At about 1:30 AM last night, my wife came into the bedroom where I was stone cold asleep and announced, "Bobby, I think we have a problem." And then I awoke to the most horrid burning rubber smell I have ever encountered. "Could you come here?" my wife asked. I got out of bed grumbling and stumbled into the office where she and the foul odor of hell seemed to have originated from.
As I walked in my wife proclaimed, "I was just working on my computer and yours started making this horrible smell and then it just shut off." My half-awake brain made a sad little attempt to process what she was saying and come up with a coherent response. All I could muster was, "Uh...That's weird."
I staggered over to my lovingly built Arrogant Bastard Box. I pressed on the power button a couple times with absolutely no response from the machine. That is when I noticed the fan that usually sits on the window sill was laying all funny right on top of the water pump for the PC's water cooling system. I suddenly became very awake. In my heightened state of wakefulness, I discovered that the little bubbles of air in the clear tubing were not moving.
The Bad
http://www.str8dog.com/images/sad_panda_002.jpg
I moved the fan back to its position on the window sill and discovered a hose that had been totally bent in half and blocked all water flow. Lifting the weight of the fan off the tube and clearing the path for water did not help. Apparently the blockage had caused the water pump to die a sad, sad little death.
The Ugly
http://www.str8dog.com/images/sad_panda_003.jpg
I thought to myself, hey at least the motherboard did was it was supposed to do and shut down when it sensed that it was over heating. My oh my, how wrong I was. I reset the power supply and tried to fire the box back up. Click, Click, Click. No lights, no whirring of hard drives powering up. Nothing.
I popped the side off the case and realized the horrid smell was not coming from the little water pump that could, but instead it was from inside my case. I looked inside only to see charred black funk inside the water tube coming out of the water block on processor two.
The Horrifying
http://www.str8dog.com/images/sad_panda_004.jpg
http://www.str8dog.com/images/sad_panda_005.jpg
It then began to dawn on my rudely awakened brain. The new kitten I got for my wife, who loves to play and knock sh*t off my desk, who is so cute and cuddly, climbed up on the window sill and knocked the fan off. Which landed on the water pump and blocked water flow. Which forced the water pump to burn out and stop moving water. Which caused my PC to over heat and bake my two lovely 1.2 Ghz Athlon MPs.
The Culprit
http://www.str8dog.com/images/sad_panda_001.jpg
I have not had the time to take it apart yet and see the extent of the damage, but I am sure I am out at least one processor and motherboard. I hope the ram, video and sound cards are all salvageable. At least now I have an excuse to upgrade my Arrogant Box to handle Doom and Half Life 2.
Topic Options
Post Options
Thanks(0)
Str8Dog wrote:
