cross-posted from: https://possumpat.io/post/6398015
Hello everyone, I need a bit of help trying to make sure my idea makes sense.
Long story short I am converting my PC from air cooled to liquid cooled and need some help with filling up the coolant and avoiding air bubbles.My idea is to use a brake bleeder to vacuum out the air from the custom loop then fill the loop with coolant.
The first step is to have a bucket of coolant up high on a shelf so that gravity helps fill the whole system.
I will submerge the hose with the valve open to let out any air in the hose, then close the valve and lift out that end of the hose and connect it to the Y splitter.
This way there is no air in the first hose from the bucket. That alone I think would be enough to start pulling the coolant through and fill the case because of the suction and gravity.
The second step would be to use the brake bleeder to vacuum out the air of the whole system. I am thinking like 10-15 psi should be good depending how much the soft hoses bend.
Once the air is out I will close the valve to the vacuum and slowly open the valve to the coolant to start filling the system.
I connected the fill hose to a nipple fitting at the top of the reservoir/pump combo, and I connected the outlet port to the GPU block at the bottom.
I imagine it will pull the coolant to the GPU first as coolant falls into the reservoir, then through the radiator, and then back to the inlet port at the top. It will fill up above where the inlet tube is so that it is submerged to prevent any bubbles in the future as coolant is pumped through.
My concerns are that normally you connect the inlet and outlet to the bottom of the water pump, and if needed there are additional inlet ports on the top of the reservoir.
I’m not sure if it matters that I use the top inlet only. The reason I switched to the top port was to try and make it make sense in my head on how the water would be sucked through when filling to avoid any air pockets in the radiator if it got sucked in from both ends.
The second concern is that my radiator is above the reservoir, on a car you usually fill the system from the top point on the radiator which is the highest spot.
It seems confusing to me on the PC to fill it from a lower point. I think vacuuming out the air will help with any issues but I’m not 100% sure.info
I got the idea because a hose on my car recently failed so I started looking up videos on how to fill the coolant as I heard having bubbles can cause overheating, and using a vacuum seems to be the way to go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1beZZCBUnt0I then started searching online on how to do the same thing for a PC and found some videos of people recently trying this, but it seems they both had some issues so I wanted to overcome that before trying it myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsJkmJMeL4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLu9RgmwzTUI found this video in my research in trying to understand how liquid and gravity work which gave me the idea to have the fill bucket up high.
I’m gonna be real this is a little over engineered. I threw tubes on, didn’t even measure, threw the pump/reservoir at the lowest point and called it good. I dont even have a release valve I have to plug a hole with my finger every time I change the fluid. But the setup doesnt look to bad. I already started this comment before studying where your pump is but just make sure that sits low.
Edit, the setup is fine. I wouldnt bleed it. Just hook up a release valve at the bottom of the pump before it feeds to the GPU to make the fluid easy to drain and your setup would be good. But if you wanna suck all the air out I say try it.
Haha this is pretty much the response I expected but I’m still waiting for my gpu block to show up so I’ve had a lot of time to over think the whole thing, plus it’s been pretty fun learning more about fluid and stuff.
At this point I just want to try it and record it and hopefully do it better than the only two people I have found that tried doing it the way car people seem to do it all the time
You should totally do it and post it then I wanna see it honestly lol
Haha alright my water block is finally out for delivery so I’m hopeful I can get it all installed by the weekend
Zero hour is almost here! I wish you luck, but most importantly; have fun!
She’s alive!
Damn that looks so amazing. Great job! How did the bleeding go?
made a little video of the process https://youtu.be/quH8xCndh84
This is impressive tbh. It was extremely successful imo and looks clean once its filled.
It went pretty well, I thought it would fill it up all in one go but I had to vacuum out a few times and let some water go in, then vacuum some more and let water go in.
I ran a benchmark to compare how it did before and after and the water block kept the GPU like 20 degrees cooler and the cpu almost 10 degrees cooler even though the cpu is still air cooled