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.
@@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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.... :)
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!!.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
I know this is an old video, but it's still pretty helpful. Even if you didn't do things "properly", you at least demonstrated how to do it. Only difference is use a threaded syringe (do they have those?) with a rubber gasket and unscrew both screws on the pump. One to drip feed the water in and the other so air can be pushed out via the water being pushed in. Can you buy replacement copper screws for it so you can avoid rust? What do you use in the water to make it less corrosive? How often should you clean out the old water? How often do you clean the radiator? What's better, top mounted or front mounted? Should you even go for an AIO if you don't plan on overclocking right out the gate? When you're overclocking, why would that effect the temp of the cpu? I thought gaming used the gpu way more than the cpu. Are you putting an AIO on the cpu to control the overall heat in the case? Do squirrels have thoughts and feelings?
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
I probably would have removed both threaded plugs right at the start. If you put water in air has to come out. You didn't give the displaced air a place to escape.
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.
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
Now I see. Still watching. Commenting too early. Duh. Question: I have a 2 yr old CoolerMaster Neptune 280 AIO. Should I be looking into topping it up?
Why would you comment before watching it all? Other people read comments before watching, and then they assume that what you suggested never happened because they are trusting you watched it, and seeing you as an authority. This isn't a livestream. Always very confused why people do this. That said, we do appreciate you watching and engaging! You would only need to top-off a CLC if you start hearing gurgling/air bubbles or see significantly degraded performance. Generally speaking, permeation does not get serious until, on average, about the 4-5 year mark. I would suspect you are still perfectly fine!
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!
From what I understand, since they use mixed metals in this loop you'd need to use propylene glycol to prevent galvanic corrosion. Wonder what's the water/PG ratio that should be used? Because anything but water would reduce its effectiveness in cooling, and would put strain on the pump, so I don't think you would want to use a 50/50 mix. EDIT: Thermaltake's Coolant 1000 uses a 94%/6% water/PG mix, so I guess that's a good starting point.
People who are saying this would be easier with various pumps and what not you're totally missing the point here. Steve's trying to show how a regular user sitting at home could do this. It wouldn't be worth it buy hardware to fill a clc as you'll be doing it only once or twice in it's lifetime and at that point it's better to just get a new cooler or go for open loop cooling.
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.
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
oxidation (yellowish/orange corrosion) happens when air gets into the system, this allows the water and oxygen to react with the metals (screw and copper base plate/heatsink)..
Try taking both screws out. fill in one, let the air out the other. Using only one hole the air is trying to go up that line not letting the fluid go down.
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
Open both screws, liquid gets in one side push the air out, also if I would try to find tube fittings that match that screws attach hoses and use another pump to inject liquid in there A syringe with some kind of seal could be used In all cases you start with the second screw removed and at the end screwed loose so that air escapes but not much water
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.
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.
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?
might be a good idea to place the pump in a vice with wood jaws, level it in the vice with the radiator as low as possible below the pump, use a temporary reservoir and shut off valve to fill it, let it fill up close the valve, do some short burst of power to blead any air, open the valve let it sit so all the air reaches the reservoir and repeat, let it sit for a day to insure it's not leaking and all the air is out then remove the valve and cap it off.
Why not use a mini funnel and a medicine dropper? Surely either of those would make putting the liquid into the AIO easier and less messy than using a glass cup.
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...
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.
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.
It's just distilled water and the EK Cryo fluid whatever mixture they have. Translation: 50/50 pre-diluted Antifreeze for PCs. In other words, if I'm understanding this correctly, the concept for PC liquid cooling is the very same idea for automobiles and radiators. A car Engine gets hot while running and is cooled using a radiator and Antifreeze Coolant to help maintain the cars performance and prevent overheating. The only major difference is the type of glycol solution used. For PCs its Propylene Glycol, and for Cars, it's Ethelene Glycol. For Enermax: Make a reservoir for the tanks. :)
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.
LMAO, next time open BOTH holes from the start! You are getting an airlock, that's why when you tipped it while they were open things went better :) I don't have experience doing this exact thing but it can't be much different from a car rad and res, removing the air pockets and the avoiding air locks is the most important part of the process. Great content as always, regardless of the hiccup ;)
No you did not open both of them. Watch your own video at 9:30. I clearly see a screw, as you're trying to pour liquid in, with a paper funnel. Db Tech made a good point here, about getting an air lock. Interesting defensive response, btw. "Next time, watch the video" ....Really?
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
Changed loquid on my GTX 4080TI hybird. Used car coolant Liqui Moly at 20% combined with destileted water and a syringe 20ml. The whole thing use +-100ml
Just use a big syringe and push water through there until it spills out of the other hole... Don't know If Alphacool had those things 4 years ago, but there are AIO's from Alphacool with their quick connectors so those are maintainable and upgradable
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.
the only way to do this is forcing water into one side of the pump into the radiator until it exits the radiator and comes out the other side of the pump - not sure if the pump has two chambers or not but that would be helpful, once the radiator is full and no air and you have water coming from the exit side of the pump then time to top it off in the pump and seal it - it's a little like bleeding brake lines in a car
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
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.
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 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?
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.
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!
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 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
how often do you have to refill it?
NO FOOD
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.
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
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.
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.... :)
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?
Find our Liqtech TR4 360 & 240 reviews here: th-cam.com/video/6jICNXAQrgs/w-d-xo.html
I'm early... hi...
i have the enermax 240. would have gotten the 360 but they were sold out and i didn't want wait for them to come back in stock.
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.
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.
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.
Watching a stoned man fumble the intricate job 😂
Just what I thought
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.
Perfect TH-camr, can't do anything without causing a bunch of comments on how to do things better.
My Antec Kühler 620 is now about 6 years old and still working like a charm.
Could you use a turkey baster (essentially giant syringe lol) to inject the liquid?
XFourty7 thats what i use to fill my loop lol
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.
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.
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.
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.
The real question is:
Can i fill my AIO with vodka?
OUT OF BOX THERMALS!!!
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
I know this is an old video, but it's still pretty helpful. Even if you didn't do things "properly", you at least demonstrated how to do it. Only difference is use a threaded syringe (do they have those?) with a rubber gasket and unscrew both screws on the pump. One to drip feed the water in and the other so air can be pushed out via the water being pushed in. Can you buy replacement copper screws for it so you can avoid rust? What do you use in the water to make it less corrosive? How often should you clean out the old water? How often do you clean the radiator? What's better, top mounted or front mounted? Should you even go for an AIO if you don't plan on overclocking right out the gate? When you're overclocking, why would that effect the temp of the cpu? I thought gaming used the gpu way more than the cpu. Are you putting an AIO on the cpu to control the overall heat in the case? Do squirrels have thoughts and feelings?
I have been waiting for this video since I saw the light go off in his head on the disassembly video. excellent work.
a solid video on what not to do
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
I probably would have removed both threaded plugs right at the start. If you put water in air has to come out. You didn't give the displaced air a place to escape.
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.
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
What about submerging it in water and just start the motor until the bubbles stops?
Or pump water into one of the holes?
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
Steve - Ya gotta open up the other fitting to let out the trapped air. Love your show, dude.
Did that several times.
Now I see. Still watching. Commenting too early. Duh. Question: I have a 2 yr old CoolerMaster Neptune 280 AIO. Should I be looking into topping it up?
Why would you comment before watching it all? Other people read comments before watching, and then they assume that what you suggested never happened because they are trusting you watched it, and seeing you as an authority. This isn't a livestream. Always very confused why people do this. That said, we do appreciate you watching and engaging!
You would only need to top-off a CLC if you start hearing gurgling/air bubbles or see significantly degraded performance. Generally speaking, permeation does not get serious until, on average, about the 4-5 year mark. I would suspect you are still perfectly fine!
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!
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
From what I understand, since they use mixed metals in this loop you'd need to use propylene glycol to prevent galvanic corrosion.
Wonder what's the water/PG ratio that should be used? Because anything but water would reduce its effectiveness in cooling, and would put strain on the pump, so I don't think you would want to use a 50/50 mix.
EDIT: Thermaltake's Coolant 1000 uses a 94%/6% water/PG mix, so I guess that's a good starting point.
Yeah, that "corrosion" looks like the copper being transferred to the aluminum screws/heatsink.
People who are saying this would be easier with various pumps and what not you're totally missing the point here. Steve's trying to show how a regular user sitting at home could do this. It wouldn't be worth it buy hardware to fill a clc as you'll be doing it only once or twice in it's lifetime and at that point it's better to just get a new cooler or go for open loop cooling.
It's Great Too look back at these videos and see how far you have come.. :) keep up the great work
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.
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.
oxidation (yellowish/orange corrosion) happens when air gets into the system, this allows the water and oxygen to react with the metals (screw and copper base plate/heatsink)..
Try taking both screws out. fill in one, let the air out the other. Using only one hole the air is trying to go up that line not letting the fluid go down.
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
Ha! I got this AIO and thought about the possibility of refilling!
You should
Open both screws, liquid gets in one side push the air out, also if I would try to find tube fittings that match that screws attach hoses and use another pump to inject liquid in there
A syringe with some kind of seal could be used
In all cases you start with the second screw removed and at the end screwed loose so that air escapes but not much water
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.
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.
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?
might be a good idea to place the pump in a vice with wood jaws, level it in the vice with the radiator as low as possible below the pump, use a temporary reservoir and shut off valve to fill it, let it fill up close the valve, do some short burst of power to blead any air, open the valve let it sit so all the air reaches the reservoir and repeat, let it sit for a day to insure it's not leaking and all the air is out then remove the valve and cap it off.
Would love to see the EKWB refilled from that same tear down
Why not use a mini funnel and a medicine dropper? Surely either of those would make putting the liquid into the AIO easier and less messy than using a glass cup.
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...
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.
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.
best way to refill is cut off tubes at end. then snip off of stubbs then refill. its somewhat easy to slide back on. its a little shorter..
found this video on a thread and the dude wrote "check out the video tech jesus made" 😂😂😂
It's just distilled water and the EK Cryo fluid whatever mixture they have.
Translation: 50/50 pre-diluted Antifreeze for PCs.
In other words, if I'm understanding this correctly, the concept for PC liquid cooling is the very same idea for automobiles and radiators. A car Engine gets hot while running and is cooled using a radiator and Antifreeze Coolant to help maintain the cars performance and prevent overheating. The only major difference is the type of glycol solution used. For PCs its Propylene Glycol, and for Cars, it's Ethelene Glycol.
For Enermax: Make a reservoir for the tanks. :)
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.
LMAO, next time open BOTH holes from the start! You are getting an airlock, that's why when you tipped it while they were open things went better :) I don't have experience doing this exact thing but it can't be much different from a car rad and res, removing the air pockets and the avoiding air locks is the most important part of the process.
Great content as always, regardless of the hiccup ;)
We did open both of them. Next time, watch the video. And also realize that we don't include every single cut in the final edit.
No you did not open both of them. Watch your own video at 9:30. I clearly see a screw, as you're trying to pour liquid in, with a paper funnel. Db Tech made a good point here, about getting an air lock. Interesting defensive response, btw. "Next time, watch the video" ....Really?
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.
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.
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!
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
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
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
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!"
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.
Just use an external pump, set the radiator above (tubes down) and fill the circuit from below... It's weird but it worked for me.
Changed loquid on my GTX 4080TI hybird. Used car coolant Liqui Moly at 20% combined with destileted water and a syringe 20ml.
The whole thing use +-100ml
2 syringes with soft tips, put 80% of the fluid in one, and bleed it as one does bicycle brake calipers such as SRAM.
Just use a big syringe and push water through there until it spills out of the other hole...
Don't know If Alphacool had those things 4 years ago, but there are AIO's from Alphacool with their quick connectors so those are maintainable and upgradable
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.
Damn thats a good looking aio
You can use one of those really long aquarium coral feeders. It's like a 2 foot long syringe...
I bought a watercooled 1080 so I might come back to this video in 5 years hah
2 years to go
plumber silicone grease (not silicone that hardens up) on the rubber gasket would make the seal better
I don't have any propelyne mixture. Can I use gravy instead? If so, which flavour?
You need to have both ports open to allow for breathing while transfering fluids.
I'm watching this and hollering at the computer... "Let some damn air out!" LOL
where did you get the wooden holder for all the bits in the kit?
Any info on if the silent loop 280mm would be filled like this too?
Do a series on different aio's..... especially cheaper ones
is this plain (ordinary) water for drinking? do you use for CPU Liquid cooler drinking water?
the only way to do this is forcing water into one side of the pump into the radiator until it exits the radiator and comes out the other side of the pump - not sure if the pump has two chambers or not but that would be helpful, once the radiator is full and no air and you have water coming from the exit side of the pump then time to top it off in the pump and seal it - it's a little like bleeding brake lines in a car