CLC question... is it normal to hear the liquid "sloshing" around in the radiator?

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^ I hope the title makes some sense.

I don't really know much about CLC's or water cooling, in general, so it's a little hard for me to explain, exactly... so, please, bear with me...

I just received a NZXT Kraken X60 in the mail today and while I was taking it out of the box I could hear the liquid sort of "sloshing" around. By "sloshing", I just mean that I could hear that there was liquid moving around inside of the radiator while examining it.

I'm only concerned because I've had a Corsair H60 in my rig for the last year or two and I've never heard that sound come from it. Not while pulling it out of the packaging, changing out CPU's, swapping it to different cases, etc., etc.

Is this something to be concerned about? Or is it normal? Help plz.
 
Solution


Yes this is normal.

All liquid cooling...


Yes this is normal.

All liquid cooling solutions must have an easily compressible gaseous volume available in the loop to enable the liquid to expand as the temperature rises. This is more noticeable in all-in-one coolers that use ethylene-glycol as a coolant rather than distilled water (ethylene-glycol kills bacteria and won't cause corrosion if used with cheaper aluminium radiators). The coefficient of thermal expansion for Ethylene Glycol is approximately 0.00057 per degree centigrade whereas the coefficient of thermal expansion for water is approximately 0.00021. Thus, ethylene glycol based coolants expand at a volumetric rate nearly two and a half times that of water. If there's no room for it to expand into it will put pressure on the tubing and the pump which can cause the tubing to leak and the pump to fail.
 
Solution

chumped

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Thank you for the fast, informative reply. Now I can get to installing! :D