Or rather, the CPU nearly melted. When I got up this morning and came downstairs, after getting a glass of water, I headed towards the computer to cehck my email. I moved the mouse around a bit to take up the monitor, and… nothing happened. I looked down and saw something I’d never seen before: the power light was blinking. Power light off? Yes, I’ve seen that. Power light on? Check. Power light blinking? No sir, I’ve never seen that before.
I hit the reset button, and immediately a loud humming sound started coming from the tower. Whatever was going on inside the computer tower, it was also causing the keyboard tray to vibrate. I hit the delete key to get into the BIOS, and headed to the Hardware Monitor section. Lo and behold… The CPU fan was near death. Instead of its usual 4000 – 5000RPM, it was doing between 600 and 1000RPM. The CPU temperature was at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, both the CPU fan RPM and the CPU temperature stats were in red, and with good reason. The thing was just about ready to melt, catch fire, or do a bit of both.
I shut down the computer, made a few phone calls, and found a computer shop that had a fan that would work. Half an hour or so later, all is well inside the innards of the computer.
We got lucky. If the fan had downright died instead of slowing down, the CPU probably would have been toast when I tried to check my email this morning. I’m guessing that the blinking power light was a sign that it had shut itself down or something due to overheating. At any rate, the CPU obviously didn’t burn up, because I’m writing this blog post via said computer.
Have anyone who reads the blog had similar close calls with their computers, or other electronics?
Comments 12
There’s nothing like a little shock in the morning, isn’t ist?
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 12:29 pm ¶I experienced something similar with the first computer I had bought from my own money. It must have been spring 2002, the PC was only a few weeks old, when it shut itself down from one minute to the other. I tried to switch it on again: Beeeeeeeeeeeeep! When I tried again after an half hour it ran perfectly well for a few minutes an then: out again.
So I brought it back to the computer store and guess what: The fan was broken and, because of the heat, the CPU as well. That’s why the PC worked until the CPU got too hot, shut itself down and started working again when the CPU got back to normal temperature.
You know, nothing like that has ever happened to me, but I remember reading a rather sweet little article in PC Gamer a few years back.
This guy wrote in, saying how he overclocked a 486 SO MUCH that it would actually run Unreal Tournament. Unfortunately, while running it, it was so hot it actually caught fire, his solution for which was to “throw it in his back yard and hose it down”. Pictures accompanied, just so you knew he wasn’t lying.
Probably the best story I have regarding punishing computers.
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 2:19 pm ¶I had the same thing happen in my power supply last week. The fan just started going slower and slower and slower over the course of a few hours.
Thankfully ASUS’ little monitoring program alerted me as soon as it slowed down (and booted me out of my Counterstrike game). But for a wholly acceptable reason.
I shut the PC down, ordered a new PSU and was very happy that I was there to catch it. Even though the software will shutdown the PC if any of its fans were to fail, I don’t want to rely on it in case it fails to work.
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 3:37 pm ¶Zeitlos: That sucks that it happened on such a new computer. I hope the computer store fixed it for free.
Karyl: OC’ing a 486 to run Unreal Tournament is a pretty amazing accomplishment.
Also, throwing it into his back yard and hosing it down was an excellent solution to the flaming CPU.
Carl: Glad to hear you, too, caught the problem before it ate your system!
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 5:08 pm ¶Pretty much the same thing started happening to my CPU fan back in January. Long story short, I bought a Mac.
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 9:58 pm ¶Jay: The difference being, my computer “fix” came to about three dollars. What did yours come to?
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 10:01 pm ¶Considerably more. haha
Posted 12 Mar 2007 at 11:09 pm ¶I merely used the slowly dying fan as an excuse to finally get something new.
Jay: Sounds like a good enough excuse to me. My excuse for not getting a new computer is my wallet.
Posted 13 Mar 2007 at 9:08 am ¶You’ll get a lame kick out of this one…
It happened after a power outage a week or two ago, so I’m thinking that was the catalyst for messing with the power supply fan in the computer I’m using right now. After using for about 20 minutes, it would shut off and blink. Have we taken the proper steps to fix it yet? No. I left the side of the case open, and put a green plastic fan to the side of the thing. Working like a charm.
Posted 13 Mar 2007 at 11:37 am ¶Joshua: Whatever works, man.
I’ve heard of people setting up one of those small freezers to place their whole computer inside, to keep everything cool.
Posted 13 Mar 2007 at 11:54 am ¶Sure have.
Posted 15 Mar 2007 at 6:22 am ¶Nils: I think something along those lines may have been what killed my CPU fan as well. I didn’t realize it beforehand, but the whole computer was stuffed full of dust. It’s a wonder the thing didn’t just catch fire.
Posted 15 Mar 2007 at 7:04 am ¶Post a Comment