Phew! (computer content)

digitalscream

So I go into town for lunch today, come home and my computer's running a bit slow (it's a Core i7 2.6GHz, so it doesn't generally do "slow"). I guess that I've probably got jobs running in the background, and think no more of it.

After a couple of hours, though, I figure enough's enough and reboot. Cue two BIOS warnings:

"CPU fan failure!"

"CPU over temperature error"

Feck. So this thing's been running for at least the last two hours without a CPU fan at all. Obviously, I yank the power cable (although why the urgency now escapes me), pull the side off and have a look inside - turns out that the dog had been in my office and bashed into the computer, somehow dislodging a tied cable which was now blocking the fan. I tied it back in place, switched it on, and...within about 20 seconds the CPU dropped from 70 C to 45 C, and all was well.

15 years ago I had something similar happen (with an overclocked Celeron 300A), which pretty much cooked itself in seconds. Thank you, Intel, for finally designing something which doesn't release its smoke when something goes wrong.

Phew indeed.

ICBM

That reminds me of something… I had a run of amp repairs at a local studio a while back, caused by some utter numpty(s) who didn't like the noise of the cooling fans - the fan grilles on the back had been deliberately pushed in so they jammed the fans. A couple of them did release the smoke… I realised what the cause was when I saw the second one with what could not have been accidental damage - it wasn't so obvious on the first one, I thought something might just have bashed into it.

Went round and checked the others and several more had been attacked. Stickers have now been put on the amps, and where it's possible I've spaced the fans further into the amp so it's not as easy anyway.

Emp_Fab

How could anyone be so dumb as to deliberately disable a cooling fan and not think there would be any consequences ?

Myranda

Emp_Fab said:

How could anyone be so dumb as to deliberately disable a cooling fan and not think there would be any consequences ?

Chernobyl? 

Danny1969

I have a Behringer powered mixing desk in for repair at the mo and the fan was fitted the wrong way round in the factory. Oh and they missed fitting 2 out of 4 reservior caps !

ICBM

Emp_Fab said:

How could anyone be so dumb as to deliberately disable a cooling fan and not think there would be any consequences ?

Either because they were musicians and hence there is no level of dumbness which cannot be reached concerning technology, or because they knew full well there would be consequences but assumed they wouldn't actually occur during their own rehearsal.

On the second point they were right - the amps failed some time later and the studio owner couldn't work out who was responsible.

johnnyurq

My two fun overheating moments were when I worked in an IT consultancy with loads of biggish businesses and home workers for clients

Number one was when the first load of AMD K6 cheapie Laptops we got for home workers and salespersons all bar a few melted due to the inadequate cooling, especially the ones used on beds on top of a fluffy duvet. 

One all but went on fire and had plumes of black acrid smoke and wee flamettes, hilarious.

Gotta love non tech buyers changing the spec to save some money.

Second was a customer who ran his business from home who took a well built and specced PC(built by me natch) back into the workshop claiming it was overheating. So soak and burn test over the next 48 hours and no sign of any overheating whatsoever, so he takes it away and then returns the day very irate.

So the PC was duly hammered for 3 days solid and placed beside a very warm radiator too and lo and behold no overheating or crashing.

Next I decided to do a site visit as a courtesy (i.e. Free) as he was getting a bit arsey, so on arriving the problem was apparent immediately.

The desk he had it in had a wee alcove where the PC was and the back was covered in with only a small gap  for cables, now that was a cause for concern but by far worse was the fact he never wanted it to move so no chance of any mechanical bumps etc.

He had only gone and carpeted the whole fecking alcove with yer best 3 inch deep shag pile carpet to hold it fast. So no air in or out apart from the front and this was before case fans front and back.

After explaining why it was overheating and him agreeing it was logical that this was why it was overheating, yet he still asked me what I was going to do about it.

So I did the only thing I could and removed it from its snug and warm home and sat it on the floor at the end of the table asking him to leave it there a few days, which he did and quelle suprise it worked perfectly with no overheating.

Thank fuck I don't do that shit any more as I may have ended up ripping his arms off and beating him to death with the soggy ends.

Paul_C

http://clientsfromhell.net/

johnnyurq

LOLz @Paul_C most of that rings true and explains why I left consultancy and retail for the Educational and Voluntary sectors.

digitalscream

johnnyurq said:

Number one was when the first load of AMD K6 cheapie Laptops we got for home workers and salespersons all bar a few melted due to the inadequate cooling, especially the ones used on beds on top of a fluffy duvet. 

Ah yes, the K6. Bane of my life.

My first job out of uni involved supported a bunch of numpty paper-MCSEs who hadn't got a clue, while building 500 K6-based machines for schools. I recommended Intel CPUs, but the beancounters thought it'd be a better idea to save £5 per machine (which were already in under-budget, so the schools would quite happily have paid a little extra). Those fucking things never worked properly - dodgy drivers, bad motherboard cooling (they were the worst of the cheap PC Chips boards) and general horribleness.

Could've been worse, I guess. Could've been a Cyrix.

Myranda

My first PC was a Cyrix...

It was far from brilliant... the BIOS on the motherboard kept forgetting that the soundcard existed... had to go into the BIOS once a week or so to turn off the built in soundcard in favour of the proper one

Danny1969

Ah yes K6 chips with 3D now technolgy ..... those fecking things were the reason my company vowed never to build anything other than Intel again. We must have built and sold a hundred before we learnt our lesson. 

To be fair though at the time a Pentium II 366 slot 1 chip was about £145 and a K6 socket 7 - 400 £89 so the difference wasn't small. 

digitalscream

Danny1969 said:

Ah yes K6 chips with 3D now technolgy ..... those fecking things were the reason my company vowed never to build anything other than Intel again. We must have built and sold a hundred before we learnt our lesson. 

To be fair though at the time a Pentium II 366 slot 1 chip was about £145 and a K6 socket 7 - 400 £89 so the difference wasn't small. 

As I recall, the Celeron 300A was released around the same time - it was a lot more stable, and overclocked to way past the speed of the fastest K6 at the time. I do remember when AMD redeemed themselves with the first Athlons, though (at roughly the same time that Intel had the brain fart which was the P4).

I miss those days, honestly...everything was a lot more interesting then. That said, things were far more interesting back in the old 8-bit days, but I guess that's a discussion for another day...

ICBM

On the other hand, fan cooling has its own problems...

This was a PA power amp from a club, where it had been installed for many years before the smoking ban.

(caution, this may make you feel ill)

When Fan Cooling Goes Bad:

http://i.imgur.com/M3FNk5X.jpg

That brown stuff is tobacco smoke residue. It's both thermally insulating and a bit electrically conductive, and the amp is of course totally and utterly toast.

The worst thing is that just looking at that picture actually makes me "smell" what it was like when I opened it.

impmann

Shit the bed, that's the worst I've seen...

I've seen a bass amp that was full of cat hair before now... that had a particular aroma too, not a pleasant one either. The guy wanted a warranty repair on it too!! 

Myranda

That there is precisely why I have cleanable filters on my fan intakes... but I still wonder why they're still considered an added extra when stuff like that is possible.

ICBM

Worst I've ever seen too, which is why I took a pic. I couldn't quite believe it!

The problem with filters is that if no-one cleans them regularly then they sooner or later become blocked and the cooling stops being effective. That used to happen a lot on music gear that was used in bars as well, before the ban.

Danny1969

That's the problem with laptop cooling, the crap builds against the heat exchanger until the fan can no longer push any air through it. A smoking pet owning laptop owner will normally have a 4 to 6mm crust of crap on the exchanger when I get it for a service. 

Some models like the Dell Latitude E6400 have a removable bottom to the laptop. You can just remove the cover, unscrew the exchanger and clean it. On most models of modern laptop though cleaning it involves removing the keyboard, palmrest and motherboard which is a right pain

axisus

My macbook pro had overheating probs this year and it buggered the graphics totally. Pulled it apart, reflowed the graphics chip and threw some software on that allowed me to speed up the fans. Been good for some months now! One was pleased with ones-self. This was my facebook post:

 (apologies - thought it was smaller!)

 

Danny1969

That's the dreaded BGA joint failure, it's been a huge problem for everybody especially nVidia. I hope your repair lasts, I've done a few but almost all of them failed within 6 months

Thankfully on the new Macbook Pros the bottom comes off and cleaning the fans is easy. Just mind the fragile connectors

johnnyurq

digitalscream;97491" said:

johnnyurq said:

Number one was when the first load of AMD K6 cheapie Laptops we got for home workers and salespersons all bar a few melted due to the inadequate cooling, especially the ones used on beds on top of a fluffy duvet. 





Ah yes, the K6. Bane of my life.

My first job out of uni involved supported a bunch of numpty paper-MCSEs who hadn't got a clue, while building 500 K6-based machines for schools. I recommended Intel CPUs, but the beancounters thought it'd be a better idea to save £5 per machine (which were already in under-budget, so the schools would quite happily have paid a little extra). Those fucking things never worked properly - dodgy drivers, bad motherboard cooling (they were the worst of the cheap PC Chips boards) and general horribleness.

Could've been worse, I guess. Could've been a Cyrix.

LOLz

Yeah the K6 and PC Chips combo was a frigging disaster especially as the jumpers for setting the clock speed multipliers were wrong. So inadvertent overclocking equaled PC death very soon, mind you other cheapie mobos of the time suffered this too.

Cyrix were indeed hateful little things but at least they had the good grace not to die a hot death and nearly cause fires.

Today we have cheapie Asrock mobos to fill that hilarious void.