PSA: Remember to plug it in!

[Zap]

The other day I decide to do some maintenance on my wife's system. I had set up a 2x120mm external radiator for her liquid cooled gaming rig and it had gotten really dusty. Thus, I removed the fans and vacuumed out the radiator fins. Seriously it was like the lint screen in a dryer! So, I put it back together and all was well. She did her usual web browsing, listening to music, playing Popcap games (yay for free Bejeweled 2!) and Spider Solitaire, plus a bit of WoW.

The next day we played Borderlands. About an hour into playing, her system hard locks. Uh oh. Radiator fans weren't spinning - OMG I forgot to plug them in!

Radiator was burning hot! I flipped the power switch on the PSU to turn off the system, then plugged in the fans. I then turned it back on so that the fans could push the air and the pump circulate the liquid. It actually booted right up into Windows and was perfectly fine, and the temperatures dropped significantly in the first minute. Two minutes later we were back in Borderlands, and played for several hours (playthrough 2, Underdome).

Whew! This could have ended badly with a highly overclocked rig, but luckily it still works great. So, remember guys, make sure your fans are plugged in.

 

[daw123]

Very lucky. Do you know what temps the CPU was hitting?

 

[Gillbot]

I ran mine for a while with the fans off just to see how hot it would get. It went all day without ever crashing or overheating but I don't recall the temps. I don't think I even need the fans on but i'm too nervous to let it run while i'm not there to watch it.

 

[Zap]

Don't know what temps it hit. It cooled off before I could check. BTW the single 2x120 loop cools a Core i5 750 (with big overclock) and a GTX 285 (small overclock) so it wasn't just the CPU. In fact, I think if the CPU was hitting thermal limits it probably would throttle, so IMO (with no facts backing it up) it was the GPU.

 

[Tsavo]

I was watching someone assemble a K6-233. He got it all together, then fired it up...to the sound of it doing panicked beeping.

He forgot the HSF. It never did run all that well after that.

 

[Gillbot]

Yeah, mine is a cpu only loop on a 3x120 so I have plenty of capacity. With a GPU, eh, that'd make me nervous!

 

[aigomorla]

lulz... at least the pump was on.... if your pump was off, the system would of undergone thermal shutdown really fast.

Don't know what temps it hit. It cooled off before I could check. BTW the single 2x120 loop cools a Core i5 750 (with big overclock) and a GTX 285 (small overclock) so it wasn't just the CPU. In fact, I think if the CPU was hitting thermal limits it probably would throttle, so IMO (with no facts backing it up) it was the GPU.

I dont think you were @ thermal shutdown.

Water boils at 100C, pure.
If your using antifreeze, it can probably push it higher, but then you would start getting bubbles forming in your system from the water turning into vapor, and bad things would of resulted from that.

I think you were probably near 60-70C on the coolant side.
The rad was then probably disapating enough to keep you below vapor point.

Either way, worst case scenario would of been a ruptured tube from the increase of pressure in your system from the result of water boiling over.

 

[CZroe]

lulz... at least the pump was on.... if your pump was off, the system would have undergone thermal shutdown really fast.



I dont think you were @ thermal shutdown.

Water boils at 100C, pure.
If you're using antifreeze, it can probably push it higher, but then you would start getting bubbles forming in your system from the water turning into vapor, and bad things would have resulted from that.

I think you were probably near 60-70C on the coolant side.
The rad was then probably disapating enough to keep you below vapor point.

Either way, worst case scenario would have been a ruptured tube from the increase of pressure in your system from the result of water boiling over.

FTFY. Srsly though... a mod should know better!

 

[CurseTheSky]

FTFY. Srsly though... a mod should know better!

Aigo is not known for his grammar, spelling, or vocabulary. He is, however, known for his uncanny liquid cooling abilities and deep pockets.

 

[Zap]

... and generous friends in the industry.

 

[CZroe]

Aigo is not known for his grammar, spelling, or vocabulary. He is, however, known for his uncanny liquid cooling abilities and deep pockets.

Well, hopefully this is one step closer to being known for both!

Aigo: Thanks for the good info. Your experience helps us save $$$.

 

[Schmide]

I would of thought the tubing would fail before any boiling occurred.

Most tubing is rated to like 75c but can handle quite a bit of pressure. Given that water boils based on pressure the water is going to well exceed 100c just like a pressure cooker. A pressure cooker works at 15psi and causes water to boil at 120c or so. Classic Tygon is rated at 10psi which would put the boiling point at 115c.

Therefore in my opinion the tubing will fail based on temperature well before it boils. Although the braided stuff is rated at much higher temperatures and pressures, but even with that my money is on the temps.

 

[Ichinisan]

FTFY. Srsly though... a mod should know better!

You missed "dissipating."

 

[Lotheron]

I did this same thing once with an Athlon XP 1700+. I think it ended up frying the cache on the chip, but the core was fine. It would benchmark as an Celeron 300 at the time I remember, but it would act and play games fine. I ended up selling it to a friend, letting him know what happened. I basically gave it to him for free as he bought the motherboard/ram that I was using. I think he used it for another year or so with no issue.

It could have turned out way worse though, so yeah, plug it in, wrap it up!

 

[Zap]

I think you were probably near 60-70C on the coolant side.

That sounds probable. Top of the rad was too hot to keep my hand on, but it didn't blister my skin.

 

[aigomorla]

melted mcw60....

look at the edges.

this doesnt happen anymore, i believe all high end gpu's now have thermal shut down.

However im not holding my breath on the vregs.

 

[Maximilian]

Dont cpus downclock themselves when overheating? I remember a really old video where they took the heatsink off a pentium 4 whilest playing a game and it downclocked itself, the game lagged but it was fine, they did the same with an athlon and the thing went up in smoke.

 

[Zap]

That was Tom's Hardware, back when they were still somewhat relevant.

CPUs are supposed to throttle, but the funny thing is that many overclockers turn off all such protection in BIOS.

 

[Maximilian]

Ah yeah, cool, found it on youtbe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSGcnRanYMM

I take it turning off speedstep would turn off the overheat protection or would it be one of the C states?