As a few of you know I did some upgrades this year that went pretty well, except for one major mistake on my part, and that was when I connected two Enermax D.F. Storm fans to my Corsair H100i GTX AIO cooler (120x240mm radiator), and the current draw fried the fan controller in the pump/block forcing me to have a H100i V2 overnighted from Newegg to replace it, and the purchase of the Aquacomputer Aquaero XT 6 to control both the D.F. Storm radiator fans (on the new AIO) and the D.F. Storm case fans. For those unfamiliar with my main rig, I have a description of it here: https://community.amd.com/thread/230494
Since doing this, I decided to do a post-mortem on the H100i GTX to see what exactly three years of 24/7 power-on time does to one, and that is what this post is about.
Caveat: This rad was functioning acceptably prior to my stupid move with the fans. Despite what you see, keep this in mind. What I am attempting to do here is to educate and inform. The warranty on this unit was five years. Most people don't run these 24/7 like I do, so the usage pattern here could actually be closer to the five year mark for most people. I don't really like my HDDs going through a lot of power cycles, so I run for continuous uptime, and that's how I ran with WD Greens without issue for over five years, and after upgrading to enterprise WD Gold drives, the same policy is in place.
My advice is that although these may still perform acceptably after the warranty expires, do not rely on it to continue to after that period. Continuous uptime use for three years to the month produced what you are about to see in mine.
As some of you might recall, one of the improvements that they touted with the GTX version of the H100i was the lower evaporation rate from the new tubing. Based on other sources, and from a GN teardown of a new Asetek rad of the same size, I found that their claim here seems to be true. I estimate that in addition to what is measured in the cup, there was another 5-10 ml in the pump and in the rad itself that was a little more difficult to drain, plus maybe 5ml or so of spillage during disassembly. Accounting for estimates of unaccounted for fluid, I'd venture to nail the fill level at 165-175 ml at the time of disassembly.
The liquid did appear to be clear, but there were some dark "bits" in it as well.
The rubber "jet" fitting that goes over the microfins and functions as a seal was pretty nasty.
That was just a preview of things to come. The first picture here is a little blurry due to focus issues, but it was the first picture of the revealed micro-fins. The second picture is a bit sharper. The third picture is a bit blurrier, but shows what was resting on top of the fins too large to fit into them. You can see clearly that there is a large wad of squishy debris in the middle, signs of corrosion of the copper is visible and possibly electrolytic since the rad is Aluminum. The dark regions in the micro-fins were caked to the top of the fins, and to date has largely even defied a toothbrush (dry) in attempting to get it out, although the bristles have difficulty getting in.
In conclusion, if you run your system hard and constant-on, be vigilant with watching your temperatures, and maybe even obtain a spare in case of failure after the three year uptime mark. After the warranty expires, it might be a good idea to retire the AIO to a less important system even if it is still operating fine. In most cases it will be cheaper to replace the AIO than to replace the CPU.
What you see here is probably the situation in all Asetek manufactured AIOs after similar uptime (Corsair, EVGA, NZXT, Thermaltake, etc.......the list is long). IMHO, they need to put some effort into better post-manufacture cleaning of the radiators before assembly.
Don't let this put you off on using an AIO. This was operating within expectations and experience up to the time of failure. These units enable overclocking and long life of CPUs, and still make for less wear and tear on the PC board of the motherboard than what I call BAHHSs (Big-_ssed-Honking-Heat-Sinks).
This post is provided for information only. Your AIO may have different results.
Message was edited by: Jim Bryant Due to problems uploading the rest of the pictures, this had to be finished in a post-posting edit.
Hello,
AIO manufacturing is not new, with good consumer result if one check the total n° of users and yet works fairly well against an aircooler.
Meaning that the manufacturing process have developed taking account of issues like leaking or degrading.
I think these may not be filled completely, build with a negative pressure inside the loop.
This will fight the natural liquid expansion due to repeated thermal cycles and lowering down the evaporation.
But i would imagine that this negative pressure would equalize over the time, even if the tubing is thick the fitting/coldplate are the major point of leak.
Then with the liquid slowly evaporating over long time, the loop will keep this negative pressure lowering the chance to leak.
This will lead to lower performances over time, until some failure happen somewhere either leak, clog, circuit board.
Also one need to take into account the corrosion if different kind of metals are used, like often it's the case with copper/aluminium combo.
Galvanic corrosion happen when different metal with different electronegativity are used, creating a charge flow into the liquid.
Also the fact that the AIO is working in a charged environment, could increase a current flow into the liquid increasing the corrosion.
This will cause metal slowly to dissolve into the liquid, the copper green junk we both found when dissembling.
For sure if any other impurity like dust would enter in the liquid, this would maybe increase the chances of building the green junk clog.
Maybe helping the dissolved metal present into the solution to precipitate, forming the junk on the fins.
On top of that, the thermal cycles when heating and cooling also greatly help the corrosion or any reaction happening into the liquid.
Especially in place where the t° is really hot, hopefully engineers take this into account, everyone does not have a 21/23° AC always with him. 
Obviously an AIO cooling a celeron in Finland will be less stressed than the one cooling a 32 cores in India on a long run.
So a lot is happening in a closed loop like these AIO, much more than what would withstand a normal custom loop.
Since i'm running these same old AIO blocks + rads, i'm pretty sure that i will find the same green gunk after 2 year, even running 75% H2O, 25% glycol.
I will take pictures next time i will clean the loop, almost 2 years now since i build this custom AIO loop, still have not failed.
It would be great if AIO manufacturers would also offer loop like the one i did, for the average price of 2 AIO.
2 rads + 1 cpu AIO block + 1 gpu AIO block + small tank => pre-assembled to be filled after been mounted, great performances for a decent price.
Something like this before i stopped to care about, note that now most of the gpu now have a memory/vrm plate, hence a HG10 is not needed anymore.
As long as it works, it's all good!
IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello,
I cleaned the loop and disassembled both the AIO block, here the result after 2 years being in a closed loop with 30%/70% antifreeze/water.
The left block is the oldest H100 mounted on the gpu, it's pretty clean even if i found the same green copper gunk.
The right block is the H100i mounted on top of the cpu, being 1st in the loop it got more of the green gunk acting as a filter.
But on overall both blocks seem to be in a good shape even after 6 years, cleaned and refilled the loop it works just fine.
Conclusion these AIO are pretty good to be reused if put in the right conditions, even the o-ring seems in good shape.
Here the cleaned loop cooling my eGPU setup, waiting i decide what to do since unfortunately my mb P8Z68 Dlx died. 
It seems i killed the Z68 chipset after cleaning and remounting everything on the mb.
Pro-tip: always consider handling old stuff with the care and respect it deserve, not as it is brand new.
