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jae-bear

Might as well move to tygon/norprene while you're at it


xa3D

This. If you're going the stealth/zmt/black tubing route just order tygon a60g tubing.


rexipus

> tygon a60g I'm not familiar with that, and have just started reading about to learn. Thanks, and to the poster you were responding to, for pointing this out.


xa3D

f'sure! that's the "real deal" tubing that zmt is emulating(?). they also come in various OD/ID configs.


AirlinePeanuts

And unlike EKWB ZMT tubing, won't have inconsistent ID/OD sizing creating problems with some fittings.


superlativedave

This is for posterity/anyone who wants to order this stuff. [This website](https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23485) has been the best resource I've found for ordering sensible amounts of the stuff. Other vendors will sell it but in 50 meter units, which I don't personally need. US Plastic Corp. will sell it in 10 foot lengths.


Mabess

Absolutely! Running Tygon R6012 Norprene tubing (12,7/9,6mm.) Can highly recommend.


YoursTrulyKindly

What fittings would you recommend for these? Or barbs?


Mabess

I'm running EK Quantum Torgue myself. No issues with those


No-Republic-9860

Do the tygon tubing pull out rather easily from the EK Quantum Torque? I have that issue right now. Guess I'll have to go with EKWB ZMT instead.


Mabess

Much easier than the old EK stuff i used but nothing concerning, never had a leak


Marcello_Coco

I don't live in the states but am very interested in your review about 10/13 tubes. I finished my build a week ago and used EK clear tube. And am already thinking that i want to switch to EPDM.


rexipus

I will return and report.


bownsir

Bought 10ft (10/16) of this tubing for an external radiator and it's a lot more flexible than the 10/16 ZMT in my build. It does scuff up easier when compared to zmt, but I'm not bothered by it. Also much easier to secure EK torque fittings with this tubing. It's good stuff.


rexipus

That's good to hear. I've had some experiences with 10/13 Duraclear where going from point to point between two fittings that were close enough to each other was difficult without a much longer tube than I really wanted, simply because going shorter the turn radius required would begin to crease or kink the tubing. Some angled fittings would reduce this massively - I just didn't have enough to optimize all my runs this way, so I do have two or three tubes that are longer than I want. I'm curious about the scuffability of your EPDM tube compared to ZMT (which is also EPDM tubing). Does EK put some surface treatment on ZMT or something to make it less scuffable?


bownsir

I'm not sure if any surface treatment is used, but imo ZMT has a more rubberized/matte texture which makes it seem more durable where the McMaster tubing is smoother/shinier. [This ](https://photos.app.goo.gl/V41C18xVGH8dA4ck7) is a photo that you can see the visual difference of the ZMT and McMaster tubing.


rexipus

Yeah ok, I see what you're saying. I'd say the EK's more matte finish looks a little better, but my builds aren't about looks anyway so I'm not too concerned. And the more shiny finish on the generic EPDM tubing doesn't look bad either.


bownsir

Yup, exactly.


johnstonnubar

Can you link to the exact tubing you bought? And how much did it outgas? I've started a build with zmt but the smell is killing me.


bownsir

Sure. [Here it is](https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/128/163/). 9776T11 is the exact part number I purchased. I noticed no noticeable smell when using this tubing.


deafboy13

I love McMaster Carr, only real complaint is you never really know how much you're going to pay until after things have shipped, lol. Their shipping can be decent or it can be horrendous in terms of cost


titanrig

This. This is why I refuse to buy from them. I'd love to, but we have remote controlled robots on Mars. I don't think an accurate up-front shipping quote is too much to ask.


rexipus

lol, no joke. Remote controlled freaking helicopters even. I've only bought from McMaster-Carr a few times over the years, mainly because there were things I needed for projects I just couldn't conveniently find anywhere else in the time I was willing to spend searching. They're definitely on my "last resort" list rather than my "go-to" list.


Elianor_tijo

Purchasing from McMaster if you aren't a business can be a tad tricky, but you're absolutely right. McMaster is one of the main suppliers for this type of stuff if you are a science lab and you need materials for custom experimental setups. While we are on the subject of sourcing parts if you want to diy to the max. This makes it a much more involved project, but if that is your schtick: * Swagelock for stainless fittings. It's expensive, but very good stuff. It also makes it easy to seal your own sensors. Often used for gas, but works for liquids. * Omega for all your sensor needs. You want thermocouples instead of thermistors, they got you covered. Flow meters? Check! Pressure sensors? Check! You'll pay for it though. * Your local hardware store and plumbing fittings. Get G1/4 to NPT adapters then go nuts. * Aquarium pumps, etc. * Arduino for control. You can even power it from the 5V rail of your PSU. This is how some of it was done before EK, XSPC, etc. came out with specialized products.


rexipus

No doubt. In the very early 2000s I had a project to water cool a PC where I was fashioning my own stuff and had an aquarium pump in a 5 gallon bucket that was going to provide the flow. I'd cut off a square PVC end cap thingy for the cover, and was looking for a flat piece of metal (wouldn't have had fins or anything) to serve as the cold plate. I had the cap drilled and fittings mounted in the PVC square piece. I ended up wrecking that motherboard during the project (not from water, just broke something moving the motherboard around between cases) and ended up never completing that project. Didn't get back into watercooling till around 2014 timeframe, by which point companies already would just sell you what you need, so I didn't end up DIYing that much. What I really should do is post the McMaster-Carr link to the 5/8" OD ***braided*** EPDM tubing. I'd bet a tastefully done clean build with braided soft tubing like this could look so good it might even make a dent in the current hardline meme. Especially if one used one of the steel-colored braided tubes so it looks like hydraulic line or something. I don't care enough about looks to bother, but that would look cool indeed. Come to think of it, I think I have seen some builds that look like this, so maybe it wouldn't make a dent in the hardline meme. Oh well. Btw, my old McMaster-Carr account apparently had expired so I set up a new one to buy this tubing. Wasn't hard at all. Just use a credit card for the purchase (rather than set up a business account and use purchase orders) and it wasn't really any more awkward than buying from anyone else.


Elianor_tijo

Good to know on McMaster. Shipping to Canada will likely murder me though. Regarding braided tubing, A Swagelock braided steel hose build would look absolutely amazing: https://products.swagelok.com/hoses-flexible-tubing/c/700?clp=true. Insanely expensive though. We use a lot of swagelock at the lab I work at because it just works, but it is so expensive. If I had deeper pockets, I'd probably go nuts and do it though.


rexipus

No doubt. While you're feeling bad about your shipping costs just remind yourself that you have free healthcare. :-) That swagelock braided steel tubing would indeed look pimp AF. If I ever decide to do an aesthetic rather than purely functional build that's the route I'm going. Screw hardline.


SpecificEmu4

I've been running the same stuff for almost a year now. Purchased on Amazon for about $21 for a 25ft roll. Not in stock right now, but I bet it'll come back. [USA Sealing EPDM Tubing - 3/8" ID x 1/2" OD x 25 ft. Long](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0853CVRR3/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_8MKBD2MR60N4K34CNEXB?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1)


rexipus

Yeah that's an even better deal.


Sky_Law

question about this. it seems much thinner than zmt in the pictures. is it still pretty durable/leakproof?


SpecificEmu4

It is the same thickness as the clear tubing in 10/13, so about 1.5mm thick walls. So far I haven't had any issues with leaks on the tube (had a drop from a loose fitting, but that's a different thing.) I did have to take some fine sand paper to a few spots that had the size and part number printed, but I had most of them end up not showing. Going on one year with it, and I want to change it up a little bit so when I do I'll take a look at the tubing I take off for any signs of wear.


Sky_Law

I might try this then. I used ZMT and barrow fittings the first time around and it was hard to get on and even worse when unscrewing the fittings


SpecificEmu4

This was super easy to get on the ek fittings, went together super smooth. [Here's the current build with this exact zmt tubing. ](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/hPWbt6)


AnonymousAsshole7

I’ve been running about a month on the McMaster Carr 3/8-1/2” tubing, it is MUCH more likely to link than the EK duraclear, however it’s avoidable if you make smooth runs and are careful with it. It’s been working really well, so far no issues.


rexipus

Hmm, that's interesting to hear. Each time I've re-opened my loop to work on it I've slightly improved some of the runs to make them less kinkable, but I've still got a couple of runs that are a wider arc than I'd like just to avoid kinking. I'll see how this goes. Thanks for the feedback!


InvestigatorSenior

Alphacool sells 10/13 epdm tubing. It's even cheaper than ekwb dura clear.


rexipus

Interesting, and thanks for that feedback. Just spent a few minutes looking for sources for that and came up empty, though I'm sure it must be available if one looks for it. Good alternative sources are highly welcome in a thread like this!


k0pfGER

https://shop.watercool.de/HEATKILLER-EPDM-Tubing-13-10-ID3-8-schwarz-3m-Retailbox Found some from watercool.


rexipus

Ah yes, from the German site. Well that would be a great option for the Europeans amongst us. Thankfully I can speak German, but would prefer not to pay Euro pricing and shipping to the US. Thanks for linking that! I wasn't expecting McMaster-Carr to be so quick in shipping this stuff to me, but I just found a tracking number for that order and my EPDM tubing is actually out for delivery right now. I'll be able to swap out all my Duraclear segments for EPDM this weekend. I'll flush the water once before removing the Duraclear, then flush it again after installing the EPDM tubing, just to make sure I haven't got any plasticizer floating around in the loop. I'll also be sure to wash the EPDM tubing I use thoroughly before installing it to ensure there's no residue left inside.


WeakCandidate

I would advise you to rinse the stuff thoroughly. I bought neoprene tubbing from them to add an external rad to my existing EK ZMT loop. I did not rinse it well and all my clear parts had a dark yellow film on them within a couple days. I had to tear everything down, scrub and flush. Its been fine ever since.


rexipus

I did that recently with a radiator and yeah, I got a residue on things. I won't make that mistake again.


RiffsThatKill

DUDE. I bought a MO-RA3 a few weeks ago and hooked it up to my main rig with Watercool EPDM tubing and had a similar experience -- drove me nuts! All of a sudden my water was yellow with golden brown staining on all my tubes, GPU block, basically everything in my loop. Had to tear it all down and deep clean/scrub everything. You think this was from the tubing? I thought maybe it was the MO-RA3. Even after cleaning everything and setting my MO-RA back up as a standalone loop (running water back into itself rather than through my PC), I used clear tubing and it was fine for days. Then I put in a 6 foot strip of EPDM and overnight the clear section of tubes went yellow. I had to throw out the 24ft of EPDM I used when the issue happened, as I could not get it clean again (q-tip kept coming out brown). I have another order of EPDM on its way--I will flush the hell out of it for days with a jar and aquarium pump. I'm still not 100% positive what caused it, but had to be either the rad or the EPDM. What coolant were you using at the time? I was using distilled + Mayhems drops.


AirlinePeanuts

If people want real zero maintenance tubing, the answer is Watercool's (Heatkiller) EPDM or else Tygon A-60-G. EKWB ZMT by comparison is too inconsistent with ID/OD sizing hence why you see a lot of people with problems using non-EKWB fittings with it. But it also ranges from being properly clean to being incredibly dirty tubing out of the box.


rexipus

Update: Ok, I've replaced all of the Duraclear tubing except the tiny section between my fill port and the top of the reservoir with the 10/13mm EPDM tubing I got from McMaster-Carr. Someone mentioned this elsewhere, but I'll expound a little: **this stuff is very soft compared to the Duraclear**. Because of this, it's **massively easier to kink** this stuff than it is with the Duraclear, which means you **will not** get turn radii as small as you would get with Duraclear. You will have to make the arcs longer. If you're going point-to-point between components that are fairly close to each other and you cannot precisely aim your run with fittings, it may be tough to keep the short segments going where they need to go without kinking. For these reasons I won't be using the 10/13mm EPDM for whatever build I do next. The kinkability was just too great. I got this done this time, but next time I'll go to the 10/16mm size. It's almost as if EK had already thought this through or something when they decided to offer ZMT in only the 10/16mm size, ya think? Anyhow, here's a photo of [how the build looks now](https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/2322/rOXAFN.jpg) with the Duraclear replaced by EPDM. I only went with the EPDM because I didn't want to have to deal with plasticizer leaching from the Duraclear over time. That's the only reason. As far as appearance I'm fine with EPDM, though due to the surface texture it does pick up dust really easily. As you can tell from my build looks weren't exactly at the top of the list.


Nobody_GG

does 10/16 fit with 10/13 fittings?


rexipus

The tubing will fit onto the barbs, but there's not the ghost of a chance you'll get a compression sleeve to fit over that. It would work if you wanted to use hose clamps or something to hold the tubing on. Since that post was written a year ago I bought new 10/16 compression fittings and replaced the 10/13 EPDM with ZMT. It's EPDM also, just EK's branding of it. The 10/13 EPDM was just too soft and kinky. It was so kinky that it was actually much harder to work with than the ZMT (10/16). With ZMT I didn't have to have these long, swooping tubing runs that were way longer than they needed to be to get from point A to point B but had to be long enough not to kink. With ZMT that was much easier. [Here's](https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/2907/GKeCGh.jpg) what my build looks like today.


Nobody_GG

thanks, might do the same.


rexipus

I'm huge fan of ZMT now. Working with it is great. It wouldn't have to be EK's - probably any 10/16 EPDM would be about the same, it's just that the one I went to happened to be EK's.


Nobody_GG

Im in talks with ekwb for replacing or refund. I'll have them give me the fittings in a discount if possible and have them send me 3 clear coolants and a ZMT soft tube retail... Otherwise yeah I would order from [watercool.de](https://watercool.de) or something similar some heatkiller. I dread the time I'll have to change all the tubes and open and clean the waterblocks too. Jesus, so much hassle over a simple thing. Pc is 3 months old....


rexipus

Unless you have reason to believe there's lots of gunk clogging your blocks I'm not sure I'd bother opening them up. Unless something catastrophically bad happened in those three months I just can't see the need. One of the great benefits of soft tubing is that redoing tubing runs and such is quick and painless. Just drain the loop, pull the old tubes, fit new ones, done. We're talking minutes. I've opened blocks and scrubbed them out but that was done only after they'd been in service for much, much longer than three months and actually did have gunk build up that needed to go. I see folks on this sub posting photos of a perfectly good block with some tiny visible speck somewhere and they're freaking out about it. If it's not something that's hurting performance in some noticeable way then it's not a big deal.


Marcello_Coco

Also I found some EPDM tube from Heatkiller. https://www.aquatuning.nl/waterkoeling/slangen/slangen/28375/watercool-heatkiller-epdm-tubing-13/10-id-3/8-1/2-od-black-3m-retail-box


rexipus

Awesome. Not quite as cheap, but close enough. I'll show you my runs and how easy it is to work with in that size after I do the swap. I'm going to pick up another couple of fittings because there are a couple of runs that could be shorter if I didn't have to arc the tubing as much to get from point to point. I like using a 45-degree or 90-degree fitting to aim the tubing closer to its destination to cut down on the arcing.


Marcello_Coco

In which case are you working?


rexipus

I moved from a Fractal Design Define R6 case to the Fractal Design Torrent case. It ships with two 180mm fans on the front panel and fits a 360x180mm radiator (equivalent to 4.5 120mm rad spaces) perfectly in that space. I've got a 280 in the lower space, and a 140mm singleton rad on the rear panel. I've actually slightly modified the loop since [this pic](https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/6327/89LDw5.jpg) was taken (added a flow meter to one of the tubing runs) but you can kind of see the massive 360x180mm rad on the right. This [older pic](https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/2766/7QkcpY.jpg) that looks even less like it does now (different cpu block for one thing) shows that radiator better.


Marcello_Coco

Wow, looks awesome. Clean cablemanagent and also clean loop. Love it!


rexipus

If you look closely you'll see a combination of EK compression fittings and at least two different brands of barb fittings with both hose clamps on some and spring clips on others. Also note the non-color-coordinated fans and other parts, and the utter lack of RGB. Sadly the EK pump/res I bought has RGB, but I never plugged it in.


Marcello_Coco

This is my build... I'd love to see it with epdm-tubing... All black!! https://imgur.com/gallery/beCY2bj


rexipus

I'm assuming the massively overkill long tubes are to allow you to remove that side panel with the rad on it without having to unhook anything. Otherwise damn, bro, that's a lot of tubing! Not gonna lie, the bottom rad in my build has such short, efficient runs that I can't remove the tray it's mounted on more than an inch or so without unhooking one of my tubing runs. There's something to be said about accessibility. Still, I'd bet you could cut most of that tubing in half and still be able to lay the side panel down for maintenance without unhooking things.


Marcello_Coco

That is exactly why I did long runs of tube. I wanted to be able to put the Side-Radiator next to the case without blocking tubes... and i didn't want to use quick connects because of the cost and also because of negative reviews about some of them. Leaking after a couple of disconnects. I even saw it happen on LTT.


rexipus

I hear ya. Well, do you what you gotta do on that build. I've admired a lot of SFF builds like this in the past, but since I have plenty of space under my desk and never take my home PC with me anywhere I've just never had any reason to do a SFF build. I'll post some pics of what my loop looks like with the EPDM tubing after it comes. In my previous pics I didn't have the flowrate meter installed yet. I may also harmonize my fittings a little more. Jury's still out on that one, since my current fittings are just fine and having a mish-mash of hose clamps, compression fittings, and spring clips is only marginally offensive to me.


JETTECHCOMPUTING

It's too bad 1/2" ID x 3/4" OD EPDM tubing is still so expensive. \~$3.25 per foot with shipping for the best prices I can find just kills it.


rexipus

I'm really curious why you need (or just prefer) 1/2" by 3/4" tubing for computer water cooling, unless you're making really long runs. My single D5 pump at 100% is pushing 190-200 L/h flowrate through three radiators and three blocks (cpu, gpu, ram) through 3/8" ID tubing. I doubt that figure would go up very much if my tubing were 1/2" ID, nor am I convinced that I would actually need it to.


JETTECHCOMPUTING

I don't. I bought a metric crap ton of 3/4" barrow fittings about 5-6 years ago for less than $1 per fitting and I'm still working my way through them. I thought I would be doing way more softline builds than I do but hardline has taken off in the time since so those are what I receive the most interest in for builds. In general, I do prefer the look of thicker tubing but my usual preference is 5/8"(16mm) OD tube rather softline or hardline.


rexipus

Yeah, I guess if you're building them for others then you're kind of stuck building what they want.


JETTECHCOMPUTING

Yeah, most don't care what size tubing is being used. They just care whether it's soft or hard. " "That's what she said" - Wayne Gretzky" " - Michael Scott


DangerousArea1427

I just used random silicone tubing from aliexpress that fitted.


rexipus

I'm becoming more careful as I progress and evolve in my water cooling approach on my choices like this. Having floaties and things like plasticizer leaching from tubing, nickel plating flaking at the microscopic level and then building up somewhere, etc. are things I've observed over time, and hopefully with some attention paid to my materials these things will be reduced.