How to Maintain a Water-Cooled PC System: Flushing, Draining, and Refilling Guide

TechSource demonstrates proper water-cooled PC maintenance, including flushing, draining, and refilling.

### How To Flush Your Water-Cooled PC: A Complete Guide
* 🗓️ This video from TechSource demonstrates how to maintain a water-cooled PC, covering flushing, draining, and refilling.
* 🧰 The process is shown using "Mini-Red," a powerful mini-ITX water-cooled system, and recommended for maintenance every 6-12 months.
* 🛠️ Essential tools include an EK Leak Tester kit, compression fitting, soft tubing, distilled water, coolant (like ModMyMods), a funnel, and a PSU jumper.
* 💧  The first step is draining the coolant; locate the drain valve (essential!), attach tubing to a bucket, and open the valve.  If there's no drain valve, the presenter humorously suggests throwing the PC out the window!
* 🔄 Flushing involves using the PC's power supply (or a spare) to circulate distilled water.  The presenter shows two methods: a repeated fill-drain cycle, and a faster method using a reservoir and tilting the PC.
* 💦 The presenter emphasizes avoiding letting the pump run dry to prevent damage.  Multiple rinses with distilled water are performed until the water runs clear, though some residue might remain.
* 🔄 After flushing, completely drain the distilled water. The presenter demonstrates how to remove remaining liquid from tubes and blocks.
* 💧 Finally, refill the system with new coolant (in this case, ModWater), run the pump to circulate, and check for leaks.  Once complete, reconnect the system and enjoy your refreshed water-cooled PC!

What's happening, guys? I'm TechSource, and today I'm going to show you how to properly maintain

a water-cooled system. Let's say you're very interested in getting into water-cooled PCs, but

you don't know what it takes to properly maintain one, or maybe you're just bored out of your mind. Well, either way,

you're in the right place. I'm going to be doing three different things in this video: I'm going to show you how to properly flush

your entire system, how to drain the liquid completely, and fill it back up. And it's actually a lot easier than you might think. So, with

that said, sit back, relax, and let's dive right in. So this is the PC I'll be using for the

demonstration in this video. It is Mini-Red, the most powerful mini-ITX water-cooled system I've built on the

channel. If you guys missed it, definitely check it out; it was a super fun build to do. But we've got the 9900K in here

with 32 gigabytes of RAM and the ASUS Strix 2080 Ti. Pretty decent specs for

Minesweeper, if you ask me. It's also recommended to do maintenance on your system anywhere between 6 to 12

months. That's usually a good range. Think of it like your baby, right? Every time it gets dirty, you've got to change the

diapers; otherwise, if you don't, then it's going to start crying and then keep you up at

night, and then one day you wake up and it's dead. But anyway, these are the parts that we're going to be using

to do the maintenance. I'll go over every single one of them, starting with the EK Leak Tester kit. This thing is an

absolute must, not only for building a PC but also draining the liquid out of it. I'll show you guys how to use it in

To make the draining process as easy and convenient as possible, we're going to use a compression fitting along with the

appropriate size soft tubing and then whatever liquid we're going to pour into the system. So, in this case,

we're going to be flushing it with distilled water, and then I'm going to fill it back up with

clear coolant from these guys at Mod My Mods. And of course, once we're done with everything, we do have to fill the system back

up, and that is where the funnel comes in handy, or you can pick up a fill bottle as well.

And finally, you will definitely need this; this is a PSU jumper. We're going to need this little guy just to

power on the pump instead of having to turn on the entire system. It's going to make the draining and

flushing process so much easier. And once again, guys, all of this will make sense as we get into the video, so if you're confused

right now, don't worry about it; it will make sense very soon. All right, so now it's time to drain your system, so

go ahead and locate the drain valve. Typically, it's always located on the lowest part of your loop, so mine is over

here on the bottom right of this massive digital plate. If your PC does not have a drain valve, I want you guys to pay attention very

carefully. I want you to grab your PC with both hands, make sure you don't drop it, walk to the closest window in your house,

and toss it out the window, because why on earth would you build a water-cooling system without a drain valve?

That makes no sense! It's like if God created humans without a pee hole; there has to be a port

where we can drain the coolant conveniently. So, if you guys are watching this video before you even build your

Water cooling system, please! For the love of God, you will thank me later. Include a drain valve. All right, so now...

that we've located our drain valve, we're going to hook up our compression fitting and our soft tube. Uh, by the way, guys,

your drain valve might look something like this, with an actual handle on the top. If your handle is perpendicular like this, that means the

valve is closed and no liquid can go through it. And when you rotate it so it's parallel,

that's when the valve opens up, and that's when liquid can start flowing through. Keep that in mind. We're going to

separate the compression fitting, and I'm going to plug this end inside the drain valve. So once that's in, we can hook up the

soft tubing. [Music] So once the tube is on the fitting, you can go ahead and lock it with the cap.

All right, guys, so we are officially ready to drain the system. I have the tube running down to an empty bucket.

You guys can use a bucket, or a bowl, or even an empty water gallon; whatever you guys have laying around the house. Just make sure

you don't spill it anywhere on your carpet. This was from building Big Red version 3. I've spilled so much coolant

on the damn carpet! It's looking like a crime scene, to be honest. But yeah, learn from my mistakes, guys,

and make sure your tube is long enough so that at least one or two feet of it is deep inside the bucket.

Next up, we are going to twist the handle and let the coolant flow right through. There we go, slowly but surely.

All right, so you guys can clearly see that there is no more coolant coming out of the PC, but we still have so much more

coolant left in the system. What we're going to do is let some air inside the system so that it can help

Push the rest of the coolant out. What we're going to do is go back to our reservoir—in my case, it's the digital

plate—and we're going to slowly release the top plug. What this is going to do is it's

going to let some air back inside the system, and it's going to help push some coolant out. There you go.

All right, so now we are ready to officially flush the system out. It's okay if you guys still have some coolant

left in there; that is not going to matter because we're going to flush everything out using good old distilled water.

The point of the flush is to clean your system and get rid of all of the red coolant

that's inside there because I told you guys earlier that we are switching over to clear coolant. Now, there are two ways

you can flush out the coolant: you can use the power supply that's already inside your PC, or you can use a spare power supply, but

I'm sure a lot of you guys watching this don't have spare power supplies laying around, so we're going to be using

the power supply that's already inside the system. Before you guys do anything, make sure the cable is unplugged from the power

supply and the switch is set to off. First thing we're going to do is disconnect the cables from the

motherboard. Make sure you are disconnecting the eight-pin EPS connector, the 24-pin ATX cable—this one's actually

a tough spot because of the tubing, so your system I'm sure won't be as difficult—and finally, the GPU cables as well.

[Music] Remember the power supply jumper we talked about earlier in the video? We're going to plug this

straight into the 24-pin cable. This is going to trick the power supply into thinking it's actually plugged into

All right, now we're ready to plug the power supply cable back inside, but make sure the power supply is still

switched off. Do not power it on just yet. All right, guys, now the fun part: we're

going to start pouring in distilled water inside our system. So I'm going to be using this fill bottle

for convenience. I'm going to close this up. We're going to grab our fill bottle and start filling up the system

with water. Obviously, if you guys have a reservoir set up, then you can use the top port of

your reservoir to fill your system. Make sure it's nicely topped off. Once it reaches the top, we can remove the fill bottle. We're

gonna put our hand behind the power supply where the switch is, and we're gonna keep it there.

We're gonna turn the system on and we're gonna wait about 10-15 seconds and let

the pump do its thing and circulate the water back inside the system. So here we go. Whatever you guys do, do not let the pump

run dry. Now we can go back to the power supply, shut it off, we can open up the drain valve,

and start draining the coolant again. We're gonna close it back up and then rinse and repeat until the coolant is no more.

Go back to the power supply, turn it on. You guys can probably tell how much the coolant has diluted;

it's no longer a red color; it doesn't even match the cables anymore. We're basically going to rinse and

repeat these steps until there is no more colored coolant inside our system. Now, obviously, this is going to take a

long time; it's a very tedious task because you have to constantly fill the system, let it run for a little bit, drain the

System rinse and repeat. So I'm going to show you guys a different way, a much faster way of doing this.

So, because I'm using a massive digital plate, it's going to be a little more difficult compared to a standard

reservoir to drain the system. So, in order for this to be very effective, I have to tilt the PC

at a 45-degree angle and use this tiny funnel on the top port. All right, so here's the best way to flush

your system. So make sure your drain valve is closed and top off your reservoir with distilled water.

You can leave the pump on the entire time; you don't have to shut it off during this process,

which is the main reason why it's much faster than the previous method. Once the reservoir is topped off, wait

for the fresh water to cycle through the system, anywhere between two to three minutes. Afterwards, open the drain valve once again,

and let some of the liquid out of your system while making sure your reservoir doesn't get too low.

Once again, it's really important that you don't let the pump run dry; otherwise, it can overheat and damage

your pump. As you can see in the video, I'm only letting a little bit of fluid out of the

system before closing the valve and topping off the system once again. So to recap: top off your system with distilled water,

wait two to three minutes for the water to cycle through your system, drain a little bit of it out, close the

valve, rinse and repeat until you're satisfied with the color of your water. All right, guys, so after two full gallons

of distilled water, this is how clear the distilled water looks in our loop. We can still see some buildup around the

rubber gaskets, and when you look at the GPU block, we can see some buildup over here as well.

where the jet stream is, and this is completely normal, especially if the coolant's been sitting in the system for

almost six months. You know, there's really not much you can do with just distilled water in getting these out. This is the main

reason why a lot of people stick with distilled water in their loop, so they can avoid situations like this.

And I always tell everyone, if you guys are going to go with solid coolant in your PC, make sure to stick with solid

coolant. If you transition from solid coolant to distilled water or clear coolant, this is what you're going to deal with. The

best way to get rid of the buildup inside your blocks is to actually take them apart and clean them by hand, which is a

completely different topic. I did do a video on this if you guys want to check it out. I'll drop a link to

it down below. All right, so once you're happy with the results, it's time to shut off the power supply.

I'm going to go ahead and check the color of the water one last time, so I'm going to drain just a little

How To Flush Your Water Cooled PC

TechSource

Introduction and Overview of Water Cooling Maintenance

Introduction by TechSource, explaining the video's purpose: proper water-cooled PC maintenance.

Targeting viewers interested in water-cooled PCs and their maintenance.

Outline of three main procedures: flushing, draining, and refilling the system.

Recommendation to perform maintenance every 6-12 months.

Introduction of necessary tools and materials.

Locating the drain valve, typically at the lowest point of the loop.

Emphasis on the importance of a drain valve in water-cooling systems.

Explanation of drain valve operation (open/closed positions).

Connecting the compression fitting and soft tube to the drain valve.

Initiating the draining process and using a container to collect the coolant.

Introducing air into the system to help push out remaining coolant.

Explanation of flushing to remove old coolant before refilling with new coolant.

Two methods for flushing: using the existing or a spare power supply.

Disconnecting power supply cables from the motherboard and GPU.

Using a PSU jumper to power the pump without turning on the entire system.

Pouring distilled water into the system using a fill bottle.

Running the pump to circulate the water and then draining it.

Alternative faster flushing method using a tilted PC and funnel.

Detailed steps for the faster flushing method, emphasizing keeping the pump running.

Result of flushing with two gallons of distilled water, showing remaining buildup.

Final Draining and Refilling with New Coolant

Draining remaining liquid after flushing.

Opening the drain valve and top plug to release trapped liquid.

Using the EK leak tester kit to remove remaining liquid.

Refilling the system with new coolant (ModWater).

Pouring in the new coolant and turning on the power supply.

Checking for leaks and letting the system run for 30 minutes.

Summary of the maintenance process and final appearance of the PC.

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