Refilling an AIO Liquid Cooler (Enermax Liqtech TR4)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- We learn the process of refilling the Enermax Liqtech TR4 closed-loop liquid cooler (CLC or AIO), built for use on Threadripper
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Host: Steve Burke
Video: Andrew Coleman
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The general consensus i gained from this video was not ever pull apart my AIO cooler 😂😂😂
Lol
Or just leave the cold plate off until you fill it and then add the cold plate last.
Please, this looked pretty easy. He could've done this in half an hour if he used a propper bottle with a seringe or something.
I actually really apreciate you showing that doing this isnt always 100% straightforward and easy and that making mistakes etc is going to happen with diy maintenance. Most youtubers will just cut it so it looks easy even for begginers and that is not the reality a lot of the time.
yeah, like soldering a gpu, motherboard, or even ... re-balling! LOL. beginners should never do those.
@@JR-zw2vb gotta start somewhere
both holes need to be open, one for liquid to enter and one for air to escape... strange you didnt notice that
Error989 That's what she said....lol
When should you change your liquid in your cpu cooler ?
@@leokap58 For a closed loop, when you hear cavitation. After you replace all of it with whatever brand you bought just keep it topped off.
Open loop? Can't comment. Some people say 6 months, some say years.
@@leokap58 Yup, that's a closed loop. And it does have a pump. Just like in most AIOs its pump is in the heat sink block.
@@GwynbleiddX1 well i did not know that thank you my good sir =D
Food for thought:
A mass of water has a defined specific volume ratio that varies depending on the temperature.
For example, the specific volume of water at 15C is 1.00092 cm3/g, and at 30C it is 1.00435 cm3/g.
So, if you were concerned about the aio not having enough pressure etc upon refilling, you could cool the fluid off first in the fridge to a lower temp prior. After purging the air out, and re-sealing everything up, when the water warmed up to operating temperature it would increase in volume, and you would have more pressure in the loop vs if you just put the same volume of fluid back in at the same temp.
200g of water at 15C will be (200 x 1.00092) 200.184cm3 of volume, then when brought up to 30C the same mass of water would be 200.87cm3 of volume. Hence taking up more space, and resulting in positive pressure inside the loop despite that when you filled it, it had no pressure.
Having said all of this, there would be more calculations in order to get what kpa or psi the loop would be at, and I wouldn't recommend doing this without knowing that information along with what the aio is rated for in terms of pressure.
Link to a calculator: www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-specific-volume-weight-d_661.html
Use a syringe that fits the holes to force the water in and force bubbles out. I think the other hole can use to vent the loop while it's being filled.
I appreciate that you show the struggle and not edit it out so it's perfect. I think we all know somethings always always goes wrong lol
I use a large turkey baster "syringe" with a bit of soft rubber hose from the auto parts store. Open both screws and inject into the system. Dont push too hard, you dont need to. All done in 10 minutes.
Did you keep filling until the liquid came out the other hole? how could you tell it was full? Also how did you empty it?
It's Great Too look back at these videos and see how far you have come.. :) keep up the great work
I have been waiting for this video since I saw the light go off in his head on the disassembly video. excellent work.
There's a reason there are two screws. When you add the coolant it needs to displace the air which is dramatically easier if it can just escape out the other side.
Si señor.
A quicker way to do this from a salty old Mechanic.
You need a hand held vacuum pump, two small ball valves, a t-fitting, a rubber bung and some tubing.
Put the valves on the arms of the T and the Bung on the bottom, tubing on either side of tee. One tube goes to the pump one tube goes a container of fluid.
Insert the bung into the port on the loop, CLOSE the valve going to the fluid side and OPEN the valve going to the pump, slowly and smoothly draw a vacuum inside the loop. Then CLOSE the valve to the pump and OPEN the valve going to the fluid the vacuum in the loop will draw the fluid in.
We used this method in the shop to fill and bleed air from cooling systems on everything from Motorcycles to Large Trucks. In those cases we an air-differential vacuum pump or large spare pump from an old A/C service system. The hand pump should give enough control to not collapse the end tanks.
somebody get me 2 hookers, 3 ball-bearings and a lighter I got this
I jsut happen to have a kozyvac 1200 2 stage on hand :)
nigga what
I'm not a mechanic but I kept thinking there must be a simpler way to do this somehow with the right equipment, the production line would need to be tooled to simplify this to one step to be efficient. Of course for mass production the fixed costs of installing the right tools to do the job quickly are trivial to the cost of playing multiple people to do the same step over the latter tends to be a quick way to go bankrupt lol. So in practice taking advantage of the same method the factory used is probably far harder than it should but the reality is that companies not treating every aspect of their product as some kind of trade secret even when immediately apparent to even a moderately competent observer makes this difficult to solve heh.
Great video Steve, glad to see everything worked out. A few suggestions for next time would be open both ports so when the water flows in it pushes the air out the other hole otherwise your vapor locking the loop the 2nd suggestion is try using a "turkey baster" large syringe or large dropper to fill with, and the 3rd is maybe you should have used a wire brush to clean the rust off the fill port screw or removed both screws when dissambled and hang the pump to allow for complete draining and evaporation over a couple days.
Nice, I used a small syringe for accuracy and to avoid spillage. But it was trial and error.. I did it on my Thermaltake 3.0 240mm Closed loop CPU cooler. Thanks for the vid.
For bleeding bike brakes I have syringes with threaded ends on them, that would probably be the most ideal thing for this situation. No loss, just inject the fluid until it comes back out the other side.
thisisobvious no brake ganga
I highly recommend using a bit syringe next time. Otherwise you'll never get all of the air bubbles from there (was refilling Kraken X61 recently and I have transparent tubes, so I see what happens).
WIth syringe you can push liquid harder in there and it will push the air from the rad and from the tubes.
Got an AIO in a lot of parts last week but the PC shutdown when the CPU hit about 78 celcius. Just checked the price for distilled water being 2,50 euro for 5 liters, it's totally worth it to try to get it up and running again. Thanks for the vid Steve!!.
Did you put only distilled water in, or added some anti-corrosive stuff also?
Watching a stoned man fumble the intricate job 😂
Just what I thought
9:27 Steve... You should have taken out the other screw... How is the air going to exit the CLC? :(
10:33 "this side is way easier" because both holes are open. Liquid goes in, air comes out.
If you had a fill bottle (the kind you can squeeze to force liquid out), it'd take like 2 minutes. Hold the pump up so the hoses don't form an S. Tilt one fill hole lower than the other and insert the fill bottle nozzle, Begin filling.Ideally you would also have the radiator tilted so the hose you're using to fill the rad is lower than the one that is allowing air to escape.
ikr common sence
I was thinking this exact same thing!
Didn't seem like common sense on the video. holding block under the radiator while shaking the radiator to get the air moving. Also other mistakes that will quite possibly even harm the pump.
This was my first thought. It's come from experience with my custom liquid loop, when I tried to drain loop with only one port open:D
Quarnozian finally someone with some common sense!
here from the future - 2017 Steve was a little less confident but brave enough to be vulnerable with limited editing! this helped, im gonna refill my enermax aio which has a fill port on the rad for some reason.... :)
It would probably be much easier to do this with a big syringe or turkey baster and have both caps open with the block angled so you fill the lower one and air leaves the top.
You might even be able to snake a drinking straw or flexible tubing down the AIO tubing a bit so it goes directly to the radiator instead of building up in the waterblock.
NO FOOD
Good.
My Antec Kühler 620 is now about 6 years old and still working like a charm.
Great video. And scrolling through a majority of the comments all I've seen talked about was the airlock problem and ideas on filling. Which are all good points but...what about the gasket? Anytime a seal is broken, the gasket that helps make that seal should ALWAYS be replaced. Keep the vids comin!
You can make a system whereby you run a hose with a threaded nipple into one of the ports and pump the fluid through the system until it comes out the other side without bubbles. Add a second such line and put the end into the water source and you would have the water being recycled through until no bubbles. Add a tank from a DIY setup and you have essentially turned a AIO into a custom loop.
Would you be able to refill it any better by submerging the pump block in some sort of bucket with the ports open and turning the pump on while in the fluid and then screwing the cap closed, once done, while still submerged?
The reason it's easier to fill the loop when you unscrew both plugs is because the escaping air don't have to compete with the water flowing into the loop in order to get out. This is probably also the reason why there are two holes in the block to begin with. The reason your custom loop typically only has one hole, usually in the tank, is because the large area will allow the air to build up there and escape with ease through he same hole you are using to fill it. Hence you don't face this problem.
my enermax for my tr 1950x plugged up. literally had no clue exactly how to take it apart and switch water in it till i watched this
I used a large plastic syringe, left over from my cats med, I cleaned it really well, so there is no contamination...First, I started with both screws off, so that...there wouldn't be any build up pressure force and when almost full, screw in secured one the holes. And honestly it didn't take that long, cause I was force injecting it. Nice video Steve.
Perfect TH-camr, can't do anything without causing a bunch of comments on how to do things better.
Depending on if the radiator has a flat and thick enough walled area you might be able to hack in your own g1/4 threaded fill port using a tap and dye. I use my own tap all the time to mod stock d5 tops with the 1/2 barbs and sometimes plexi/acetal reservoirs to add more fill ports. Seems like something up steve's alley.
Yeah, all Enermax needs to do (or any AIO maker) is add a T-connector somewhere on either tube, and so people can use it for draining and filling. The nice thing is you can fill and drain an AIO like this completely outside of your build (unlike custom hard tubing setups). So if there are any leaks it's no where near your PC (cept maybe a PSU you're using to run the pump) it's nearly risk free!
yeah i think that's the Fractal Design Celsius line, they use fittings that's compatible with EK fittings, and others. So you can easily dismantle them and add more to the loop. But they don't come with drain/fill ports. There's another one that had hot-swap connectors but it's kinda proprietary if you wanna add CPU ad GPU cooling into the loop but that's a rather old product from about 5 years ago. Idk if it's still around anymore.
Dude thanks. You are awesome!
Damn, Steve. I don't think I've ever gotten pissed while watching one of your videos until now.I kept saying to myself, "remove the other screw!"
I've cleaned kettles and coffee machines out with hydrocloric acid before now (Spirirts of Salts is a dilusion of this) and you can use oxalic acid to dissolve rust. I have one cooler that I recently removed thats 10+ years old and clearly been leaking, I never imagined how little fluid there is in them so I'll see if I can rebuild that now. I'm guessing that running the impeller occasionally while filling will help push bubble out too.
Also, for measuring purposes, if you have a means of measuring weight, it's far more accurate to measure liquid by weight and convert it to volume than by attempting to measure by pure volume.
Every shipped unit should just come with a syringe of prefilled coolent (Of the brands choice) with an auto sealing rubber syringe hole on the top of the radiator for end users to do themselves after a certain time after being bought, or if they decide to break warranty and clean it. This with a pin hole air release would insure no air pockets and extra life out of the cooler.
P.s. thanks for the video Steve, would love to see more of this content on different AIO's, maybe add it to the bar graphs and such under a "ease of refilling" catagory?
Ha! I got this AIO and thought about the possibility of refilling!
You should
Did this a couple weeks ago to my intel aio and it works well, i think i put too little fluid though since it makes bubbly sounds before it starts to flow. Also i used peak antifreeze that was laying and it works fine and shouldn’t corrode, it’s also premixed. I used an old saline syringe to inject it. The only downside of antifreeze is that ethylene glycol has half the specific heat of water so it not as good as water but it also won’t rust. Not sure how it would compare to other liquids made for cpu coolers.
The real question is:
Can i fill my AIO with vodka?
Could you use a turkey baster (essentially giant syringe lol) to inject the liquid?
XFourty7 thats what i use to fill my loop lol
how often do you have to refill it?
i would use a sauce squeeze bottle( can be bought at walmart empty) to help with filling as well as loosen the second bolt to let air escape
Medicine syringe from the pharmacy works well. Great video!
That sounds pretty clever, actually. Like, just get some distilled water, find a spot where you can get access to the loop like the holes they used in this video, make sure to hold it up so that the air inside moves right to the top and then just fill it up with the syringe. Could probably avoid a whole bunch of disassembly.
The distilled water won't have any anti-corrosive in it but at least it probably won't have any bad reactions with the liquid that's already in there and it probably won't be a huge amount of water to refill anyway.
Gonna have to try and remember this one in case I ever need to refill an AIO. Realistically, if you can double the life of an AIO by doing this it would probably be plenty. Any longer than 8-10 years probably won't be worth it anyway.
a solid video on what not to do
It's worth pointing out that in some applications, (I have a unit in an unheated out-building) distilled water is a poor substitute for glycol, as it will freeze, causing leaks and possibly destroying the pump.
I'm kind of amazed you even consider an AIO living for five years given the current market. I keep hearing about Asetek based AIOs dying after a year or so.
What about submerging it in water and just start the motor until the bubbles stops?
Or pump water into one of the holes?
This was a good video. I will be trying to recycle cooler also.
You might get me to switch to an AIO from air if they started doing ports on the rad. This is a massive step in the right direction.
Just scored an unused one of these for $30 shipped and plan to use after a rebuild. I'm going to dump the stock cooling fluid and put in coolant I trust - and clean it with descaler if needed (hopefully no gunk in it). As a side note, I have two Corsair AIOs running non-factory coolant for 5x years now without issue...no leaks...no pump failure. It takes good water to make good coolant and I just don't trust Chinese sources as skimping on quality to save a buck is kind of the national sport for them. Bottom line, you can't skimp on water quality or coolant additives. Fortunately, if you're handy, it's an easy fix.
What do you think about using a good scale with a new one and making it the same weight to calculate if you have enough liquid.
gamersnexus, an idea to fill it if i understand it, was to use vacuum and a hose conected to the recipente with liquid and pump roling as soon as liquid goes in. the pump whit a bit of liquid acts as a valve so the vacuum comes from the radiator side and gets the liquid from the hose purged. thanks for any feedback, welcome to improvement
Do they leave some space for air expansion. Im going to rebuild mine but being a diesel tech I am use to coolant expanding and exiting to the overflow then when cooling down sucking it back in due to expansion and contraction. If it was completely filled would it pressurize too much and damage anything? I think I saw a new aio with a bladder that expands and contracts to adapt to the expansion. Thanks for you in depth content. I really enjoy it.
Use DO ultra since most AIO's use mixed metals, done a few and it holds up well and you get no galvanic corrosion. You can also mod it with colored or clear tubes for a bit of custom look and length.
Damn thats a good looking aio
I would have used a hose pipe 6mm in diameter then i would have siphoned it back into the aio bro. For anyone thats interested in doing it with a hose pipe and not a flannel you can buy them from amazon for 2 dollars. very useful for us plumbers and of course the pc builders doing water cooled installs. One other thing we could use is a syringe. Nice vid bro
Have you guys looked into whether replacing the liquid coolant straight after purchase could potentially prevent the gunking issues seen in the product line?
I'm watching this and hollering at the computer... "Let some damn air out!" LOL
You should do a tutorial on this for AIO's on GPUs, like the Vega64 or the R9 Fury X, the Fury is almost 3 years old and soon enought it will need it's liquid changed!
Also, can that cooler be used on another CPU, I want to see how it works on a smaller CPU to see if there is a benefit to having a larger set of microfins compared to standard CLCs where the fins only cover around 70-80% of the surface area of the CPU's heat spreader?
Would it be iladvisable to pump some CLR or such through for cleaning purposes? I don't currently own any level of water cooling, but it is something I would like to get into. Thanks. 👍👍👍👍
One thing that might've made this an easier process would be one of those large 50ml syringes. There are smaller ones too, if it would be better to fill smaller amounts at a time, of course. The tip of those is blunt, but it would make it easy to get the fluid down into the port.
Whoever is trying refill or replicate this at home. PRO TIP: Try to have two openings so the water will flow inside faster since there's space for the air bubble to escape, once you're almost to the top 90% close one off and use an Ink dropper or syringe to top it off.
Would it work if you could force the water through the system with a plastic syringe plunger forcefully blowing air out the 2nd hole or would that cause damage to the motor?
other little note, for the rubber gasket, you can use a little Vaseline/petroleum jelly to hold gasket in place while setting pump back into housing...
Ok, I'm using my first one of these and I need to know if they need to be filled like this when you get it or if they come with water already in there. I'm getting an Aquafusion 240 if it matters
use to barb fittings the intake and output ports of the pump.. run a hose from the intake to the base of a funnel and the other port back in to the funnel to release air...
if you took out the other screw or loosened it the air can bleed out and/or turn on the pump so it helps you. find the way it pumps and put the liquid in the otherside
Would love to see the EKWB refilled from that same tear down
Free advise: If you do something like this again, buy a gallon jug with a pump on it (such as the kind Go Jo mechanic's hand cleaner comes in). Then connect tubing from the jug to the filler port and other piece of tubing from the outlet port to a recovery jug. Then, as I suspect the factory does, you can pump the coolant in and measure the amount of coolant in the AIO. You'll need to make the connections watertight.
Any small pump would work and those screw holes were obviously the fill and bleed holes.
he could have also undone the other screw to give the pump breathing room, the way he was doing it is why it took forever to refil, think of it as if you bought a CAN of apple juice and u only put one hole in the can, takes for ever to get any juice, but when u put a hole on the other side it allows breathing room and more juice comes out...also while almost done typing this i noticed he finally did it lol
Got a link to one? Thinking about doing this with a AIO from ekwb.
yeah like when you refill a transmission or a diff
It's a mystery to me though how they can screw up the factory fill and deliver it with air in the system, as in my case. From what I could gather, system pressure is not a problem and an AIO is supposed to have zero air in the system, but mine was gurgling loudly at first startup: th-cam.com/video/abXdw0VRo3o/w-d-xo.html
OUT OF BOX THERMALS!!!
I really appreciate you video I just would like to know how you mix the liquid
This video helped me a lot, I learned what not to do lol
you could also drill out the rad and put in pressure fitting from the hardware store?
I’m trying to refill mine but idk if I should just use regular water or u have to put some other stuff with the water
What liquid you actually need to add to distilled water? Can't find any information about it. Need to do the same thing with my Zalman reserator 3max.
How you turn it on without connecting to motherboard? To help bubbles out.
Good video, great comments
If you got a barbed hose end to screw into one of the hole once your primed the pump technically could have put a hose on the barb and into the container of coolant and quite literally just sucked it up until it came out of the second hole
Steve this may be easier to fill through the cold plate and then topping it up through the holes as suggested with a syringe, btw they use a vacuum system at the factories at least in other industries on hole to suck one hole to fill
Apparently such vacuum-filling can be messed up, because my LiqTech came with plenty of air in the system.
Is it a good idea to fill an AIO completely with fluid? Is a litte bit air inside the loop not necessary to let the fluid some spce when its gone warmed up?
Is it possible to open the circuit? For example add pipes for a video card, a bottle (forget the name of the container that acts as the exchanger) and then go back to the CPU block? As in a Custom refrigeration?
if u buy a Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite ML120L do u need to refill it if so when and what stuff do u have to do to it
Hey Steve, thanks I thought I was lost without this video! What product would you recommend to clean the whole loop out of any residue?
let me give you an advice get an air cooler,water cooling need maintenance and replacing the fluid every 5 to 6month and have high risk of leaking and failing
surely you could rig up a secondary pump, or maybe an external reservoir that could assist in refilling.. this looked really clumsy and almost no way to be sure you have a full system free of bubbles.
I have a NZXT Kraken x63, it worked fine for about two years and then one day the pump stopped pumping and temps ramped up to 100c. I determined it just had air in it, because quickly flipping the computer upside down and back immediately fixes it and gets it running normally again. Unfortunately this now happens roughly once per day. I'd like to attempt refilling it rather than buying a replacement, but I'm so paranoid about doing something wrong and ending up with water frying all the internal components of my system. How do you know if you have too much or too little liquid? Do you have to drain it first or can you just add a bit of water to get the air out?
Not worried about the copper cold plate and aluminum radiator? Especially since not using ethylene glycol?
hello Nexus, what kinda water, i should fill, is this drinking water/RO something like that .
If I wanted to make an SFF case with a short loop from a 240mm rad to a gpu block to a cpu aio block, would the aio's pump be strong enough?
You can use one of those really long aquarium coral feeders. It's like a 2 foot long syringe...
One of my coolers emptied itself all over my CPU and motherboard over a long time. If I'm not too late in shipping it to Corsair yet (it took a while to find a replace ment X79 board), I'll ship it to them. If I am too late however, I'll try to refill it. It was an H100i unit.
Is it possible to add a reservoir tank to the fill port, and then just power the pump until it stops allowing more fluid to enter in from the tank?
where did you get the wooden holder for all the bits in the kit?
Hi there,
I need your help, I got my New Enermax AIO Liqtech 360 TR4 and I would like to refill it before use...
I also got a Thermaltake C1000 White opaque coolant (anti-corrosion fluid)
Can this liquid go inside Enermax?
Thanx for your advice
So just for kicks i emptied out the contents of my aio since it was already exhibiting the symptoms of permeation. I replaced its contents with 50/50 radiator coolant from the AutoZone. My system has never cooled faster than it does now. I have ran stress tests to deliberately increase my CPU temp, to test the cooling on my system under maximum temperatures. From a maximum temp of 203 degrees F, all the way down to 115 degrees F in under a minute and a half. Oh and my CPU is an AMD 3950X, and my rad is a Silverstone 360 AIO.
So, to reiterate, this liquid is of a relatively similar shelf-life as the one that the cooler came with from the manufacturer, correct? I recall a tech commenting on manufacturers (maybe it was an older GN video aka your commentary) using a specific liquid that would sit comfortably well with the product's warranty.
However, at the same time, I wouldn't believe this to be the case since it's pretty much the same. I guess the question then becomes, what makes the liquid inside most AIOs green again?
sooooo, how often should I be doing this? my h100i is at around 2 years now..... I'd probably just ditch it depending.
watching this to see ifi can do mine, a thermaltake 1 fan radiator (done me wonders for my humber 6600k) i think i'll try a syringe with a a tiny tube
very good to know my ek tr4 can be servisable
A 20ml seringe will do the job 😎 nice vid though! Makes me want an aio
Steve if you plan on doing this again maybe get a lab wash bottle. It's a squeeze bottle that draws from the bottom of the container. The nozzel is very fine and would easily fit in the fill port.
Not very expensive either they are non reactive plastic.
Do you need to change the watercooling often?