Cleaning Water Cooling Parts?

I saw a video on YouTube where a radiator was cleaning by attaching the tubing to a tap in the bathroom and just running distilled water through it for a couple hours. Would this be effective?

No, the water coming through the tap in the bathroom is not going to help at all, it's not even distilled. Quite the contrary long periods of pushing that water through the rad will cause salt deposits and a layer of brown stuff covering the pipes insides leading to a much lesser effective radiator.
The distilled water that is spoken about on so many forums to clean WC parts is actually Battery Acid.... not Boiled, Vaporized and Condensed Water....

Use mild Battery Acid (Distilled Water) and just let it soak for sometime.... then you can either use a tooth brush or just give it a vigorous shake till you see or feel water flowing through the Rad easily and see or feel the Water Block is cleaned.

Mild Battery Acid itself contains Sulphuric Acid..... that is pretty much a chemical combo all in one solution... I doubt you'd need anything else. But do use the precautionary measures printed on the bottle before trying anything out, keep it way from your eyes, clothes and skin.

**The distilled water that is spoken about on so many forums to clean WC parts is actually Battery Acid.... not Boiled, Vaporized and Condensed Water....
**
link please? I drink the distilled water I use in my loop so I'm rather unsettled to read this allegation
Cs, is there any way you can run your loop into a bucket of distilled? it depends on your loop ofc, mines designed for easy flushing, but check this out for guidance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9T [...] r_embedded,
if you can put a feed and return pipe into the bucket, you can walk away and leave for a good few hours
Moto

Not the drinking distilled water......
no, that is the Vaporized, Condensed and then bottled for drinking purpose water.

The one used for cleaning coolant stuck in a radiator is the battery distilled water...

Yup, that is right about battery acid, but you need to use a mild one.... more in the ration of 50 -50... 50% Battery acid and 50% distilled water.... That gets all the gooey stuff off the insides of the rad if it did get stuck there and leaves the copper inside clean as new...

INK?

It is most probably an Antifreeze mixed with distilled (Drinking) or demineralized water....

and I also still have air bubbles in my system after a few months... how sad

Air staying in a loop is one of the biggest first-timer's problems. Often, they get a loop running, don't really know what to expect and neglect purging all the air. They later find that their reservoir levels have dropped, suspect a leak and get scared when they don't find one. Air *usually* works it's way out of a loop with a good pump and flow, but not always. Your water level in your res should be almost identical when it's running and when the pump is off. If not, you have air in your loop displacing your water levels.

could i clean using alcohol?

And regular distilled drinking water would not work either?

So how would I go about setting this up? Remove all the WC components from the case, fill the res with the solution mentioned above, then jump start the PSU?

"fill the rad 60%ish with distilled and cover the ports with your (clean) fingers, give a good shake for a few mins, rinse, this will help get any residual crap out of there too, even if theres nothing in there, its better to have done it needlessly than to need it done and not have"
do you mean the res or is it actually possible to "fill" the rad with water?

okay thanks a lot for the help ^^ one last question: does the water block corrode over time if left on its own?

If you can, it's also helpful to run some kind of filter to keep all that crap out of the water as you flush your rads- you'd be surprised how much junk is in there. There are several options if you go this route, but like Moto said, if you can at least fill/shake/rinse a few times manually this should help get out most of the big chunks.

New radiators are like new babies- they are nice, shiny and fun to play with but they are a real pain when you need to get all the nasty stuff cleaned out of all the had to reach places.

I've had the same CPU block for 3+ years, same radiators for about 4 years, same pump for almost 6 years. Tubing is pretty much disposable as it starts to get brittle, cloudy, stained (if you run dyes/additives) and can cause leaks if it deforms too much from aging...although realistically, we'd be talking several years. I ran my loop for 2 years straight without cleaning...no problems.