What sort of idiot runs their CPU without a cooler?

[Erithan13]

I plead guilty.

Had just got back from a holiday and was keen to start transferring photos and videos onto my rig. I'd hidden it away out of sight while I was away and it was a simple task of putting it back in place and connecting up the cables. I was admittedly in a bit of a rush and accidentally dropped one corner onto a wooden floor. Literally a drop of a few centimeters and only onto one edge, didn't seem all that severe really. You see where this is going don't you?

I should have checked the internals carefully. The case incidentally is an Antec GX300 which has a 'window' but it's so darkly tinted it could probably double up as eclipse glasses....anyway, nothing seemed loose or out of place from a quick exterior inspection, system boots up as normal and starts loading windows. Suddenly the case fans start screaming at full blast. The Cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper something with the little push spring pins, I figure one of them has popped out, turn off the system and open it properly.

The bare face of the CPU is staring back at me with the cooler having made a cosy little home for itself on top of the GPU. That feeling dawned on me, when you know you dun screwed up bad, and you can barely do anything more because all you are occupied with is trying to kick yourself until you promise not to be such a colossal impatient moron in the future.

Cooler went back on, didn't bother with fresh thermal paste since it wouldn't make an immediate difference to whether I'd cooked the CPU or not, and I wanted to know just how much damage I'd done. System boots, fans spin up as normal, windows loads, check temperatures.....phew, seem normal. Browsing, gaming, photo editing, all proceed without complaint, I was living in constant fear of a BSOD or the system just going 'poof' and bricking itself without warning.

Been a few days now so I guess I've been lucky, props to Intel for the thermal protection and throttling. I still need to replace the paste and maybe do some stress testing to be absolutely sure. There's that cliched phrase 'lessons have been learned' that accompanies any major screwup by a company/government etc, needless to say I absolutely have taken on board a few things from this one.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Been a few days now so I guess I've been lucky, props to Intel for the thermal protection and throttling. I still need to replace the paste and maybe do some stress testing to be absolutely sure. There's that cliched phrase 'lessons have been learned' that accompanies any major screwup by a company/government etc, needless to say I absolutely have taken on board a few things from this one.

Been there, done that, mostly. I was working on upgrading a friend's CPU, and when I was working on it, I noticed that one of the mobo screws wasn't screwing into a standoff. Turns out, the standoff was under the motherboard, and it shorted it out when I powered on. So you were a bit luckier than I, in the end.

Thankfully, I had purchased a spare board for my friend a few months prior, so I was able to get him up and running again without too much trouble.

Makes me wonder, though, about my overclocked Skylake rigs, using "SKY OC" that shuts off the PCU to be able to OC. Some claim that the overheat protection is also shut off. I haven't tried testing that, of course, but it concerns me a little bit.

 

[Blue_Max]

Intel built in some decent protection for that sort of thing. Anyone remember the AthlonXP / Duron days when the CPU would cook itself to death in 2-3 seconds? A friend of mine did that... building an Athlon XP rig, he tested it without installing the cooler and cooked the expensive XP. Had to make do with a cheap Duron since the money was spent.

 

[Phynaz]

You'll be fine. Modern CPU's will not self destruct without cooling, they just shut themselves down.

 

[Torn Mind]

Throttling saved your CPU.

As a FYI, some mobos let you disable throttling.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Anyone remember the AthlonXP / Duron days when the CPU would cook itself to death in 2-3 seconds?

Yep, did that to one.. I think it was a k-6? or whatever.. before the vertical slot, one of the flat ones. I plugged in the power without checking to see if the PSU switch was off, and I think the case had an always-on power switch? Or I plugged in the wrong thing into the power switch pins? or something... something resulted in it turning on when I gave it power. Didn't take but about 3 seconds before I started seeing smoke. Wasn't happy.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Makes me fondly remember the video way back when of the guy cooking his breakfast on his CPU.

 

[Phynaz]

Throttling saved your CPU.

As a FYI, some mobos let you disable throttling.

But not thermal shutdown.

 

[bbhaag]

Intel built in some decent protection for that sort of thing. Anyone remember the AthlonXP / Duron days when the CPU would cook itself to death in 2-3 seconds? A friend of mine did that... building an Athlon XP rig, he tested it without installing the cooler and cooked the expensive XP. Had to make do with a cheap Duron since the money was spent.

I do....haha. Many years ago when we were moving I loaded my tower on the bed of a U-haul box truck. I got it setup but didn't even think of checking inside the case to make sure everything was ok.
Need less to say the cooler popped off in transit and my poor AthlonXP burned up in seconds.

 

[MongGrel]

But not thermal shutdown.

Throttling is a bit of a different critter.

Have had a few incidents in the past myself where I was basically burning in a chip and had to yank a power cord out (had monitoring software up).

I hate pushpins, have had enough coolers over the years even the ones running are not really stock mounting from spare parts.

I've never fried a CPU, but did fry a MOBO and a GPU on two different "opps, oh crap moments" in the past.

Most MOBO's are almost bullet proof on shutting down these days.

 

[Torn Mind]

I have my own story of a "near-death PC experience". I know the feeling of "doom" or "ooooh crap". The straw from the compressed air can hit the LGA pins on a board I just sold and was used a mere handful of times; it was like new except for dust. That cost me an all-nighter, but luckily, the pins were in the IGP circuitry, and I was able to get those things straightened out good enough to POST.

 

[nerp]

There was that classic video from Tom's Hardware when they had an AMD chip literally pop or explode. It took a long time before people finally shut up about that and stopped worrying about exploding CPUs.

 

[cytg111]

Thankfully, I had purchased a spare board for my friend a few months prior, so I was able to get him up and running again without too much trouble..

I dont know what to say to this. I feel I should say something, just dont know what! ... You did *what* for a friend? What else do you do for your friends? Keep spare girlfriends? Cars?

 

[mv2devnull]

Some are apparently into "retro" with 486DX, which did not need a cooler ...

 

[Jen]

There was that classic video from Tom's Hardware when they had an AMD chip literally pop or explode. It took a long time before people finally shut up about that and stopped worrying about exploding CPUs.

remember the video well , cpu didnt last long either. i lost 4 amd cpus in one day trying to figure out what was causing them to burn up. finaly figured it out was the pcpower and cooling 450 watt powersupply that was killing them. was a long time before i had a decent computer again

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I've never seen a hsf that comes off that easily.

 

[bbhaag]

Some are apparently into "retro" with 486DX, which did not need a cooler ...

I got into vintage computing last year and you're right. I own two 486 systems one runs an Intel 100mhz 486 and the other is an AMD 100mhz and neither one has a fan on the cpu.

An interesting thing is the AMD system has a heatsink on the cpu but the Intel system doesn't. I guess AMD has always run a bit hotter even back then. haha

 

[cytg111]

Vintage computing .. is there a survivalist aspect to this? Gate length (according to process tech), faraday cages etc? Is an older node less likely to be affected by an EMP?

 

[Blue_Max]

Vintage computing .. is there a survivalist aspect to this? Gate length (according to process tech), faraday cages etc? Is an older node less likely to be affected by an EMP?

Doubtful. Some of us just like to relive the "glory days" of when this stuff was new and amazing. I keep around a couple old machines with ISA slots to play with my vintage sound cards!

*sigh* I never, ever should have recycled the neat-o 486 with built-in monitor (early imac style.) It was such a tidy, compact little guy with 2 ISA slots... freepin' perfect for a vintage sound card shrine!

 

[bbhaag]

Vintage computing .. is there a survivalist aspect to this? Gate length (according to process tech), faraday cages etc? Is an older node less likely to be affected by an EMP?

Nope but when I was kid a system like that cost around $3200 in 1992! I grew up in working middle class family so trying to convince my parents that we need a 3000 dollar computer was impossible.

Now I'm older and can afford the computer I never had as a kid. Plus its awesome playing games like WC2 and Day of the Tentacle on period correct hardware

 

[PingSpike]

One of the pushpins busted on the shitty Intel stock cooler on my main machine a few weeks ago, the thing was hanging half off when I looked at it. I only noticed because the fan sounded bad (because the whole HSF was loose and the fan was running full blast) and then I checked the temps and 90c! Nothing was crashing or rebooting. I mounted a new cooler and all has been well. I think I'm going to bail on pushpin coolers from now on, even when they stay on I'm never satisfied with how they install.

 

[Regs]

The stock HSF for Intel is terrible for this. Those push and turn heatsinks are utter crap and I want to yell at the guy who came up with such a dumb design. After moving my case and some internals around, two of the pins came out and my HSF was running half way off for a month before I figured out what was causing the hitching and crash boots. My CPU was running 90c+ idle.

Edit -- lol -- PingSpike I didn't read your message before posting mine. So I agree completely. Those things never worked. Need a after market one that screw in from the other side.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never had any significant problems with push-pin coolers. Then again, I'm not removing and re-applying them too many times. (That would seem to make the pins weaker, every time you re-install it, so eventually, they'll break or give way once installed.)

 

[bigboxes]

The stock HSF for Intel is terrible for this. Those push and turn heatsinks are utter crap and I want to yell at the guy who came up with such a dumb design. After moving my case and some internals around, two of the pins came out and my HSF was running half way off for a month before I figured out what was causing the hitching and crash boots. My CPU was running 90c+ idle.

Edit -- lol -- PingSpike I didn't read your message before posting mine. So I agree completely. Those things never worked. Need a after market one that screw in from the other side.

When Intel started coming out with those in the mid-2000s, I was working on a new customer build. I couldn't get the HSF off so I just took a nipper and snipped the end off and off came the HSF! Made some story up about the HSF being defective when all I had to do was turn the damn pin 90 degrees. I felt so stupid, but never told the customer. Bad boxes! I was used to building highend machines with coolers like Thermalright that it just blew my mind that Intel would make something so cheap. I was still AMD at the time and even their heatsinks were robust.

 

[Ratman6161]

Never ran one without a cooler but I did once run one without a fan. This was a K63+ back in the day (anyone remember those)? Thought back then it was super cool that I had it over clocked from 450 Mhz to 600 Mhz. Problem was,we had four cats. Ever see what cat hair does to the insides of a system that doesn't have any kind of filtering? Long story short after the system kept rebooting itself randomly (no build in overheat protection in those days). I finally pulled the cover to have a look. Fan was so caked with cat hair it wasn't running at all. Cleaned it out, put it back on, used the vacuum cleaner on the inside of the case, and it was as good as new.