My waterpump failed the other day. The safety measures worked OK, the PC shutdown before the CPU melted or anything nasty. But, shit, what a hassle.
My first reaction was to grab the old air cooling parts and start to face a major dismantling to go back to air cooling until another pump was available. But then I stopped panicking and decided to dismantle the pump.
I had to drain the coolant, naturally spilling a bunch of it in the process. The InertX evaporates pretty readily, so the spillage isn't a problem, but the fluid loss is, since replacement fluid is currently unavailable.
After pulling the pump out, the front moulding can be removed, and then a blue retaining "nut" comes off to allow the impeller to be removed. I was in too much of a panic to take pictures (couldn't handle being off-line), but I found a small chip in the impeller magnet (some kind of ferrite material), and suspect the chipped off material had jammed the impeller. So has this been caused by the startup cavitation mentioned in my previous blog entry ?
I cleaning up the impeller, reassembled the pump, carefully refilled the system and started up. It took a while to clear the last of the air from the pump, but eventually it settled down. It's noisier than before, and sometimes sticks on startup, so I consider I'm on borrowed time. The Waterchill forums are full of comments on pump failures and other problems, so it may be a weak pump anyway.
Despite that, I've ordered an identical replacement Hydor L30. I did consider the Swiftech MPC650, but at over twice the price, and with having to mess about adapting 10mm Waterchill piping to 1/2" barbs, I decided to postpone that one.
It has crossed my mind that a less powerful pump would be the way to go - in order to avoid the startup issue. Googling couldn't find an comments on the Swiftech pump combined with InertX fluid, and the InertX people don't actually post a list of pumps they claim to have tested with. So it looks like I'm going to be a pioneer on this one.
**Update - picture added
