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Today I was testing the RAM of a friend in my PC and since I had it opened up anyway, I thought I could renew my thermal paste as well. When removing the block from the CPU, I saw this:
To me, this looks like corrosion. The AiO is roughly 6 years old, so it's nearing its end of life anyway, but is that normal? Should I still use this?
Thanks for any advice.
Air coolers for the win.
Can't beat my NH-D15. Air coolers reign supreme, with proper case flow
Doesn't look like corrosion, since that would likely be a blue/green color from the copper (you can see a little of that oxidation in the third pic), but it probably is a buildup of minerals as the main plate has slowly leaked fluid out the sides.
Should you use it?
It's leaking fluid. Unless you know for a fact it's using some kind of non-conductive fluid, it's a matter of when it leaks onto something more important, not if—probably your GPU, if not your CPU.
Wait, there are nonconductive PC cooling fluids? I need to learn more.
There were some really toxic ones used in early supercomputer days.
Mineral oil is nonconductive. Some people even do aquarium builds with the whole mobo and gpu immersed in mineral oil. I don't think mineral oil is used in loop coolers though.
Yeah I think outside of transformers trying to pump mineral oil without constantly dissolving your o rings would be a nightmare.
Pure water, by itself, is non conductive IIRC. It only becomes conductive if there is stuff dissolved in it, like with tap water where there are small amounts of minerals in the water.
I don't know of any, but I don't keep up with the world of liquid cooling. Water is usually the most common, since it is cheap and has reliable performance.
I'd guess it's a tiny leak and something in the heat transfer fluid can corrode copper when exposed to air. Copper turns blue when corroded, and the white buildup is probably the dissolved solutes from the fluid being left behind as the water evaporates.
Probably best to replace the AiO.