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Tip for Cleaning Fins in XG7


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Hey gang, this may be common knowledge, but it wasn't something that was apparent to me even after looking through this forum. After putting together my loop, I apparently did a poor job cleaning off the shavings from my acrylic tubing. This meant that those pieces would get loose in the loop and ultimately get stuck in the fins of my GPU. This was driving me nuts, as I could actually see the bits and pieces stuck against the fins, and paranoid me was feeling like it was disrupting the flow of coolant throughout my system. I never knew just how much you see every little imperfection when you put together a loop, and simply can't keep your hands off of it; but I digress.

 

I searched for videos on cleaning the inside of an XG7 but came away a bit intimidated. I know I'll eventually need to take the whole block apart for a deep cleaning down the road, but I just needed to clean the fins at this point. The video by Bit-Tech does a great job doing tear-downs of the Hydro X system, but of course they sped up the section of video where they took apart the XG7. But even from the speed-run, it looked a bit complex with a ton of tiny screws.

 

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Then I stumbled on a video by JayzTwoCents where he does an overview of the Hydro X system, and he made note of the fact that the fin array appeared to not be directly machined into the block, but was actually secured with 8 screws.

 

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With this I took my GPU out of the system and separated the XG7 from the GPU to investigate.

 

And it turns out that the fin array is indeed not built into the block, but secured using 8 screws after all. This means that the fin array itself is removable from the block. All you have to do is remove the GPU from the block, remove the 8 screws directly behind the fin array, and the fin array will just fall out. From there I scrubbed it with a toothbrush and rinsed it with distilled water. Installing it back couldn't be simpler either: simply reinstall the 8 screws and reinstall the GPU. You will need to clean the thermal paste and reapply it, so make sure you have that handy before you start taking it apart. To be safe, take note of the tension applied to the screws when you remove them so you can install them at that level of tension again. There's an O-ring in there that seals the deal, so a snug fit is needed, but I would probably avoid over-tightening. I would also avoid fully tightening the screws until all of them are seated, and proceed to tighten in a star pattern to make sure you get even pressure across the plate.

 

I'm not sure if Corsair designed the block this way because 1) it's cheaper to manufacture it this way than to build it into a solid block, 2) they anticipated that people would need to get in there to clean/replace the fins, or 3) both. All the same, I'm glad I found this out and wanted to get this information out there in case it helps another noob like myself.

 

TLDR: The fin array in the XG7 is not built into the block, but can be extracted for cleaning by removing the 8 conveniently located screws directly behind it.

Edited by nerdballer
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