My computer had been restarting alot lately, so i opened it up and their was only about a quarter cup of water in my water cooling system. The plastic tubing going into the cpu block nearly melted off, and the temp inside the comp felt like i was in the african desert. Anyway...is it normal for the water to evaporate from the system?-thanks

are you sure it's not leaking out somewhere?

if it is not sealed, then water will evaporate quickly in a hot environment

but even if it's completely sealed (it should be) water vapors will slowly leak out through the tubing. silicone tubing leaks vapors the most, vinyl tubing is best, but still leaks out vapors over time.

in any water cooling system, you should routinely check your water level.

you may want to consider getting or making a larger reservoir

thanks,

It is sealed, but im guessing heat is the issue.I have been having trouble with bubbles because of the anti-algea formula that came with it, it is like a soup, and when it is mixed with the water it becomes foamy.

Because of the bubbles, the flow rate is significantly lower then it should be, theirfor the temp is way higher then it should be.

I have a 120mm reservior already and had enough trouble fitting that into my mid-tower case, so another wouldn't be reasonable.

Since 9/10 of the water evaporated, i refilled it and now their are no bubbles and the water is flying through the pipes. Well, i hope this doesn't happen again

i just use plain old distilled water in my setup

foam is bad, very bad. i wouldn't use that stuff anymore if i were you

yeh, i am using distilled water, but you are supposed to use some kind of alti-algea and pump lubricant or else your system will slowly be eatin by minerals.

btw..what kind system do you have?

I made my own system. (even the water block)

nice...

Yup (10 character minumum sucks)

i also used blue food coloring just for fun

haha

auto antifreeze 50/50 % solution works fine too.

the problem with anti-freeze is that its electro conductive so it kinda cancels out the effects of the distilled water...same with the blue food coloring...cool and all, but if your system leeks, your screwed.

if you want to get technical, all fluid is electro conductive, even distilled and deionized water. however their conductive resistance is very high. voltage can overcome resistance, but the voltages in a PC (with the exception of the PSU itself) are very low, un-contaminated distilled water will not conduct enough electricity in a low voltage environment to short anything out.

while pure distilled water is practically non-conductive, any small amount of contamination will make it very conductive again. if the pump was run with regualr water first, then the distilled water is already contaminated enough to damage components.

there are aftermarket non-conductve water-alternative cooling liquids that are much more reistant to electro conductive contamination.

to bad i dont want to pay $30 for them

I would suggest really making sure that there are no leaks before installing the whole thing in there.

Also, the oil in PC thing highlighted something very important: you may have spills and all, but it does no permanent harm. Just dry it off (Remember the part where the guy dunked his whole PC in deionized water? Ran for 5 mins before shorting out).