Wednesday, March 16th 2022
EK Water Blocks Announces Flexible Leak Tester
EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a new leak tester purposed for PC liquid cooling. EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex is a fast and safe way to test for possible leaks in your custom water cooling loop. While traditional leak testing works, it is slow and requires actual liquid leaks in order to diagnose the issue. Using air as a test for leaks, does the job way faster, less messy, and ultimately just better.
Traditional leak testing requires the user to fill up the entire loop with coolant, wrap joints with paper towels, and wait for hours constantly checking if any of the paper towels are wet. With air testing with the help of a leak tester, the user doesn't have to fill the loop, allowing much easier disassembly in case of a component leaking, way fewer risks for the PC hardware, and to top it off, less hassle and time spent for the user.
EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex has a flexible tube on one end, allowing you to easily reach any port in your loop and avoid stressing it when pumping. It is fitted with a revolvable male G1/4" connection port so it can be directly screwed into any standard G1/4" port in your liquid cooling loop. The other end is hooked up with a non-return valve which will make sure that no air is escaping through the tester unit itself. A small pump for pressurizing the loop is also included.
The top-mounted pressure gauge is custom made for liquid cooling loop testing purposes which clearly marks the safe pressure for testing. In order to prevent damage to your liquid cooling loop, keep the pressure only in the predefined zone marked on the gauge. Please read the user manual before using the EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex.
The EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex is available for purchase through the EK Webshop and Partner Reseller Network. In the table below, you can see the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) with VAT included.
MSRP: 29.90€. For more information, visit this page.
Traditional leak testing requires the user to fill up the entire loop with coolant, wrap joints with paper towels, and wait for hours constantly checking if any of the paper towels are wet. With air testing with the help of a leak tester, the user doesn't have to fill the loop, allowing much easier disassembly in case of a component leaking, way fewer risks for the PC hardware, and to top it off, less hassle and time spent for the user.
The top-mounted pressure gauge is custom made for liquid cooling loop testing purposes which clearly marks the safe pressure for testing. In order to prevent damage to your liquid cooling loop, keep the pressure only in the predefined zone marked on the gauge. Please read the user manual before using the EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex.
The EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex is available for purchase through the EK Webshop and Partner Reseller Network. In the table below, you can see the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) with VAT included.
MSRP: 29.90€. For more information, visit this page.
20 Comments on EK Water Blocks Announces Flexible Leak Tester
"So, let's overcomplicate the design and do a big PR stunt around it instead of fixing the glaring issue." seems to be the motto of this company.
- Listen for hissing noises (effective most of the time)
- Going over and tightening all fittings by hand (in case something was missed)
- Taking out a bowl of soapy water and carefully rubbing some along various joins where you suspect it might be leaking (nearly 100% effective, unless your leak is somewhere really weird)
If you can't find your leak using any of these, your loop likely needs a complete teardown anyway.
Well if you were a plumber you'd use a soap and water solution and spray it on the joints and look for bubbles
Not very practical around electrical equipment :laugh:
So yeah air pressure testing is a unnecessary process if using soft tubing and barb fitting
Might be useful in hard pipping seeing there is more chances of assembly error but then again hard tubing is something I'd never use it's to much trouble to do simple tasks like changing thermal paste/...
But then again I also love QDC's so removing swapping gpu/ cpu/.. is effortless, blasphemous I know not buying ek trivial unneeded assessors :laugh:
As for fitting your head into the case to listen, a funnel over your ear (wide end, not the narrow one - ouch!) makes for a passable DIY mechanics' stethoscope (unless you happen to have one of those), allowing for decent pinpointing of sound sources by ear alone.
Radiator is the only item worth using an air pressure tester on
But you sure don't need to install the rad first to use it that way kind of stupid to do it that order
Besides before you install a rad you'd want to clean/ flush the rad and by then you'd notice a leak if it had one.
So air testing may make you feel better but just a waste of time to an already long process of cleaning dirty radiators.
But if you listen to ek you don't need to clear their radiators just buy their air tester :laugh:
But regardless of this, where's the harm in using a pressure tester to ensure that everything is securely clamped down? It's a cheap and easy safety valve to avoid the terror that can come from filling a newly assembled loop. Saves you a ton of paper towels too! Put it this way: no matter how many times you check everything, there's always a chance you've forgotten something or made some silly ovesight. A single pass of pressure testing tells you what you need to know: whether or not air - and thus also water - will escape from the loop under moderate pressure.
It's not necessary, but it's very nice to have, taking the guesswork out of safe assembly.
No harm just more expense
Hell you can make one from home depot parts or any hardware store.
Besides shaking rads clean never works
I setup a loop outside the case and do all flush plus use a filter to catch the crap so yeah it's a tad different lol
This is just a simple designed mora 360 but i clean all rads like this
Live and learn how to really test items and clean them
And sure, you could make your own pressure tester - nobody has said you can't - but good luck doing so with G1/4 compatible components at a manageable size without spending more than the cost of this or spending hours sourcing and assembling everything. The gauge, valves and connectors are likely easily found, but a pump that can be fit onto that easily? Yeah, that's not a standard hardware store part. So, a bike pump plus a hose to connect it? Starting to sound very practical, this.
So, this might not be for you, but it's an incredibly handy thing to have around, and it's by far the best way to reduce the stress and risk of assembling a loop and ensuring that it's leak free. In light of a decent loop costing hundreds of dollars, and this being reusable essentially forever, €30 is a pretty low price for that imo.
Sadly you don't know how complex radiators are so there's no use in trying to talk to you.
And frankly I don't see how this is relevant to the product at hand - it's for testing entire loops, not just radiators. Loops have far more points of failure, far more room for human error, and thus necessitate care in building. This eases that burden on builders a tad, for a price that's mostly negligible compared to the cost of a loop.