Nickel plating from EK "WARNING"

[mayhem]

PLEASE REF POST #18 FOR A UPDATE FROM EK

Oky any one into water cooling and whom has accounts at well know water cooling sites will know this all ready.

EK has been sending there Copper water blocks to a un-known source and this source has been nickel plating there water blocks for them. How ever the standard of nickel plating has been a massive issue and is leading to nickel plating on several EK products to flake, peel, disintegrate.

Some Shops selling EK products have taken a drastic step and are now either recalling the blocks, refusing to sell the blocks or completely with drawing there line of nickel plated products from EK.

This issue will effect a lot of blocks and a lot of stock held by re-sellers.

Please buy with caution any nickel plated products from EK for the time being.

One such note from a re-seller - http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/sidewindercomputers/Corporate06042011.pdf

EK have been stringing along its customers and RMA procedures now for over 2 months and have been blaming customers for the liquids they use how ever there are many different people using any thing from simple DI water to Pre-Mixed liquids and its been said a few times now by reputable people that the foundation for the excuse is inconceivable and the company is playing the blame game. This is not good enough from such a large player in the water cooling industry and it is advisable once again to avoid purchasing such blocks and do not purchase such blocks until the fault is sorted.

Remember this is nickel plated products from "EK" not Copper or Plated products from other companies.

I do not not have any thing personally against EK how ever this sort of mistake should be know to all users of the water cooling community so that you may make you own unbiased and informed decision.

Here are some proof images of nickel plating failing.

there are lot more on various web sites around the world.

If you find this is happing to you products in the UK then i suggest you get straight on with a RMA to either EK or follow the long distance trading regulations set out buy the UK government and get a RMA back to the store you have bought it from. The quicker you do this the better the chance you have of getting a replacement.

 

[Game Over]

That sucks

 

[C3mods]

That really sucks, I was saving up to buy a cpu block and graphics card full block and both was going to be the nickle plated with acrylic to see the fluid. That just screwed that up.

Why do manufacturers that usually make good products, end up going the cheap way out for a little more profit and end up ruining their name?

 

[Firat]

I just recently bought the ek supreme hf nickel plexi cpu block :/

Imma keep an eye on it, it's been good for 2weeks so far

 

[ShortAlieN]

I really want their blocks for my next build. Build is kind of ruined without them. will have to figure something out.

 

[ruthless_villain]

will have to use xspc blocks now :|

 

[mayhem]

What you need to do is look carefully look at you blocks and if you can see Copper though the plating then you are going to have problems. If this flakes its going to get into your Rads and cause problems as well a if it gets into you water pump it may damage the impeller. If this happens you screwed its as simple as that.

EK have know about this problem for a while yet on certain forums they have been blaming the users which is untrue and pretty much underhanded, how ever a few people have taken it upon them self's and run tests on new blocks and these new blocks have shown the defects before they have even seen a drop of water. I personally not only feel sorry for the end user but all so for all re-sellers no matter whom they are as this sort of thing will cost the re-seller a large amount of money that they probably will not get back.

Lucky i think nickel plating is a unnecessary evil and is just bling and i have never bought any thing nickel plated as it just introduces another metal into the loop that is not needed Plus it adds another £15 to £20 onto the price of a water cooling block.

To add to this more shops are refusing to sell there products and have pulled sales of EK products. expect the same to happen over here soon.

Personally i like EK branded stuff and have bought a few peace's off them in the past how ever if there QA is this bad it begs me to question the rest of there range of products. This is not the only time this has happened with EK and they have had problems with cracking res's in the past as well which again was down to QA control. The only way things like this are sorted is to literally stop buying there products until they have sorted there problems out.

 

[equk]

Fortunately I didn't go for any nickel stuff in my loop.

Was just looking at the nickel fullcover gpu blocks but will stay with copper.

 

[Firat]

What you need to do is look carefully look at you blocks and if you can see Copper though the plating then you are going to have problems. If this flakes its going to get into your Rads and cause problems as well a if it gets into you water pump it may damage the impeller. If this happens you screwed its as simple as that.

EK have know about this problem for a while yet on certain forums they have been blaming the users which is untrue and pretty much underhanded, how ever a few people have taken it upon them self's and run tests on new blocks and these new blocks have shown the defects before they have even seen a drop of water. I personally not only feel sorry for the end user but all so for all re-sellers no matter whom they are as this sort of thing will cost the re-seller a large amount of money that they probably will not get back.

Lucky i think nickel plating is a unnecessary evil and is just bling and i have never bought any thing nickel plated as it just introduces another metal into the loop that is not needed Plus it adds another £15 to £20 onto the price of a water cooling block.

To add to this more shops are refusing to sell there products and have pulled sales of EK products. expect the same to happen over here soon.

Personally i like EK branded stuff and have bought a few peace's off them in the past how ever if there QA is this bad it begs me to question the rest of there range of products. This is not the only time this has happened with EK and they have had problems with cracking res's in the past as well which again was down to QA control. The only way things like this are sorted is to literally stop buying there products until they have sorted there problems out.

Just wanted to ask, i was checking out forums on this problem and all the people with this problem use distilled water.... now these people seem to all be anti premix/dye becoz it apparently clogs up your block....any truth in this?

 

[mayhem]

Its all so been seen on fesser 1 liquids mate, you need to go to the ausi forums and there are some there.

Its nothing to do with the liquids it all to do with the badly plated products.

You will all ways find some one saying premixed / Dye liquids blocks systems when in fact 99.99% of the time its the users fault for not either cleaning there system out correctly or simply not looking after there systems correctly.

I have proved this over at XS my self with prolonged testing.

Lets put it another way (runs and check the books) ..

Ive sold 800 bottles of premixed liquids so far, over 2000+ dyes and only ever received 2 complaints so far.

1) one from adding a full bottle of blue dye in 1/2 ltr of liquid. (my advice to them was to drop the water cooling and stick in a HS instead)

2) A early batch of Pre-mixed liquid i was working on had problems this was rectified way before it went retail.

So out of all them products ive sold and the feed back ive had i would tend to disagree with some how ever each to there own.

some one posted once - you only hear the bad on the internet not the good. this is soooo true

 

[C3mods]

I went to the EK website to see what, if anything was being done about the problem and this is what I have found as of now:

Nickel Plating Issues - 30/05/2011

I would like to announce that we got the test results from renown independent institution, which we contacted for solution on situation with nickel-plating issues. I would like to be clear in one thing, it took 2 month for the institution to make tests as any test with nickel is a long term project, if you want to be thorough.

We are now in process of translation.

We will put that report on our page in 2-3 days.

There were allot of confusion and lack of argumented information so we were really looking forward for the results of the study and let me just say for now, we were very surprised with the results.

And then this Post

Nickel Plating Report - Delayed - 02/06/2011

Dear EK customer

The institute took liberty to spend few more days for manuscript reading and finalizing the report. Please bare with us few more days. The institute prommised us final report in the beginning of next week.

I really hope they get the issues straightened out personally. I would like to order a few of their products, but as of now I don't want to chance it.

 

[mayhem]

Well what's brought this on for shops to with draw the products is independent tests by a reputable person on a un reputable site to show what the problem was. And that being that the fault squarely down to bad nickel plating. Im not going to link to the site for personal reasons and suggest no one else does due to the language used though out the site.

 

[C3mods]

Well what's brought this on for shops to with draw the products is independent tests by a reputable person on a un reputable site to show what the problem was. And that being that the fault squarely down to bad nickel plating. Im not going to link to the site for personal reasons and suggest no one else does due to the language used though out the site.

I have a good Idea of what site your referring too. I have issues with that site and so do a lot of other people. And I can understand your personal issue with them. I think these forums are for Q&A, reviews, and also for people to help others out with what they know or found out. Its one thing to joke around, or flame someone to a certain extent, but not to use vulgar language every other word and completely bash people in general.

Btw glad to see you back up and again Mayhem, and nice to see you posting more again

Question though, are you going to be stocking places like performance-pc in the states again, I know they have a few of your dyes left, but out of stock on most of them.

 

[mayhem]

Im working closely with I&H over in the USA and hes trying to re create my dyes over there with some success. How ever he's finding some of my mixes are very difficult to re create as so are some of the major manufactures over there. I use some complex mixers to create the colours and some of the stronger colours i do and mixes are pretty difficult to replicate.

I think hes the first person to suddenly realise what i've done is not normal and i even baffle some Dyes specialists over here on how i make them

...

My only problem with exporting out of the EU is customs and last time i sent over dyes to USA in bulk they got caught up in customs and were not released for 2 months much to the annoyance of Performance PCs (of cause they thought i was trying to rip them off till they arrived). If performance would like them they will have to contact me tbh.

From I&H

I just wanted to update you guys on what's going on.

It turns out that all of the dyes Mayhem supplied me with are based on UK color codes, and don't technically exist in the USA.

The USA and our FDA have different dye codes for the same dyes, and in some cases certain versions of dyes that exist in EU or UK don't exist here in the US, and vice-versa.

It took me a month after I got the info from Mick before I could even find a dye supplier that was willing to take the information I had, and try to track down USA analogues... and the only reason they were even willing to do that is because they have a UK office that they can correspond with directly.

That said, for me to be able to produce USA analogues of Mick's dyes, I'm basically having to reverse engineer and test the entire product line from scratch, which is almost impossible considering that I don't have anything but pictures to go on.

I had some settling issues at first, but hooked up with a chemist and through correspondence with the dye company's tech dept., am working my way through the colors one by one.

To complicate matters, some dye colors are made from more than one base, and my dye supplier gave me 2-3 versions of each base to try. That is pretty hellish when you're trying to duplicate a result.

Being that I've pretty much made my own product line from scratch, I'm not sure it would even be appropriate to call these dye's "Mayhem's", because they most certainly are not the same dyes.

When I got started on this, I (incorrectly) assumed that I would just be able to find all of the same dyes, and copy Mick's recipies. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

I am still willing to work with Mick, and send him some samples of my dyes for comparison to his, or whatever he wants to do. I pretty much am just doing this now so it doesn't seem like it was all wasted time, so I'm good with anything. I may just release these under my brand, because they don't really equate to Mick's dyes. That's something I'll have to figure out in time.

reading that though again just made me laugh i sound like a mad cook ... wich im not im just mad.

 

[C3mods]

LoL. Sounds like it. Well hopefully the both of you can get stuff straightened out.

I will probably order some dyes from you directly after I get some extra cash. I did have a couple questions for you though about colors, how hard is it to get a good UV purple, because most ones that I have seen so far, aren't very UV reactive at all, and also why does most UV red show up as more of a pink instead?

I love the clear blue dye of yours, that I have seen in pics and videos. Keep up the great work, and maybe it should be Mad Scientist not cook

 

[mayhem]

There is no such colour as UV red its basic a mix of UV pink + Red dye. The best way to achieve a good UV red is to Mix Red, Blue and UV pink. This is a old Tut i did a while back

http://wcdyes.com/download/MD_BR_UVBR.pdf

 

[C3mods]

There is no such colour as UV red its basic a mix of UV pink + Red dye. The best way to achieve a good UV red is to Mix Red, Blue and UV pink. This is a old Tut i did a while back

http://wcdyes.com/download/MD_BR_UVBR.pdf

Thanks for that, it helps out a lot.

 

[mayhem]

Dear user of EK products,

Original EK statement can be found also here.

EK Nickel plated products have been under lot of public interest recently due to reported flaking issues. This is a short statement to summarize the important points and conclusions from research done recently. In our statement there are also links to technical papers covering the issue in depth. We hope this will clarify the situation. EK promises that we will pursue this issue furthermore.

EK Water Blocks Company has been working on the Nickel Plating issue for over 3 months now. Let us say that any test with nickel is a long term project, if we want to be thorough.

We chose technical Institute Jozef Stefan which is well known worldwide to check our samples. Their test report can be found here.

We have also made internal tests of 5 different coolants in an identical hardware setup.

What we found in summary is that:

1. Certain chemical additives based on pure silver and Copper Sulphate that were added to the loops all of these cases have made distilled water electrolytic and with its properties they caused corrosion of nickel plating.

2. Most of the threads on the forums have stated nickel-plating flaking off, while research have disclosed there was no flaking involved whatsoever.

Effects of these additives were not commonly known. EK is sure that users are using them in good faith. Due to only until recently confirmed effects of these additives to nickel plated blocks, EK have decided to fully replace products with damage nickel plating in order to support customers of EK products.

You will get a specific EK RMA form from your reseller which can be also downloaded here.

To get the RMA product replacement you will need to follow these steps:

1. Fill in RMA form

2. Make pictures of the block (front, back and corrosion close-up)

3. Send RMA form, scan of original invoice and 3 pictures for each block to support@ekwaterblocks.com e-mail.

4. We will then inform you where to ship the damaged block(s).

5. EK support will inform you from where your replacement block will be shipped to you (in most cases it will be shipped from the location where you bought it)

6. Customer will pay shipping costs for the replacement block and can discuss with the reseller what shipping method to use

7. Customer will get the block replaced and cannot ask for a credit note nor replacement for another product. Only thing that we allow is that customer can chose to replace the product for non-Nickel-Plated block – copper version.

Therefore until further notice EK Water Blocks Company recommends, not to use distilled water with silver in the loop in combination with nickel-plated blocks, nor additives based on Copper Sulphate.

EK recommends only coolants with anticorrosion additive, although our internal test systems of pure distilled water have been found without any problem in 2 months test period. EK Team would like to ask you to kindly spread this information as we would like our users to continue having excellent experiences with EK products.

The replacement form can be filled in until July 31st, and starting with August 1st EK will no longer replace products with such damage as the reason of the damage will be widely known and customers still using these additives will do it under their own risk. The replacement request can also be possible only for the purchases with invoices dated up to June 12th 2011.

Edvard König

 

[C3mods]

So they are basically saying that its the users fault because of the additives they use in the loops?

What kind of additives would have Copper Sulphate in them? Are they saying not to use silver as in a silver coil in the loop?

 

[mayhem]

no what there saying is that Silver or copper sulphate is causing the problem. how ever UK shops have hardly had any returns (i mean so far i a know after talking to a few today they have had NO returns) with this problems, Its only USA, AUS, Canada.

wich is bloody wired