my turn for a few water cooling questions...

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Marci

Also MARCI owner of thermochill, clearly stated, in some cases where people vinegar diped, THE SOLDER on the radiator would melt clean off and start to LEAK. <--- there goes your 100+ dollar rad if its thermochill :X

Sorry for bumping a decrepid topic, but need to correct somethin'... misquoting leads to misinformation... and a customer was just complaining about our rads due to the above, trying to say his radiator was falling apart after reading the above, when all he needed was some PTFE tape on the barbs.

Vinegar is FINE to use for cleaning your rad, as long as you don't leave it in there for days on end. A few hours then a rinse is absolutely fine. However, that doesn't change the fact that it's unnecessary and hotwater will do the job. Vinegar on it's own WILL NOT cause any longterm damage to the rad. It will cause oxidisation of the surface, which when mixed with elements from solder and flux may result in a black tarnish... once done with the vinegar you should be flushing with distilled anyways to remove this oxidisation, and thus remove the "dirty" layer... this is the whole point of cleaning - to strip a fractionally thin surface layer away thus leaving a clean layer beneath...

THAT's what I said... The text regarding solder being destroyed was if people used anything stronger than 24% acetic acid. Vinegar is NOT 24% or stronger... otherwise you wouldn't be using it on foodstuffs....

24% or stronger acetic acid will completely destroy solder - ie: the rad would fall apart. As Creidiki states, pure would severely damage the radiator.

Long n' short, ThermoChill rads can be flushed with Hot Water because we use a water-based flux, so seeing as everyone seems to panic over flux residue (despite all radiators receiving a caustic bath during manufacturing), if you want to give it a flush before use, just run Hot water thru it whilst shaking every now and again, and do it in both directions thru the rad.

A side note - you're also recommending Storm for DualPump users - that all depends on the CPU. Storm only wins on small bare die. If it's an IHS'd chip the FuZion and ApogeeGTX WILL beat it regardless of pumping power. To get better Storm performance, you need the G5 or G7 implementation, both of which are suited to CPUs with larger dies. The G4 implementation as sold by Swiftech doesn't have a large enough cooling patch to cover multi-cores adequately... especially such as Kentsfield.

ahhhh thanks for the correction marci.

This was back during the days when people were posting that there rads would leak after a 12-24h vineger dip.

I will correct it As soon as possible when i have time.