Slashdot Mirror
Requiem For A Motherboard
JimLynch writes "In my last DIY column, I discussed what it was like to build my first system. As time went by, unfortunately, my DIY system wasn't all wine and roses. This column tells the story of how I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions. It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere."
This has to be by far one of the worst things i've seen posted on slashdot. Really, the fact that someone even took the time to write this article amazing me.
How many ways can I destroy a computer... yahh
Maybe if there were good gory pictures or something
Gamblers Forum
I have seriously manhandled about 150 computers, ripping out the motherboards, making frankenstein boxes out of non-working boxes, hot swapping non hot-swappable hard disks, forcing fans onto cpus, pulling out running SCSI discs to get that gyroscopic effect because the disks are still spinning at 10K rpms. I must have had some luck though. Never once have I broken a machine.
found out one time that an iMac keyboard can hold exactly one pint of beer...
at least it had a use for something..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
"I shouldn'ta broke off the white thingie."
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
I sympathize with this man's problems that have to do with computer temps. It's very hard to get the hot air to flow out, instead of having a mish-mosh of air currents within your case. If fans wouldn't work for him, you could just go the hardcore road of water cooling... none of that "hot air" is involved, although a conventional water cooling system is much more expensive then fans. Its the ever debated balance between $$ and quality.
Knocks parts off the motherboard, wasn't grounded, refused to measure fan sizes before buying them. And I am still only halfway through the article. Can be summed up in one sentence:
Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!
Download my free songs!
Geeze, who is the author of this lame article. Should I start writing articles about my trip to the grocery store? I wounder if I could get published, well at least I could get slashdotted...
*sigh* this articles so lame, it just makes me laugh to hard.
Gamblers Forum
This and many other sites like it offer a Print option that puts the whole story on one page. With the likelyhood that slashdot is going to take this site to task, it would be a good idea to get it all on one page before you start reading. That way, you won't get blue mouse trying to get to page 2.
I dunno, I tried real hard on a graphics card comparison to kill a board, swapping cards fast, and, oops, forgot to power off before reboot...
That was several years ago and all the boards survived. Buy quality components is probably the best lesson!
It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere.
You betcha. Here are some gems:
When I returned, I smelled the distinct odor of something burning. -snip- Just for the heck of it, I checked the temperature of my motherboard with SiSoft Sandra.
Mistake number 1. If you smell smoke, go for the plug, not Sandra!!
You knocked off a "white doohickey" and didn't check to see if it was something that was soldered to the board?
Yeah, that could be a problem. Learn the names of your doohickeys, at least. Then post here - we could use the giggles.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
He tot it was da ganja, mon.
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
The first time I built a computer, I figured that if a few of those metal support posts were good, more would be better. That's why they gave me a whole bag, right? I assembled the system and it wouldn't start. I did some troubleshooting, succesfully booted with the board out of the case and eventually solved the problem.
That's as dumb as I've gotten -- perhaps I should be writing for ExtremeTech instead? I know my first response to trouble isn't to ask in a forum what new heat sink will make me more 1337.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I'm so happy that there are so many people out there like this, otherwise a lot of us would have to go out and get real jobs...
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
The reason the motherboard started smoldering? The CPU maxed when he tried to load one of that site's webpages. It's impossible to pick out any actual content on that page amongst all the adverts, links, and folderol.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
This whole article was just one painfull (and pitiful) screwup after another. I couln't even bring myself to read the whole thing.
Area man who didn't know anything about cars filled up his radiator with motor oil and overheated his engine. News at 11...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There are some tips you should know, like installing the cpu and heatsink before the mobo is in the case. And making sure you screw in the mobo with the correct standoffs.
let me say this:
[Nelson voice]
Ha ha!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you don't know what you are doing, then either take it to or buy from someone who does. I mean come on, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. I don't know how to fix cars, so do I fix my car when something breaks? No. I take it to a mechanic. Jeez, some people are really hurting in the common sense department.
Agreed. I haven't built a system since an O/C Celeron 2 800 running at 900 Mhz was a kickass system, but in my experience the hardest part was figuring out with components your board supported. Most componenets could ONLY be connected the right way and it was just about impossible to connect things the right way in the wrong place. As my co-workers used to say when I worked at Old Navy: "A partially trained Monkey could do the job, and the customers would probably treat him better"
Building my first PC was no where near as confusing as the first bike I built, or the Car Engine I hope to rebuild in the future (as soon as I can listen to one of those muscle car guys talk about engines without my eyes glazing over, and parts of my brain BSODing)
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Used to be, back in the old days, if you were feeling a little masochistic you'd do a little bit of self-flagellation. Nowadays, you see if you can get a quarter million people to laugh at you all at once.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Later, I found that when I had put the memory in, one of the plastic pegs that separated the mobo from the metal case fell off and the half the mobo was touching the metal case. I am not sure which short circuited first, but... game over, man. Lost everything but the hard drives, CD-ROM, and floppy drive.
After all that I was almost expecting for him to say he then loaded up Far Cry for a couple hours until the smoke started REALLY billowing from the computer. Of course that would become a nuisance so then he'd go in the other room to get some shut eye while Maya rendered a few scenes overnight...
i've built dozens of computers since 1987 and have cracked the case on thousands of others, literally. I've never toasted a part but for once, and that was an improperly soldered CPU board on a Compaq Proliant 2500 back in 1996. A surface-mount capacitor just fell off the board. Warranty replacement - the system was brand new.
Now, i've seen bad boards, particularly in the lower quality side of the Taiwanese parts market back in the late 80s, when if you ordered 10 motherboards you might expect 2 or 3 to fail. Never got any, though. I hear the same thing is true with some of the cheaper SiS based boards today.
I don't think it's all luck. Quality parts selection and careful handling will take you a long way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Best use for an AMD CPU. EVER.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
***Like most of you, when I need a question answered, I usually hop right into the forum. The ET forum is blessed with the presence of many extremely experienced DIY people who almost always have helpful suggestions or at least a definite point of view on DIY issues.
***
welll, it might shock you but if the question is "what's burning??" I DON'T CHECK INTO THE FORUMS as the first thing, I'm kind of old fashioned in the sense that in a case like that I turn off the computer and see wtf is wrong with it..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Actually...
Yeah, he made a series of incredibly boneheaded moves. No big deal there, I think most humans do something like that at least once in their life.
However, he was smart enough to write an article and make some money off of his mistakes. Hell, he can probably deduct the cost of the dead hardware as a business expense. I never managed that.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Wow, he knocked a 'white doohickey' off his motherboard, walked around with it while his arm hairs were standing up straight from static electricity, and still expected the thing to work? What a chump. But not nearly as chumpy as someone who would do these things (i.e., me, with my first DIY system):
1. jammed a DIMM in backwards (this is hard -- the slot is asymmetric to avoid this very thing), turned the machine on, and quickly smelled the sweet smell of burning plastic as the DIMM holder melted, then tried to turn the machine off but forgot that you have to hold the power button down for several seconds, and stinking up the entire house before just pulling the damn plug...
2. vacuumed the dust out of the inside of the case while the machine was running, accidentally tapping the spinning CPU fan with the tip of the vacuum attachment, and snapping one of the fan blades off, making it spin out of control like a unbalanced centrifuge and making a horrible loud noise...
3. speculated that random machine crashes were being caused by a poorly-mounted heat sink, so removed the sink and turned the machine on, heard a loud "BEEEEEEP" and no start-up, then put his finger on the exposed die of the CPU to feel what was going on--OHDAMNIT'SHOTHOTHOTHOT, and enjoying the sweet smell of burning fingertip flesh...
Why has this article been published on Slashdot anyway? Just to make fun of the poor fellow?
Or maybe Slashdot readers suddenly became a bunch of dumb wannabe geeks who really need that kind of "tips" and I haven't noticed yet.
I find that having everything you might need next to you before you start building/reparing a system is the best way to avoid danger. Then ESD is not a problem as long as you periodically keep touching the case, as long as there is no potential difference between you and the case you should be fine. The more you move around the more chance of you building up charge.
It also helps to read manuals and how-tos if you are new to this stuff.
xray
This guy wasn't just forcing it, he was handling it in the most slapdash manner possible! And how could he get a heatsink that barely fits the case? Where's all the air going to go?!
Bah. Here's what I learned about building a machine:
1. Buy as much as possible from the same retailer. That way when something goes wrong, there's no back and forth on it.
2. Buy from a store. There are a lot of "cheap" internet sites that will happily sell you unreliable hardware, then become hard to contact afterwards. Swap meets are an especially bad place to purchase new hardware components. With a store, you can walk through the door and strangle the guy behind the counter.
3. Buy as big of a case as you possibly can. This will allow you a lot of room to work on the inside, as well as good airflow and extra mounts.
4. Find out what every cable is *before* you plug it in. Also, make sure which direction it goes. Sometimes they need forcing, but only force after you're SURE that it's supposed to fit that way.
5. Take your time and assemble the components as early as possible. Some things can only be inserted inside the case, but others (such as CPU, fan, and DIMMs) can be assembled outside the case. It also never hurts to leave things like the hard drive unplugged just to make sure your system turns on and functions. Remember, SLOWLY.
6. Buy quality components. It may look cheaper to buy that AZUZ motherboard instead of the ASUS one, but the difference is tremendous.
One last tip: don't buy the latest and greatest processor unless you absolutely have a reason to do so. The performance difference between that and the next model down is almost imperceptible due to wait states in the CPU. You're much better off investing your money into more RAM. Less heat, more speed. For gaming, go for the best vid card, though. Unless you like to upgrade, you'll be with it for a long time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Works for computers AND intercourse.
Submited by GeorgeW.
In my last radio address I discussed how it was like to rule USA for the first time. As time went by, unfortunately, my country wasn't all wine and roses...
Clearly you should have used a UPS, then set up a script that detects when the power is killed and starts looping a WAV file of sirens blaring and a robotic voice saying "MAIN POWER FAULT" at 90dB.
I built a system off of the Sharky Extreme budget PC components back in November. I loaded up the basic stuff and had a few extra components laying around like a Geforce 4ti and a Soundblaster Live card.
I only run Linux on it and never even installed Windows at all, everything is fully supported by Linux.
The only problem I have with it is over heating. I have a nice heatsink/fan sitting on the AMD 2500+ and I'm not overclocking it at all. But still, I have to have the case open and a small table fan pointed right at the motherboard to keep the temperatures down to 44c...otherwise it raises to 55c+ with the side panel on and the two case fans running.
I've seen the temp jump up to 61c-62c which from what I've heard is either fine to it's too hot. I've heard the gamut of people saying it's not a problem and not worry about it.
But here's the rub...I run Gentoo Linux, and since I compile everything, I don't want it overheating while in a compile...as an error could easily be compiled into code and be almost impossible to track down a bug....or so I've heard. This has NEVER happened to me. I guess I'm just extra paranoid about the temp.
Other than my paranoia, everything runs tip-top and is very speedy. First computer I've built from scratch (not to mention the first OS I've built from scratch) and everything is ok. Other than me running the memory as single channel DDR instead of Dual channel for 3 months because I had it in the wrong slots. D'OH!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
How is the 'Extreme' tech guy just nnow installing his first mobo? I mean, that shit should be a prerequisite to having a writing gig at a site called 'Extreme Tech'. I guess they are so extreme that their people have never built their own machine before.
If this guy works in IT he should be fired. This is a prime example of why I have a job and why I give people too much credit. Doohicky? If you don't know a resistor or a capacitor when you see one, you probably don't need to build your own pc. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
So this guy who doesn't know what he's doing decides that he can tell others what to do?
The clueless leading the clueless.
I mean, it would be expected from somebody at THG..
Actually, now that I think about it, THG will probably post these article soon enough.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
After smelling smoke, I reached for the plug, and turned to find the ZIF socket a smoldering mass melted into the motherboard. Removing the Bright green Cyrix heatsink from the ZIF socket revealed that I had shattered the ceramic block that encased the CPU chip.
I took the melted motherboard, cracked CPU, and the faulty manual back to the store and they acknowledged that the manual was wrong. They gave me a new mobo, and a used but working CPU, even though I had only bought the board from that store.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
For all the disparaging comments, the one good thing that comes of all this is this: Cheap Hardware. I've built a lot of machines and only once had a problem with overheating when I didn't quite get the heatsink on the CPU perfectly ... no burning smell, just the temp in BIOS rising swiftly was enough to make me pull the plug.
I've got another "jinx" friend who fries motherboards and graphics cards regularly. I laugh at him quietly so as not to give myself bad computer karma and realize that the more people feel that they can DIY, the cheaper components will get. Good can come from idiots of the world, however reading this is like reading Darwin Awards for computer retards.
Your screwdriver license has been revoked.
I wounder if anyone would be interested in seeing some of the really bad code I've written while *high*
Think thats a good story?
Gamblers Forum
And here it is.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The tech people at my local computer store said it was heat that did that, the people at another store said that it would've happened anyway. It left a nice mark on the side of my tower though, capacitor guts everywhere!
Why would cutting power kill your motherboard?
Worst that could happen is if power dropped in the middle of flashing a BIOS, but that's recoverable via a quick trip to the nearest little computer shop that has an EPROM burner (or warranty replacement if your bios is a TSOP)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's GCC, not Gentoo. If the computer flips a bit and GCC puts that into the code, the resulting bug can be damn near impossible to find. Short of having an assload of time, a good debugger, and being damn near a genius, forget it.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
The meta-bug: Failure to isolate problems one at a time.
If he'd simply concentrated on what was wrong (bad fan on heatsink), he never would have purchased the new heatsink. He would never have purchased a new case to fit the new heatsink. He would never have had to remove the motherboard and fuck it up by knocking parts off in his failed attempt to put it into the new case. He would never have needed a new motherboard, and he never did need a new case.
> Can be summed up in one sentence: Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!
You have a gift for understatement. Describing this guy as a "feckin' eejit" is akin to describing Valles Marineris as a "ditch".
Constructive advice: The difference between feckin' eejits and the clued is that the clued try to solve one problem at a time. CPU running insanely-hotter than normal? Solve that problem - and only that problem. After you've solved that problem, then you can think about getting better solutions like a quieter heatsink/fan, a snazzier case, or a new motherboard. Solving one problem at a time means that the "solution" to the first problem doesn't necessarily have to fix anything -- it could be that you wanted to upgrade the old box anyways, so just power off the damn thing and buy your new box.
You didn't miss anything, basically this guy just told everybody how foolish he was. If I am getting heat sink/fan for my cpu and it's not an exact copy/replacement I would definitely check to see if it fits. This man doesn't, in fact he doesn't check three times. To further things he gets impatient and either shorts out his board with static electricity or the piece that he refers to as a doohickey was more important that he realized when he knocked it off.
I have the same board he has, sorry strike that, had and I gone through two fans because of temp getting to high but I allow the BIOS to turn of the PC if things get to hot. Linux can get might pissed off about a hard shutdown but it's better than having to get a new CPU.
All in all a really dumb story...
I would like to see a picture of said doohickey to see what it was he broke.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
It bothers me to no end when people try to pretend that their stupidity is normal and that they're trying to help you out by telling you not to do the thing(s) that they obviously should not have.
Gee, did you guys know that you shouldn't stick a lit cigarette in your eye?
Don't use hot sauce for you 'roids!
NTITE
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
But I prefer shopping at well known internet sites than compusa. The guy behind the counter earning min wage doesn't give a rats ass about your problem. It doesn't do any good to kill him for the corperate policy, and unless you have access to pig farm body disposal is a major headache.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I've been building many a PC in my day. The first one I ever did is still humming away in the other room with my blog running on it. The BX chipset is by far the most reliable and stable motherboard chipset ever made. And the Abit BX6r2.0 is the best board with that chipset.
Anyway, I've never had a problem putting computers together. The reason for that is lots of research on the internet. Before I get ready to build a box I check everything. I never buy incompatible parts. I don't skimp on cost and risk getting a part by a no-name manufacturer. You don't know how many times I see people with broken hardware from no-names. Pay the extra 30 bucks and get the big name brand stuff. Abit, Asus, Leadtek, Gainward, Creative, Seagate, Corsair, Crucial, etc. If you get a video card from randomtaiwantech and it doesn't work, there's a reason.
However, me and my roomate did make a big mistake once. The reason was that there was no documentation concerning the issue on the net, and to this day, there still isn't. The first time I built a computer with a Duron isntead of a Pentium it wouldn't boot. I couldn't figure it out. The company I bought the computer from either didn't know. But what they should have noticed on my invoice was that I had a 300W power supply and that I needed more. Eventually after several RMAs I had a 300W power supply that worked somehow magically.
Later my roomate got a new PC and it had the same trouble. My computer died soon after and we realized something. The power supply is important and 300W isn't enough anymore. Motherboard manufacturers! In the documentation for a motherboard list how big a power supply is needed! You have no idea how long it took us to figure out what was wrong with several completel seperate machines not booting in the same fashion.
Let this be a lesson.
1) do research
2) do more research than is possible
3) don't be cheap
4) if you know what you're doing it wont go wrong.
Needless to say my current box has a huge expensive 450+ Watt Enermax PSU. I will never have THAT problem again.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
If your processor was to overheat, the computer would just freeze. On the slim chance that garbage was incorporated into your binary, it would just crash when you ran it. The chances of some incorrect but "meaningful" bits being written are vanishingly small.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
the part that made me ill was him not knowing what doohicky he knocked off.
I can relate to components not fitting in certain configurations;CD rom drives that were 2cm to long for the mobo/case combination i was trying to install them in, or powersupplys right up against cpu heatsinks blocking the air flow. with infinite combinations comes infinite ways to screw things up.
I once put a HUGE heatsink/fan combination on a CPU for a friend. it was an aerocool deep impact limited edition (gold plated heatsink with iridescent fans) as seen here without the 80mm fans mounted on it or the gold plating. i had to use a dremel to trim the shroud around one of the fans so it would clear a memory module. but I figured "hey, you can't see it from my house"
"He's a real midnight golfer"
I was working at ChimpUSA about 7 years ago in the upgrades department. A woman with the 'clueless drone' expression came up and asked for a new cpu and mobo.
"Would you like us to istall it for you?" (Not an attempt at selling over-priced services, just an attempt to prevent the inevitable.)
"No, I'll do it myself"
After the requsite hour she called back and claimed that the mobo didn't work.
"Did you hook up the power supply? Make sure the CPU was properly seated? Checked the RAM? Plugged in the drives? Proper grounding on backplane screws?"
She answered yes to each question as I explained each of them to her. After a good 30 minutes of trouble shooting...
"Oh yeah, when I was putting the motherthingy in, I poped off a brown cylinder with my screwdriver. is that important?"
"Hmmm, yeah, capaciters can be important. They probably didn't put it on the board to look cute."
And that is how I know the guy. I sold a mobo to his mother. "...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Rebuilding an engine is kind of like upgrading your computer.
You get to:
1. Buy tools to do the job right.
2. Have screws and bolts left over after every trek under the hood/in the case.
3. Get to swear you'll never touch this goddamn piece of crap again when it fails to start/turn on.
4. Be overjoyed at the sound of sweet exhaust/bios beep when you're finally finished.
The only real problem with cars is that they don't stay perfect forever. But I guess the same could be said for case fans/hard drives etc.
I've worked on cars for about 6 years now, got the bug from friends in college. Some days I hate having to fix my cars, but others, I look at the savings.... that is, after I learn what to buy etc.
Karnal
So while gcc is compiling firefox and it "flips a bit", that could compile an error into the firefox code, correct? ,,somehow to easy'') doublecheck and correct!
Firefox wouldnt matter too much - a bug in glibc would be annoying. But most of the time the compile simply fails - if you compiles fail on different source code lines (inreproducable) you can be pretty sure it is a hardware problem (overheating or bad RAM).
Which is why I've heard many times not to be overclocking while your compiling anything.
Thats a good advice. My current system ran at 85C when first assembled (And mainboard, CPU and cooler came as a bundle). Starting a compile locked the system. My brothers system even failed trying to install Windows XP because of lockups. Checking the CPU temperature in the BIOS we saw a temperature of 120C (on my system because of the compile, on my brothers system even when idle.). We decidered there just wasnt enough pressure from the Cooler (Arctic Copper Silent Pro) on the CPU - so we manufactured two thin copper plates of about 0.8 mm width and did put it between the mounting piece and the cooler. We now needed much more force to press the cooler onto the CPU, but both systems now run stable on 50C.
So:
Dont trust manufacturers. Even good ones. If something seems weird (like cooler that could be pressed onto the CPU
One night, I was upgrading my PC, when all of a sudden it went berserk. The screen started flashing and it was like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
And then, like half my motherboard was gone. And I was, like, Nnng?. It was a really good motherboard too. And then I had to do it again and I had to do it fast and so it wasn't as good. It was kind of a bummer..
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I built my first GNU/Linux PC this spring. It worked out surprisingly well. Here is my advice:
an ill wind that blows no good
Wait states have not much to do with the CPU... good advice, but a bad explanation.
:-)
True, but it is the CPU waiting. The wait states have more to do with cache misses, bus speed, and memory latency. The end result is that your CPU rarely his 100% capacity, thus real world performance differences between CPUs is somewhat mythical.
Then again, I didn't really feel like giving a dissertation on why CPU speed doesn't matter. Getting a good MoBo is about all you can do to really improve the issue. Since "quality components" was already in my advice, I figured that anyone reading it would do just fine.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How To Destroy Your Computer, a step by step guide.
Bang. That machine never worked again.
You could always compile again and diff the binaries and find the bug that way, right?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Our company makes memory chips. 80C is considered standard operating temperature. We do high voltage operating stress on the parts to eliminate infant fails at 130C before they're re-tested and sold. I'm not sure how tolerant other types of IC chips are, but 50 or 60 doesn't seem too bad yet. However, if that is 50 or 60 air temp in your case, your components are getting hotter than that, and will probably have problems.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I started building out computers 20 years ago when components were so #$%ing huge and cast-iron that you'd have to be a total idiot to accidentally destroy anything. By the time a faulty heat-sink could destroy a system, I had built about a hundred of them, so I've yet to destroy a single machine by my own stupidity. Knock on wood, but there is something to be said for tinkering with something you don't mind losing before dropping $2k on a soon-to-be door-stop.
Definitely, though, the huge case advice should be heeded. Sooooo many problems can arise from that, not the least of which is, ta-dah, heat dissipation. To say nothing of proper (and improper) grounding. Finally, DON'T SKIMP! You're saving money on the labor, put it into quality parts -- especially cables (power/hdd/cat5 etc). There's no sense shorting out a $200 HD or $95 power supply, and potentially a $200 MB and $400 CPU, all over a 39-cent cable that you should have spent a buck on -- (or for that matter, the $20 power supply you should have spent $50 on)... and for the love of god, don't build this thing on the floor of your shag-carpeted living room walking around in new trainers, OKAY!??!
A screw sticks, for example, on a side cover assembly. You check the manual to see if there might be any special cause for this screw to come off so hard, but all it says is "Remove side cover plate" in that wonderful terse technical style that never tells you what you want to know. There's no earlier procedure left undone that might cause the cover screws to stick.
If you're experienced you'd probably apply a penetrating liquid and an impact driver at this point. But suppose you're inexperienced and you attach a self-locking plier wrench to the shank of your screwdriver and really twist it hard, a procedure you've had success with in the past, but which this time succeeds only in tearing the slot of the screw.
Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn't just irritating and minor. You're stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It's absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle.
This isn't a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck. In traditional maintenance this is the worst of all moments, so bad that you have avoided even thinking about it before you come to it.
The book's no good to you now. Neither is scientific reason. You don't need any scientific experiments to find out what's wrong. It's obvious what's wrong. What you need is an hypothesis for how you're going to get that slotless screw out of there and scientific method doesn't provide any of these hypotheses. It operates only after they're around.
This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.
From "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. (Chapter 24)
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
...I once had "LM7805" branded backwards on my fingertip, by seeing 'What is hot in here?" ..But that wasn't nearly as bad as the other tech who ran his finger across the inkjet printer head while it was printing. (They design them so you can't do that anymore)( without major effort)
The ink almost made him have to have his finger amputated; It is very toxic, injected under the skin like that.
You could clearly read "The quick brow" backwards, fairly distorted, across the tip of his index finger, afew days later, after all the swelling went down.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Unfortunately, a lot of cases have decorative plastic front bezels that don't let air thru, even though they seem to have a grill in the front.
On all my cases, I use a 7" diameter AC fan on the front. I cut a hole thru the plastic bezel, thru the sheetmetal, and mount a 240 volt AC 7" (6.75") diameter fan on the front, blowing in so as not to fight with the power supply fan.
Using a 240 volt fan on a 120 volt system makes it run slow so it is not noisy. You could also use a 120 volt fan and a speed control suitable for inductive loads ( a light dimmer usually isn't). The ideal is to use a 200 volt fan made for the Japanese market (where the voltage is 100 or 200 volts, vs the 120/240 in the USA) but these are a little hard to find.
You absolutely need to have outlet area to dump the hot air, and I try to put my cards in every other pci slot, and leave out the blanks covering the slots in between. In this way you make a card cage like in the mainframes, where air used to flow between every board.
The fans are cheap on the surplus market, if you check the ads in Nuts and Volts magazine, you will find lots of surplus places listed. If you get a used fan and it has noisy bearings, you can pull them, read the part numbers, and order replacements for them from a bearing place like E. B. Atmus.
Once you make the proper holes in your case and put in a big fan, you should get lower temps than you do with the cover off.
If you want to be less extreme you can use smaller 12 volt fans, just make sure you cut the holes to let air in and out.
Here are some cheap fans at marlin p jones. The 24 volt fans may not run at all on 12 volts, unfortunately, but the 12 volt ones should run on the 7 volts you get between +12V and +5V on your power supply.
Good luck!
The best way to fix it is to get a new fan, and install it into the power supply (don't just buy a new PS unless you need it for a good reason, a fan will be a lot cheaper).
Barring this, remove the fan, remove the label from the fan, and pop the retainer ring (don't loose it!) off the fan shaft. Remove the fan blade/magnet assembly, apply a drop of silicone oil (or a bit of petroleum jelly) to the shaft, reinsert it into the bearing (spin the fan to distribute the oil on the shaft), and reattach the retainer ring. Clean the area for the sticker (of any grease or oil), and put on a new one (a cheap paper "garage-sale price" label works good).
Such a simple repair takes only minutes, and will last for several months, if not longer (why spend the money if you don't have to?).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This is as true today as it was 50 years ago. Furthermore, I think if you can't name "major" components on a motherboard, you shouldn't be messing with it - or at the very least, you should know this and *really* take your time.
I remember upgrading the memory, as a kid, in my TRS-80 Color Computer 3, from 128K to a whopping 512K. This was about 15 years ago. I remember the instructions (which I still have, along with the computer, and upgrade - and yes, it still runs great!) warning about handling the CMOS devices to avoid static electricity (when inserting each of the DRAM chips into their sockets). I ended up grounding myself using a length of steel wire tied to the kitchen faucet, then looped around my arm as I did the upgrade.
All in all, it took me about an hour to perform that first true "upgrade" on my Color Computer - being a 15 year old kid, impatient to get my upgrade going, but knowing that if I screwed up, my parents would be pissed (they paid for it, after all) - I took my time, grounded myself, and made sure I did everything right. So what do I have to show for it?
Well, patience, number one - but I also can still whip out my Color Computer 3, with floppy drive, monitor, and 512K of RAM - and boot it into OS-9 (8 bit multiuser/multitasking, baby!)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
But I've seen everything from "60c isn't bad" to "60c is one step below the entire computer bursting into flames".
Different CPUs are capable of different temperatures. (case in point: Intell Prescott chips being derided as "Pres*hot*" chips)
Internal case temp should be in the 30-45C range (assuming ambient air temp of around 25C). My AMD cases are running 41-46C at the moment, but the A/C is off and the ambient temp in here is 31C. CPU temps are generally in the 50s, depending on the case temp and the particular chip. I only use AMD, but I get nervous when the chip hits the high 50s. At which point, I investigate larger heatsinks or higher cfm fans.
Only solutions for lowering internal case temps are either:
- Remove heat-generating components
- Get components that produce less heat (5400rpm drives instead of 7200rpm drives, older video cards instead of the dual-heater top-of-the-line beast, use an older and cooler CPU)
- Adjust/add fans to move more air through the case per minute (air flow). Make sure the exhaust fans are properly oriented so that air flows through the case as designed.
- Simply buy a larger case so that the heat producing components are farther away from each other (Antec Sonata / p160 or a full-tower case)
- If the video card has a fan on it, make sure there is at least one empty slot between it and the closest PCI card
- 7200+ rpm drives generally require active cooling (Antec p160/Sonata cases have drive bays with a dedicated 120mm fan slot). Putting a 7200rpm drive in an external USB/firewire enclosure that doesn't have a fan is a good way to kill the drive (been there, done that, now only use 5400rpm drives in those enclosures).
I tend to be conservative with my cooling advice because my office has poor climate control. Like I said, it's 31C in here at the moment, which is warm enough to be uncomfortable even in shorts and a t-shirt. However, all of my machines work just fine since that they're in good cases with good airflow.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
If a sudden loss of power to the ps causes a mb to fry in any consumer PC then, IMHO, somthing is defective, possibly the ps. It shouldn't happen period. Power outages are to likely in typical home or small bussiness to guarantee it'll never go out suddenly.
Turning of a switched outlet is no worse, and often better, that a random outage.
I've been through lots of outages, and even had my comp connected to switched outlet someone (ok,ok, me somtimes) would turn off without making shure the comp was powered down. NEVER have I had that dammage anything more than data on the hd.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I've never been to ExtremeTech.com, but I would guess by the name of the site and the writer's completely ridiculous mistakes, that this article has to be a joke. I could understand if this was some random blog, but this article is coming from a site that seems to be about upgrades/mods/etc. Did they decide to get the mailroom guy to build a PC? It just doesn't make much sense.
As quite a few other posters have pointed out their tips for building a new system, all I really want to add in is RTFM. I'm not saying you have to read the entire thing, but everytime I've built a new system, that's my method. Open the box, ogle the motherboard, then take 5 minutes to look over the manual--that way you at least know the random jumpers on the board. And it gives you a moment to step back from it and calm down--at least for me. If I'm about to be building a new PC, I'm raring to go. I think the key to building a system is to SLOW DOWN! Think before you ram that $300 CPU in the wrong way and bend all the pins.
That's just my advice.
From the rest of the article it is apparent he is a beginner at case mods. So by the time we read about how much he likes the case window for viewing we understand why he doesn't have a webcam inside his case.
So, while I can't lay claim to the stupidity that caused my most interesting hardware failure I still laugh every time that I think about it, so here goes nothing interesting:
One day I am sitting at my computer, minding my own business trying desperately to finish a contract job that I have to deliver in about 12 hours. I haven't showered for two days, slept in about three or really had a meal that didn't involve junk food or cup o' noodles at the computer all week. I am almost done, I can feel it, so I stand up and go into the other room to call into the office and make sure nothing else has gone wrong while I have been dealing with this.
As I stand up, my cat assumes that I am going to pet him, and I have to gently remind him (read: shove him away) that there are other things that I have to do. So, I go into the other room and make a phone call. I am on the phone for about five minutes and everything is grand. I walk back into the room and go to sit down at my computer and notice several things wrong, listed in the order in which I noticed them:
1) My computer was off.
2) My computer was smoking
3) My computer smelled like cat urine
4) My cat was angry
Apparently when I refused to pet my cat, he decided to get back at my by marking the object that I was ignoring him in favor of: my computer. I, like the tower of intellect that I can be, had that side off of my case and a big house fan blowing in the side due to air flow problems at my, then, over-clocked system.
Well, enough to say that the computer didn't work, the job didn't get finished that day and the cat has never been the same. He won't go near computers anymore.
(I do have to say that this experience is the reason that I don't mind hearing the 'Jesus Saves' joke anymore because if it wasn't for that lame-ass joke I wouldn't have remembered to save my work and I would have been out a contract and not just 14 hours late with a great story to tell.)
Reading some of the nasty comments here on /. actually makes me feel sorry for the ExtremeTech guy. Ok so he made a couple of noob DIY mistakes, but who doesn't? Hopefully by the time he builds the next PC it should be easier... if he is smart to remember the mistakes he did.
OTH there are people who are just too hamfisted to be successful at handling/building delicate electronic components. I remember a manager I had once who kept on breaking stuff that we were building software for, almost everytime he "played" with one of them...