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Hi All,

 

I would like to know if I should run my Water Cooler kit with pure Corasir fluid (the green one) or I should mix it with distilled water (or another fluid)? If I should mix it, what is the ratio between fluid and water?

 

Thanks

 

Ricardo

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You will want to use the entire bottle of coolant included with the unit and then top it off with distilled water.

 

I'm sorry, but this response rattles my proverbial cage!

 

Corsair produce and actively market the Nautilus 500. Corsair produce and actively market the pretty expensive Corsair coolant (I'd love to know what the percentage markup over cost is!). But, at the very least, is it too much to expect that Corsair gives consistent advice on the concentration of their own actively marketed coolant that should be used in their own actively marketed product?

 

So.....which is correct? the advice given above........or the advice given below in this (Corsair) 'lab report':

 

http://www.corsair.com/systembuild/report.aspx?report_id=12490&sid=7

 

.....where they use half a bottle? It's no wonder that people are confused! It's generally accepted (in many independent tests) that pure distilled water offers the best cooling performance in any water-cooled system; so the more coolant required (to combat corrosion, algae growth and surface tension etc. etc.) , the less the cooling efficiency....and the higher the expense! That may not be good news for Corsair's Coolant Sales Department, but I suspect, given my experience of the quality of your products, that Corsair, as a company, is motivated by something a tad higher than that.

 

Elsewhere in this forum there are posts where people have added water blocks and have asked if they need to buy more Corsair coolant as a result. They've been told not to; admirable honesty, but is it good advice? Is it informed advice? If Corsair have the confidence to market a coolant product then you presumably have very detailed test results indicting its performance at different concentrations? At least I hope you do!

 

If half a bottle is sufficient then people should be told. If a full bottle is necessary then people should be told. You guys may have a life, but you market this stuff to geeks like us who care about such things! It would be even more honest to let people know exactly what's in your product so they could judge for themselves; but if you need to maintain secrecy (which is understandable), surely the least one should expect is some consistency in the advice given?

 

I'm very pleased with my recently purchased Nautilus 500 (and my Corsair VX550 PSU; and my Corsair 'Dominator' ram!). I'm pleased because you guys seem to invest in quality products at a reasonable price (am...er....generally) but I think your customers deserve a little more consistency; and, ultimately, a more convincing respect for your own product, in this case.

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  • Corsair Employee
I just double checked the Product Manual and at the top of the last page it indicates that you should use the entire bottle. It is probably not necessary and half the bottle should be fine, but you may need to refill the unit more often as the water may evaporate more quickly with less coolant. As far as performance differences, I really couldn't tell you which would be more efficient, but I can assure you that we are not out to trick people in order to sell more coolant. You can use any propylene glycol based coolant in the unit.
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As far as performance differences, I really couldn't tell you which would be more efficient

 

The standard blurb used to advertise Corsair Cool goes as follows:

 

"Specially formulated green coolant offers superior cooling qualities........."

 

Call me old-fashioned but if, indeed, a product has been "specially" formulated to, not just offer average, but "superior" cooling qualities, I'd kinda expect that the very LEAST the manufacturer would be able to tell us is the advised concentration of the product necessary to achieve this "superior" cooling.....within, lets be reasonable here, lets say a 10% margin.

 

That Corsair can't even tell us whether there is any difference in performance between using half a bottle of their "specially" formulated product and fully doubling that concentration, is incredible.

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That Corsair can't even tell us whether there is any difference in performance between using half a bottle of their "specially" formulated product and fully doubling that concentration, is incredible.

 

It's not that we can't tell you whether there's a performance difference or not - it's that the difference is negligible and much more affected by things such as ambient room temperature, improper use of thermal paste (either too much or too little), airflow, and a number of other factors.

 

You can safely use half the bottle in the Nautilus 500 when installing it, and top it off with distilled water. You can also safely use the full bottle. If you'd like, you can safely not use the bottle and all and fill the entire thing with distilled water and a propylene glycol anti-freeze, but we obviously would not recommend that since we cannot control the coolant.

 

The coolant was chosen specifically to make it easy for end users to buy something they new was compatible and designed to work with the Nautilus 500 (and previously, the Internal Corsair COOL kit). We tested with this coolant, so we are very familiar with its properties.

 

It's possible that you could get similar performance from a bottle of Sierra Propylene Glycol Anti-Freeze, but we wouldn't know for a fact, because we have never tested this.

 

To be quite honest, we don't make a whole lot of money selling coolant. We probably make more on a week's worth of power supply sales than we do in a year's worth of all watercooling products, truth be told. But nonetheless, we provide a working solution that's flexible, and that flexibility is nearly idiot proof.

 

The Nautilus 500 is one of the easiest-to-install and use watercooling kits on the market, the system can go from aircooling to watercooling in less than 10 minutes if you know what you're doing. Part of the flexibility was not including too much coolant. This means that even the full bottle of coolant could not significantly harm performance. And while only half or so is necessary, there would be no noticeable performance difference between half the bottle and the full bottle in most situatons.

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The Corsair COOL coolant is very much the same bottle from the HydroCool days. The mix ratio is the most important part to know. The safety range to protect all the metals in the HydroCool (aluminum radiator and copper cold-block) was 28~35% (33%) Propylene Glycol to the remainder ~66% Distilled Water.

 

The company that made the HydroCool for Corsair did extensive testing on the coolant mixture ratio. Their labs are extremely technical since they have been in the cooling business for over 90 years.

 

Seeing that the Nautilus 500 uses the same radiator as the HydroCool, but a newer and more surface area copper cold-block, it would be very wise to keep within the above HydroCool mix ratio for the best protection if using a PG mix. Besides, the PG in the HydroCool kept the Bosch PAD pump from being too noisy. The DDC pump can benefit from this too.

 

The Nautilus 500 is a great product in performance over the HydroCool. 500W of cooling for the Nautilus over the mere 200W of the HydroCool shows the vast cooling performance Corsair has achieved in time. Both products share many other characteristics too.

 

Another nice note is that the PG coolant is pet/child safe. Plus PG offers a greater level of protection that many people either are unaware of or haven't payed too much attention to. That protection is this, if a leak were to ever occur in the computer case, not everything is lost. PG is safe to rinse off of PCB boards with distilled water, air dry and to reuse the equipment again. EG coolant isn't forgiving at all, so kiss that expensive hardware, that's been contaminated, good buy. With the cost of computer hardware in a machine being more that 1 troy ounce of gold in today's market, why not choose PG as the safest choice and most beneficial all around.

 

PG is used as a food sweetener too. It's FDA approved. You can find it listed in many salad dressing, gummy bears, candy, fruit rollups, ice-cream as a flavor enhancer, etc.

 

Knowing that Corsair did their homework by keeping their formula close to the HydroCool PG type, everyone using it would benefit greatly over the EG coolants out there.

 

PG coolant isn't cheap compared to the EG coolants on the market for a 1-gallon jug. So, in reality, the Corsair coolant price is a fair price.

 

Oh, if you haven't yet, get a Corsair PSU. In all the years owning PSU's only one old brand called HiPro ever held up for me. But, that PSU manages a mere 80W. The Corsair 620W is an awesome piece of equipment and has plenty of excellent reviews.

 

Peace!

 

Stev

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