as to what the inside of the block looked like considering I was seeing that build up on some of the tubes there I don't know why I was getting this build up a lot of people don't have this problem few people have had this problem so it's it's almost like a 50/50 it just depends on the components it depends on a lot of different variables I don't think color matters you know because there are there's a lot of dye that actually creates these different pigments that is used with the pastel fluids so I don't know if that has anything to do with it but technically the White has no dye because that is the base coolant it's just a white like dragon eyes fluid all right so we've got all of those loose and well you know it's it's not as bad as I thought it would be quite honestly you can see here the o-ring does have pretty much a coating of that white again it's like a as you can see it's like a powder it really is where the hell's will focus it really is like a powder when you touch it it's very tacky the micro channels here don't appear to be clogged up although now they don't appear to be clogged up they've also got this little plate that goes on there to kind of direct the water flow through it either direction but I all I pretty much need to do at this point is take out the o-ring clean the o-ring clean off the gunk that's built up right here on the so you can see when I rub it it's just kind of like it's quite a bit of powder built up right here again I think this is salt and I'll explain why I think that's the case in a minute but I don't believe this to be the reason for my high coolant temperatures although when I touch it everything is sticky everything is sticky right here in the micro channels so it definitely is going to need a pretty thorough cleaning to make sure that you know there's no issues there but one of the other reasons why I want to look inside here was to kind of see how the plating was holding up against the Nano fluid here there has been issues in the past where some coolant can start to eat away at nickel plating and I want to make sure that that wasn't the case I didn't think it would be but yeah the inside really all in all is not that bad at all I mean you can see against the black here there's quite a bit of crud building up you can see right there that's where it was kind of collecting obviously okay for cleaning we're just going to start with alcohol alcohol is a really good place to start I just kind of want to see how this stuff reacts to it we'll just kind of wipe around the outside here yeah and as you can see get all these screws out of there you obviously don't want to lose any of these screws either but alcohol is a pretty good place to start when it comes to cleaning as you can see it's wiping right off you definitely want to make sure the spot where the o-ring seals is clean this can be that's kind of important part number one but it doesn't look like there's any real massive buildup in here I mean it's a little bit more buildup than if I was using a distilled water obviously distilled water has nothing to build up but again this does not appear to be the source of why my GPUs were getting pretty hot alright so in the end this is what you're left with here you just take your small Oh ring here be gentle with this it's actually very fragile and just kind of work it into the channel here definitely have to make sure that this thing is seated properly otherwise you are going to end up spring in a leak it's going to have a little bit of conformity if that's even a word probably not a word so you're going to want to make sure you kind of get this thing lined up in its original spot because it's going to kind of want to take to the shape that it's been out for a while this might end up being one of the more frustrating points of you know this particular process but ultimately the nickel plating looks very good on the inside doesn't look like there's any tarnishing or any sort of flaking which was one of the reasons I wanted to look inside of this thing and unfortunately it also does not look like the block having any sort of build up is going to be the culprit for the temperatures that I had been trying to figure out which is unfortunate anyway we'll get this thing back together and we'll talk about what I think the white stuff might be all right well here it is put back together I really didn't think that the pastel was going to be the problem or I should say the Nano fluid because really it's the nanoparticles that I was thinking might have somehow been getting clogged I doubted it those since they're extremely light and people haven't mentioned pastel clogging before but anyway when you put this back together kind of do like the four corner screws first to hold it in place make sure that oring doesn't pop out it's kind of difficult to work in there then put in the other screws real light and then work your way around and kind of tighten it up in a star pattern and then make sure it's tight but remember it is easy to strip this even the copper based copper is still soft metal so you want to make sure that you don't strip it especially when you're putting the end piece back on because this is threading right into the acetal material and it's just a plastic so it's going to strip really really easily doesn't take a lot of force to make a good seal with that o ring but anyway I want to talk to you real quick about that the white stuff and what it could possibly be I really don't know I'm not a chemist now like I said I'm not a chemist you might be thinking jail then how can I even talk about this but I would least want to mention a post that I found on overclock net where I guess I'm assuming this guy's a chemist he really seems to know what he's talking about at least that on the surface it sounds like it so the question was about like I said about the white almost salty material that appears to be building up in here and this guy said that copper does oxidize rather quickly when exposed to an oxygen deprivation cell at the same time this isn't a pH problem so much as contamination problem the liquid is either partially or very reactive to copper salts and the salts have high solubility I'd say that that is a big problem in a matter if the radiator is 100% clean prior to use these salts would eventually build up the question of whether or not this would be in a week or six months should not matter now this guy's name is little Hasselhoff er he's got 1773 thanks received on the forum so he seems to be pretty active apparently the oxygen deprivation cell again have no idea what that is is a contamination problem and it has something to do I guess with the fluid and it has to do with the way it's reacting to the copper and considering I have copper radiators could be that could be salt building up in the system I don't know if that has something to do with why the fluid was changing color but it wasn't building up inside the block but as you saw it was kind of building up on the on the fittings and stuff already cleaned that one off but anyway I just kind of want to put that out there too it is what it is I'm officially saying I don't think the pastel has caused any of the temperature problems I was receiving with my Titan so I've got to figure that one out maybe you guys learned something today from how to take the block apart make sure you just don't over tighten it doesn't take a lot of pressure to get these things sealed back up but the best thing is no matter what happens in there you can generally clean it unless the nickel starts to flake off you can always get your blocks running like new again you don't need to buy new blocks I only went with the nickel plated plexi blocks so that they they look cool that's really all it was it came down to the petty looking awesome anyway guys thanks for watching today's video I hope this has helped you learn something that's it that's all I'm talking about with the pastels stuff removed forward I hope the Primeau chill stuff works out well for me but time will tell these are these are things that take time to kind of present themselves anyway the block wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be so that was a pleasant surprise got to clean the other two and then and I will find a purpose for these anyway guys thanks for watching it as always we will see you in the next video