Question about reliability of water cooled CPU

This video should answer some of your questions. Lots of good stuff on youtube about this topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1p9QbZ9tc&ab_channel=JayzTwoCents

EDIT: Here is another good video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j80dQIxkdc&ab_channel=AwesomesauceNetwork

I've been tempted to do a custom watercooled setup for a long time. I've never gotten around to it though.

My first foray into water cooling was an AiO or closed loop water cooler. It could have been my bad luck, but in my experience you are just as likely to get a leak with a closed loop system as you are a custom system. There are more points of failure with a typical custom system, but closed loops do leak and I am proof of it. I bought a Cooler Master Eisberg 240L Prestige. The draw was that it was "expandable", so you could add more waterblocks to the loop if you wanted and it could be drained and refilled. I never tested out these features though. This system developed a split in a seam on the plastic shell that contained the pump / cooling plate. I believe it was created by the force of the mounting system holding the pump / plate to the motherboard. I believe the leak had existed for quite awhile before my eventual "failure", but because I run a distributed computing project (WCG) and never turn off my pc and the leak was very slow, the fluid that escaped evaporated before it became a problem. I was away at work (Christmas Eve) and my daughter was using my computer and when she was done she turned it off. I came home Christmas Day and when I had a few minutes (after supper was all cooking), I went to use my computer and found it off. When I tried to turn it on, it wouldn't. After some quick troubleshooting, I was unable to determine the cause of the problem as the coolant wasn't immediately obvious. Being busy, I didn't get around to looking into the problem until the next day. This is when I discovered that coolant was on the backplate of my "new" 980. Thankfully I was able to salvage my system by letting everything dry out and using compressed air to force coolant out of my graphics card, PCI-E slot, off the surface of the motherboard and the CPU socket.

So I'm not trying to scare you away from water cooling, just making sure you go in with your eyes open if you go the closed loop direction. My new water cooler (Cooler Master Glacer 240L) which was Cooler Master's replacement for my faulty Eisberg has worked well ever since. It's been installed for about a year now and my system never shuts down.

1. Firmly agree w/ closed loop coolers
2. Absolutely agree. Closed loop coolers are cheap for a reason...they cost as much for the entire cooler as you might easily find for a good watercooling pump. Closed loop radiators are almost always made from aluminum and typically are thinner than normal watercooling radiators made of copper and brass.
3. Aluminium in a loop with copper, brass, nickel and even silver can easily lead to mixed metals corrosion. This can be inhibited by using a coolant that is meant to inhibit corrosion (similar to the properties of glycol antifreeze in car cooling systems - brass, iron, aluminum, copper, etc). However, the more you 'add' to pure water, the more viscous it becomes and also causes you to lose cooling potential.
4. Very much agree. I would make a strong estimation that greater than 95% of watercooling leaks or failures are due to installation or maintenance error. Examples would be over-tightening fittings, overly loose fittings, improper block seating, improperly seated o-rings, running a loop without water or coolant, etc.
5. Agree. Also make certain that when you install inside the case that you double check all fittings even if you do not completely disassemble the loop. Fittings can come loose due to twisting of tubing, etc. You're likely going to know within minutes (sometimes seconds) if you have a leak...pay very close attention when you jumper your loop with it filled within the case around the remainder of your PC components.

I did a lot of testing with the EK Predator XLC 240 - I'd strongly recommend it. Take a read through the stickied data review on it. I haven't yet used the Swiftech, so I can't say either way.