How to clean clogged GPU and CPU blocks

all right we're literally on the heels of our last video we stopped recording on that one played a couple video games and then came back out here to fix the mess i made so if you didn't see that last video didn't do well then you won't know why the loop looks like this so please go watch that video oh god it turned chunky [Music] what we're gonna do today is we're gonna clean it and take you guys along for the ride of how to clean your water loop after you put vodka or apple juice and chocolate milk through it [Music] so i had this loop running for a while after i put this distilled water back in here it's crunchy out here like listen it's like i don't know whatever dripped out of it got all nasty all right so first things we have to do obviously is drain the loop i kept it running because i didn't want this to coagulate any worse i guess i want to get as much of it to move to the pump as i could because most of it would kind of just float we need to drain the loop there's some tools we're going to need though so h-block is obviously different the ek water blocks and the fantex block here that's on our 2080 ti use allen screws when it comes to holding things together fortunately you're not gonna have to take the block off the card but you're gonna wanna be careful to make sure not to get the card too wet um if a little bit does drip on there it's fine as long as it's completely dry before you turn the card back on or plug it into power so unplug your stuff unplug your power supply get everything off get all these cables out of the way all this crap because we want a clean working area so in order to do this we are going to be using my ifixit kit now look normally that's that's the one that one's too big yeah that's what she said normally we would have a really funny skit about i fix it with explosions and know fiction and all that sort of stuff but i'm just giving you a serious conversation today what to almost three years ago my wife your father's day gave me my first ifixit kit and i was hooked we started playing around doing ads for them without even being sponsored now they're a huge sponsor of ours we believe in what they do they fight for right to repair they give all sorts of um materials and tear down guides how to's i mean almost any electronic you can think of when it comes to computers and monitors and tablets and phones you can find a teardown guide how to use their tools how to repair your own stuff so with father's day coming up if you guys are interested in getting an ifixit kit for the father dad i guess that's the same thing right the son that's also a father if you want to buy someone and i fix it especially for father's day so you could be as cool as my wife was then check the description down below you guys will find the latest promos and links to ifixit so that you can get your very own ifixit kit as well i know it's not exactly the same kind of ifixit ad you guys are used to but it's the realest one because we do use these primarily lately for fixing our drones but we use these all the time when we do this type of video so what we need to do now is drain this mess what sucks about that is phil is currently editing the video we shot we made this mess nick is now shooting this video which means i have no one to help me drain it i just keep one of these five gallon water jugs around that i use to kind of drain everything into and then i empty it when needed in an area that isn't in a way that is in accordance with your current regulations and stuff because you can't just go throwing alcohol and all that type of stuff down the drain so that's good enough for now we'll continue draining the loop getting stuff out of the tubes and get our parts separated we're gonna probably want to do some sort of a flush on the radiator as well although all of the uh gunk pretty much moved out of the rad and a solid piece it was kind of gross in fact this is what it looked like did it chemically like like chunk the milk okay stop abort oh it's starting a board i didn't expect i thought he was gonna clean it not coagulate it air balls that's only going to get stuck in everything now look at the gpu [Music] all right so once you get your loop all disassembled you can get your cpu block and your gpu out this is pretty gross i'm gonna yeah this this is disgusting this was not supposed to go this way we learned as a group actually today group effort what happens when alcohol and chocolate milk touch each other it just completely like clumped up and as such this is a pretty good example because even though you might be going jay i don't this video's stupid nobody's going to be running chocolate milk and alcohol in their loop so this doesn't apply this does apply to any sort of growth or chunking up of fluids it happens it does happen if you leave your loop unattended and you don't take care of it and you get algae growth the very same thing is going to happen therefore you're going to need to take it apart and clean it so the reason for taking apart and cleaning it takes a back seat to the fact that you need to take it apart and clean it so that's what we're educating you with today so now we've got our block pretty much uh both our cpu blocking our gpu block off here and ready to go oh don't drip on oh this is just mostly alcohol okay i just dripped a couple bits on the motherboard so clearly i'm gonna wanna blow that dry as best as possible that's why you can also get yourself one of these little lower vacs so anyway this is what we're working with [Applause] man i hear you laughing nick chocolate chunky monkey crap everywhere okay i'm using a nice wood table here um if you're using something nice that you care about probably put something down to protect it this wood table here is designed to be beat up because it's a workbench so there's that we're gonna use just our ifixit kit a toothbrush and some isopropa alcohol now we'll start with the cpu block because it's easiest most cpu blocks are similar to this and we're just going to kind of loosen crack each corner loose but not take it apart yet you're going to want to do two things well at least one of two things keep a mind of the orientation of all the parts inside every block is a little bit different fortunately you can find the manuals for just about every water block online or if you're like me you like to take things apart and then later go oh wait how did that go i always like to keep and i keep track of the way things are oriented with the block facing right side up so for instance as i'm taking these out i'm kind of holding it together with my fingers so it doesn't fall apart so this is right side up facing you see the logo is correct correctly facing that way so break this apart and if i undo these two screws which are even smaller and i think i'm going to do that i'll get the rgb off of there and then not to worry about getting water all up in there there now we have a 100 disassembled ready to be cleaned gp block or cpu cp block they're tough they're robust so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to get myself a red cup um this is also an o-ring here i want to be mindful of and then we get a red cup that i can use to just sort of like use distilled water or whatever because i want to soak this stuff real good and i'm just throwing all the stuff in there especially this guy look at that it's just all up in there nasty so we can just sort of start cleaning it yeah this discoloration right here this that's a hundred percent the alcohol did that and this is why i tell people all the time alcohol in the loop is a bad idea see this used to be clear but look what it did there it totally etched it and that's something that we've seen before totally knew was gonna happen because i'm like totally saying totally a bunch like a total valley girl which is fine but that's what it does it destroys the plastic so we're gonna take this get that in there as well and then maybe save that one for last then i'll take my toothbrush and i'll just start lightly rubbing along the grain for the little micro channels because what happened was this stuff completely clogged when it was really bad before i was able to use compressed air yes if you didn't see the last video please go watch it a lot of ridiculousness ensued and compressed air was used to get a lot of this stuff unclogged go with the grain that way the bristles can get down in there and get it as clean as possible and then just sort of flush it and keep going get in the corners where everything is going to kind of build up you want to just do this a few times until there's nothing left on there just a little bit not much so the jet plate is now clean now i'll put the o-rings in there look how much stuff is already floating around in there the o-ring i'm pretty much just going to wipe with my fingers like that what i'm going to do right now it's going to be kind of gross so i'm going to hit this with the air now you can just get a real good look at what the alcohol actually did to that clear plastic it was not white before it was as clear as this top that is just nasty it's not gonna hurt performance at all it's just gonna look stupid now you might to get a toothpick or something to really kind of pick out what gets stuck down in all these little grooves and channels all right so the white stuff does actually start to come off but the problem is i'm never going to be able to like get down into the nooks and crannies in here i think what was happening is the alcohol was just breaking down the plastic it's what it does right so the fact that this color sucks for our experiment but nonetheless it doesn't change the process so now i'm just doing the top things kind of got down in between the o-rings that shows you just how important the o-rings actually are i mean obviously they seal right just want to clean in here as best i can all right so everything's pretty much clean at this point now i'm going to discard this water get i'm not going to be using this water for the block on the next part for the gpu i'm going to reassemble this back in the reverse order which i took it apart and we'll move on to the gpu all right so it's all back together correctly and you can still see the discoloration through the top but you know usually when the coolant is flowing through it you won't notice it too badly especially when the rgb lighting is going but if i decide to use this block in a build and it bothers me i'm i have extras and if yours is discolored because that can happen depending on the type of fluid that you use whether it's glycol based uh ethanol base or whatever base then it might start to discolor like that too because even like glycol based stuff has a glycol in it and that can happen it can start to break down some of the plastics over long periods of use you can usually contact these manufacturers and get that piece replaced for free if not a very small fee so there we go that's all put back together that's ready to be used again at some point stick that back there now we're going to move on to the one that i'm sure is going to give people anxiety and that is the gpu block because if you damage your gpu getting a new one right now is not going to really happen too easily so you want to be extra careful so i'm going to do is i'm going to remove these fittings here on the back and i'm going to shove i'm going to basically shove paper towels in there for now now this top piece does come off and we can deal with that in a little bit but i don't want any of the fluid coming out and just sort of dribbling down the back of the card so i'm just going to take paper towels and like literally thread it in like that because then at least that will act as like a little bit of an absorbent barrier to stop anything from getting in there and they do actually they do actually sell threaded plugs not like like these plugs but i mean like little rubber ones that you just shove in there whatever so now when i'm working on it like this i don't have to worry about anything coming out the backside that sounds like a joke but you know whatever so this will probably be using the same sizes as the other ones yep and then this will be the smaller one like the rgb yes okay so use the same two sizes as we had with the ek block now the fan text is a little different it's got these little plastic covers on here little black covers that are more of an aesthetic piece that we're going to remove those first just like that that accesses the rest of the screws so just remember the smaller head screws if you're taking apart a fan text block like this go on to the decorative covers you're going to want to keep track of what screw came out of where as well you want to keep track of what screw came out of where as well or at least be mindful if any of them are any different links because if you're not careful this is when you could potentially damage something by having it protrude uh through the well if it's too long then what's gonna happen is it's not gonna tighten down properly and then the o-ring will leak and it will leak out to your graphics card however i don't anticipate that being a thing here because the blocks are pretty much the same length or the bolts are the same length because it's the same level all the way around so i'm just going to go through and just give each of these screws a little bit of a turn like a half turn maybe more like a quarter turn until they're loose but i don't want them coming off yet because what i want to do is make sure my paper towel is ready because i don't want it dripping on the pcb now if something does drip on the pcb that sucks but it's not the end of the world because again until you turn the card on and it sees power uh nothing will short okay so now i'm going to go around and just get these all loose i'm not going to pop them out of their spot yet you'll notice too as you loosen it it's going to kind of feel like it keeps tightening as you go around that's because the o-ring is pushing back against it eventually you get to the point where the o-ring is no longer compressed and then it won't have any resistance as you undo the screws i'm going to get my paper towel ready in this case i'm using blue shop towels this terminal if you have a terminal like this on your graphics card it's always connected to the acrylic top not the metal part so you don't necessarily have to take that off now we will be in this instance because i don't know if anything nasty got in there i mean as you can see this block looks like somebody took a big old poo in it so we're just gonna lift this straight up and you might have to wiggle it a little bit and there we go take the o-ring out gently there is some water on the pcbs we'll be blowing that out real good and one thing you can do too and this part always freaks people out you ready you can take alcohol and spray it in there where the water got now the water the alcohol will create it a faster evaporating environment i can remember exactly what it's called isn't that gross start with cleaning this guy up we'll set the pcb aside for now [Music] and i'm just going to wipe it right now without using any sort of chemicals the nice thing about acrylic it's very difficult to stain you can take this into the bathroom run it under the sink get any crud out that's stuck in there first i want to get whatever i can with the towel in the corners like this you can use a toothbrush that'll get the stuff that's like stuck in the corners out you can see so far i haven't even done anything except wipe it how much better it looks just put a little bit of distilled water in here now you also want to make sure any fingerprints and stuff you get on the inside of the acrylic here you wipe those off because once you put it back together it's going to show if you leave them there so that's the top piece and you can see we didn't use any harsh chemicals or anything on that just distilled water we'll set that aside and now we'll come over here same thing i'm just going to take the brush and just start wiping it like this now this can be a little bit more difficult to get looking real nice and i have no problems using alcohol on this bit because it's metal nickel plated you see some of this is just really i mean really stuck down in there so i'm just gonna keep working it with the brush wiping it working it wiping it working it wiping it sounds like a saturday night and then we're gonna see how it looks you might be tempted to use a brillo pad but don't it'll scratch it some of these bits are like really and i mean really stuck to the metal like there was like a chemical reaction that happened there or something it just really really stuck so i'm really having to take a lot of time on this and it's it's coming clean slowly but surely like this is when i would rather just maybe even take the block off and submerge it in something which i'm thinking i might end up doing just because this is not i was trying to make it so that we don't have to replace the block and stuff but we're already we did more work to tear this off than the block actually would be to come off it's like all this is just really kicked on there if you get it wet with the alcohol then it will start to come off it's just there's some sort of a weird bonding that's happening there so what we're going to do next let's try and do this i'm going to take the block off but we're going to do that now we'll be able to make sure obviously that the card is as stuck on as possible or clean as possible and dry and all that this is where hopefully you still have your uh instructions on how your block went together so it's kind of funny how fast this is working with just regular hand soap and water here so if we just done this route to begin with we'd probably be done already so i mean if you're comfortable taking your block off hopefully you're the one that put it on hand soap is just such good stuff it works on everything you should get all the soap out of there now you might notice a little bit of discoloration in there that's actually normal um that's from the flow of the coolant going over it over time now remember this is not a brand new water block this was used for more than a year and so there's a little bit of discoloration in the nickel plating totally normal how far it goes how much it changes color how far through it'll go sometimes it can go all the way through to the copper underneath this is a copper plate it's going to depend everything to do with the manufacturer what kind of process they used how thick it is to begin with and you know every single bit of nickel is going to do this so what we're going to do now is we are going to go ahead and reassemble our block reapply our thermal paste here the board's all nice and dry nothing got in there yeah everything looks good so let me get this reapplied now if you're wondering what thermal paste we use i essentially use kingpin kpx on everything ever since we've used it for our subzero overclock overclocking or you know cooling for overclocking it works at all temperatures it's amazing stuff and i will just use that from now on it's you can actually drop a few c just by using it even on conventional stuff that's not extreme water cooling and yes i use a lot of it mostly so i give you guys something to complain about okay so now the block is reattached to the card we get to start the painstaking task of getting the o-ring back in the channel with all these bends now we take our plexi piece once again lay it back down and then we can start putting these screws back in now remember on this particular block there's some raised parts and there's some lower parts the raised parts get the longer bolts or screws whatever you want to call them and the non-raised parts get the short ones so i'd like to get started [Applause] like a like a wheel on a car kind of diagonal and stuff so one across here like star pattern that way i know everything lines up because the problem is you might start putting them all in on one side and then you might get them in but then it might be off just enough where the holes don't line up on the other side so keep that in mind as you're going around so i would just kind of pick four corners get everything started and then you're good to go all right so there you go cpu block is clean you're ready to use again gpu block is clean and ready to use again and um didn't take a whole lot of crazy effort i mean i should have probably just taken a block off from the beginning i would have saved myself some time there but as you can see no more junk in there it would have a perfect flow rate might look a little bit cloudy it's because we just dried it off when it's wet it'll look a lot clearer again this piece right here like i said if i decide to use this block in the future i'll replace that internal jet plate or the plastic flow plate because that looks bad but you know what now we'd be able to put this right back in our system with thermal paste of course and be up and running in no time as long as you guys don't go and put chocolate milk and alcohol in your loops you shouldn't get uh you shouldn't have to deal with any of this but loop maintenance usually after a few years might require you to tear it apart and do some cleaning depending on how much that time is worth to you you might just replace the parts all together in terms of what kind what blocks you're using which means most of the time people keep their blocks until they change the part anyway uh usually without requiring any sort of a tear down all right thanks for watching anytime we like to do anytime we have to do any sort of maintenance or work we always take you guys along for the ride so you can learn something as always we appreciate you guys view and we'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: JayzTwoCents

Views: 365,100

Keywords: watercooling, water cooling, pc water cooling, pc, gaming pc, gaming, gaming computer, watercooling a pc, how to clean a watercooler, how to clean a water loop, how to clean a watercooled pc, gpu block cleaning, cpu block cleaning, how to clean a waterblock, how to clean a block, overclocking, jayztwocents is an idiot, jayztwocents, post malone, terry crews

Id: wuzo3XSofrk

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021