What is the best water cooling liquid to use?

[Butkick]

Hello
I was ordering some Coolermaster Aquagate NC-1 Liquid Coolant from NCIX.com as i have A Coolermaster Aquagate but it has been "unexpectedly discontinued" and now i am not sure what liquid coolant would be the best to use. I was thinking Primochill PC Ice NON-CONDUCTIVE Water Replacement 32OZ - Clear , but i am really unsure what would be the best.
Here is what is in my loop

Swiftech APOGEE GTZ LGA775 CPU Water Block
Primochill Primoflex Pro LRT UV Blue tubing
Coolermaster Aquagate ALC-U01 LCU

Other components
Q9550
Asus P5K64 ws mobo
Stacker STC-T01 case


In addition to this i have two other questions
Would there be a benefit to mounting my board upside down?
and
The tubing is 3/8 diameter while the quick connects on the Aquagate is 1/4 diameter
Will i notice any performance decrease?


Thanks

[ZZLEE]

Distilled water and a silver ciol.

[biff]

Last I read (which was a long time ago) is that there is (among the better fluids) little enough of a difference to be considered negligible. AFAIK straight up water is the best performance wise, but it's not available in pretty colours and is conducive to algae growth. But you can get additives to remedy both of those. If you do't want to be bothered with making your own concoction then buy a bottle of whatever 'look nice' and never mind the "non conductive" babble unless you're submersing your system in it. Or you could go to crappy tire and but some glycol (mix it 15%) and have enough to last the next 10 years for probably less than $10... if you like green.

Originally Posted by Butkick

Would there be a benefit to mounting my board upside down?

No

[edit] forgot to add that if you're going to use water, use distilled as mentioned above. I think it's ~$1.49 for 4L at the grocery store.
[/edit]

[ZZLEE]

Petra's Tech Shop Stops growth of stuff in your loop Silver Coil

[Squeetard]

Smarten up all of you. NON CONDUCTIVE coolant is the only thing you should be using in a liquid cooled computer.

period.

iT COSTS $20.

Or you can be an idiot and spill free water all over your $2000 rig.

[SugarJ]

Now, now Squeetard, didn't you see the video Petra did deliberately dumping distilled water and "non-conductive" coolant on a running mobo? The coolant shorted the board out right away, and distilled took almost a gallon if I recall.

However, anything you add to distilled does add to it's conductivity. The best solution is to properly leaktest your loops. Most people are too impatient to do that, me included. Anytime I've had a leak, it's been my fault, not the equipment.

Personally, I'm using Feser One right now, and jump back and forth between that and distilled depending if I want colored or not. The PC Ice the OP mentioned is good stuff too, I've used that before. Just don't add dyes to it.

[AmuseMe]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

Smarten up all of you. NON CONDUCTIVE coolant is the only thing you should be using in a liquid cooled computer.

period.

iT COSTS $20.

Or you can be an idiot and spill free water all over your $2000 rig.

Lets just think what Non-conductive is coolant is madde out of... Wait, I got it! The main ingrediant in NON-CONDUCTIVE coolant is...... distilled water I can ger a nice 4L jug of 0.0PPM water for about .90c at a drug store. Throw a kill-coil or two in there, and some silver barbs for overkill, and your good to go.

Or you can spend $20 on the same thing with a brand name on it. Not to mention NON-CONDUCTIVE coolant will become conductive, just like distilled water, over time.

[Dazmode]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

Smarten up all of you. NON CONDUCTIVE coolant is the only thing you should be using in a liquid cooled computer.

period.

iT COSTS $20.

Or you can be an idiot and spill free water all over your $2000 rig.

Five stars!

[biff]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

Smarten up all of you. NON CONDUCTIVE coolant is the only thing you should be using in a liquid cooled computer.

period.

iT COSTS $20.

Or you can be an idiot and spill free water all over your $2000 rig.

You had me going there for a minute!

[Squeetard]

Did some digging around. Water needs to be distilled AND deionized to be deemed non-conductive. And as soon as you spill it on your mobo the salt and mineral residue left on your mobo from the soldering process will contaminate it and make it conductive.

I've spilled some of my Feser one non-conductive fluid on my mobo (filled the pci-e slot with my vid card in it, o-ring in the gpu block was leaking) and nothing happened.