3XS - BWE - Waterloop Rebuilt - Now Makes A Lot Of Noise

[drharvey12]

Hi Guys,

Just after a bit of advice and help from you guys.

Sent my system back to SCAN recently as they offer a FREE 1 year top-up and refilling of the waterloop in my system.

They even rebuilt the loop from scratch using new piping as they said that they had better tubing available now and moved one of my graphics cards to the third PCI-E slot on my motherboard to take advantage of x16 2.0 for both of my GTX480's. (They came pre-configured in slots 1 and 2 which shared the same PCI lane and therefore only worked at 8.0x each)!

Got it back within 8 days inc weekends so very happy about delivery time. Also they have run it through prime tests and others to ensure it is working fine. Again brilliant customer service so far. Packing was superb too with the interior of the machine coated in bubblewrap to help shock proof it for the journey.

Have re-connected it back up and let it stand for 30 minutes or so (not too sure if you need to do this but figured it couldn't hurt). Just powered it on and had it running for another 15 minutes and it's making quite a lot of noise now. It's bubbling away like an aquarium but it's really loud!!! I can see rather larger bubbles passing through the loop to every 20 seconds or so and the idle temps are a couple of degrees higher than they used to be.

Should I be concerned or do I need to let it stand / run for a bit longer and hope it settles down?????

Appreciate any advice you can give me.

Thanks

[Ben @ Scan]

Hi David

The pipes on the system probably just need to settle down, if there is an airlock in the system you can follow the guide here to free it off, this shows you how to tilt the system to get the water flowing freely and get rid of any air.

http://www.scan.co.uk/downloads/3xs-...fill-video.wmv

When the system was returned there was hardly any flow of the water and as it is flowing freely now we have redone the piping it will be louder than it was but it is probably an air bubble in the system

Regards

Ben

[drharvey12]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the quick response. I've been rocking it side to side for a bit and then tried it again but hasn't really made any difference. Still seem to be a lot of air bubbles going through it. I can live with it if it's going to sort itself out but is there any issue with it being like this????

It's really bubbling quite furiously in the reservoir at the front.

It is running at 16x 2.0 mode on both gfx cards now which is great

Hope you have a great weekend!!!

Cheers,

[drharvey12]

Thanks for the PM Rob.

Tried your suggestion of elevating the front to make the reservoir the highest point of the loop. This actually quietened it down a lot but it got really noisy once I put it back level again.

Am going to leave it running this morning in the hope that the pump will eventually bleed the remaining air out.

Have noticed a reduction in temps on the CPU though. About 1c at idle so at least it does appear as though the increased flow is keeping it cooler

Just have to crank up the speakers when playing games I reckon!!!!!

Anyway, I've replied to your PM as well with more info.

Hope you have a great weekend.

[Edit: Been running it all morning and although it seems ok in general the reservoir has now filled up the top part with micro bubbles that just float on top and build up at the sides. I have tried tilting it every which way but it doesn't seem to make too much of a difference. There's still a lot of bubbles going through the tube and every time a large one goes through there is an audible increase in noise - maybe once it hits the pump???). As I said it doesn't appear to be affecting performance in any way and the temps seem fine but it's certainly different to what it used to be. Also the liquid seems a lot thinner in the reservoir as I used to be barely able to see to the back but now it's much clearer. ]