Preventative Maintenance is Important!

Hopefully, you have come to read this article as a means of education and not because you have already had a leak. I will start this article by stating that the best way to handle a leak is to avoid ever getting one in the first place. ALWAYS perform regular inspections and maintenance on your water cooling loop! You can often catch leaks early by simply looking around inside your system and paying close attention to your tubing, water fittings and cooling blocks. These items will often show signs of a coming leak by the presence of small forming drops on the outside of the object you are inspecting. Place a small towel under your cooling products, covering your components, to protect them while you are inspecting the cooling loop. Try to agitate the tubing a little, move it back and forth gently to simulate the PC being jarred or shaken in some way. This will also help to show weak points in your loop that may result in a leak.

Why do liquids conduct electricity?

Before moving onto the process for cleaning up a liquid cooling loop leak, it is important to know why such a leak is so dangerous to your components. This can be summed up with one word: electricity. A coolant leak puts your components at danger by allowing electrical currents to either reach parts of your components they weren't meant for or by allowing more current to reach those parts than intended.

100% pure H2O doesn't conduct electricity because there aren't free moving particles in it. For a substance to conduct electricity it needs to have electron mobility. In metals, for example, cations (positively charged ions) are surrounded by a sea of electrons, which are mobile. Thus, metals conduct electricity. In water's case (as well as any other liquid), it only conducts electricity if it contains some other substance which has free electron movement, ie. it is conductive itself. Since even normal tap water is not pure (it has added minerals and ions etc., with free electron movement), it is able to conduct electricity. For more in-depth information on electrical conductivity check here and here.

So, you have done your homework and bought a non-conductive coolant or are using distilled water and are now wondering, "That statement must not apply to me since I am using a non-conductive coolant." That is where a lot of people make a big mistake. Even though your coolant may be more or less non-conductive when you bought it, over time it will pick up particles from your cooling system (dust, dirt, impurities, algae growth, and even microscopic copper/aluminum particles from your waterblocks) and the non-conductiveness becomes not so non-conductive over time. That is why it is so important to change your coolant on a regular basis. Over time it WILL become more conductive than when you first bought it. The longer you wait, the more conductive the coolant can become... If a leak occurs during a lapse in maintenance (when the coolant is most likely to be conductive) you have a higher chance of your components being damaged.

What should I do when I find a leak?

Upon discovering that you have a coolant leak in your loop, you should IMMEDIATELY start the shutdown process for your PC. Close any open programs and then shut your PC as you normally would. However, if you are seeing ANY sort of violent behavior resulting from a leak (ie. sparks flying, coolant squirting from the leak instead of dripping, smoke is present, etc.) then it may be necessary to simply turn off or unplug the PC in order to prevent further damage that may be caused by a slow shut-down process. The longer and more extreme the exposure to electricity via a leak the greater the chance that your component(s) will be permanently damaged.

Next, you need to grab a towel or something else similar to allow you to soak up any excess coolant that may be in/on your components that were leaked on. I suggest that you blot or dab the affected area instead of wiping back and forth. This will prevent spreading the coolant around to areas that were not originally affected by the leak as well as keep the towel from being shredded by sharp areas which are often due to solder points on video, sound and other expansion cards. While you are doing this, look around for the source of the leak and inspect all the areas around and below the leak to make sure you have identified all wet components.

You can see in the pics below where a cheaply made water cooling system sprung a leak around the CPU waterblock itself which dumped quite a bit of coolant on the video card as well as the AGP socket itself. As I was playing a game I noticed some sudden graphic anomalies which prompted me to look in the case window. When I saw that there was a pool of coolant standing on the card I shut the PC down. The blue dye certainly increased the conductivity of the coolant; it also made it easier to see exactly WHERE the leak reached. You will notice that some of the coolant even had time to dry and get crusty. This is certainly a testament to good coolant maintenance. Had the coolant been really old and polluted, the reaction to the leak would have been much more violent.

How do I properly clean up after a leak?

Before you begin to clean up the mess, make sure you have the needed supplies (which are very easy to come by). You will need some paper towels, a clean toothbrush, and some Rubbing Alcohol. Rubbing Alcohol is used since it will not damage electrical components if given a chance to thoroughly dry and it dries very fast. The toothbrush is used to scrub the area needed to be cleaned and is good and reaching into small areas where the leaked coolant may have collected and/or pooled.

The process itself is very simple. Dip the toothbrush into the alcohol and gently wipe off any excess from the brush by running it against the rim of the alcohol bottle. Then gently scrub the area which was leaked on with with the alcohol soaked toothbrush. Periodically blot the area you are scrubbing with your paper towel to soak up the rubbing alcohol and coolant you are scrubbing clean. Repeat this process until you are confident that you have removed all of the leaked coolant. If you are using dye in your coolant then make sure that you continue until the paper towel you are blotting with comes back without any color on it after dabbing the area. This is a good sign that the area is clean.

In order to clean the AGP, PCI, ISA, etc. slot itself, add a small amount of rubbing alcohol to the corner of a folded up paper towel. Fold it over enough so that it is thick enough to slide into the AGP slot and touch both sides of the inside of the socket. Then take corner of paper towel with alcohol on it and gently slide it into the AGP slot and run it along the slot. Next, use another folded up paper towel WITHOUT any alcohol, it needs to be dry, and run it along the inside of the slot as well. This will wipe up any excess alcohol and coolant/dirt. Repeat this process, just like with the toothbrush, until you are satisfied that you have cleaned up all of the coolant.

After you are satisfied that you have thoroughly cleaned all of the affected areas exposed to the leak, let the components thoroughly dry... a hair dryer can help to expedite the process. Once you are convinced that everything is 100% dry and that you have corrected the source of the leak, reassemble the PC and fire it back up. If you experience any other strange behavior or signs that the leak is still affecting the PC, then shut it down and repeat the cleaning steps again.

As long as you catch the leak early and do a thorough job cleaning up the leaked coolant, your hardware should stand a very good chance of surviving. After following these steps, the PC which I took these pics from continues to run great and showed zero signs of permanent damage from the leak.

Good luck to you if you are attempting to recover from a leak and remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Take care of your cooling loop!