That's what I get for buying such complicated shit

[plonq]

Last night I tweaked a couple of things in Vista to try and boost its performance a bit (not that it is lacking in performance, but because I am a hopeless tweaker). I changed the VM settings, disabled and changed a couple of services, and modified the BIOS settings a bit. It booted up just fine, and worked great until I fired up WoW to get ready for last night's raid -- and my video crashed hard.

I went through and meticulously backed out all of the changes I had made and fired up the game again, with the same result. Hm. Even though they should not have affected the video drivers at all, I halfway suspected it might have been caused by the game add-ons that I had updated just prior to running it. I considered stripping the game of add-ons to see if that would help, but I decided that I would first try updating the video drivers -- the ones on the nVidia site were a few months newer than the ones on my machine. Couldn't hurt, could it?

This time the entire system crashed when I tried to run the game, to the extent that for the first time ever since I went to Vista, I had to use the power button to reset the system. I booted back up again, and I noticed that I was getting occasional video glitches during the boot process. Rather than trying to run the game again, I ran PC Wizard to see what was going on with the internals of the machine.

Core voltages looked fine. CPU usage was nominal. CPU temperature was fine. GPU temperature was... ack! The GPU was clocking in at a balmy 117 degrees Celcius. I copped a glance into the top of the case and saw what one does not want to see when they are running a water-cooled system; there were large air pockets in the water hoses, and the fluid was definitely not flowing. I powered down the system immediately, because I suspected that the pockets were actually steam where the fluid inside the GPU jacket was boiling off from the heat.

I know that the cooling system was working when I got up yesterday because I make it a habit of glancing at the hoses for air pockets every other time I use the system, and everything looked fine in the morning. I ran a few tests, and as far as I can tell, the fan is still working but the pump is dead. I checked the manufacturer's site, and they have a three-year free replacement warranty. Time to dig around for my receipt. I hope I can get more than six months out of the replacement.

None of the reviews of this cooler mentioned anything about problematic pumps, so I am left wondering if it got damaged in transit. It was about -32 on the day it got delivered, and the unit was frozen solid when it arrived. Hmph. Next time, damn the noise, I'm getting a fan.

Comments

[typographer.livejournal.com]

One of the problems we ran into with the liquid-cooled system miertam was running for a while was condensation caused water to drip onto the motherboard. Surprisingly, it never caused a classic short with smoke. Just his sound card, I think it was, stopped working, and when he opened it up, there was this round path of corrosion on the motherboard around part of the slot the card was in. It took him a while to figure out what had caused it.

So we've gone back to the massive arrays of fans in cases.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

My case has a window on the side, and a mesh on top for a fan, so I can keep an eye out for leaks. I am a little concerned about the potential for leaks down the road as the parts heat and expand over time. The most likely place for it to leak is at the quick-release joints, and those are sitting right over the power supply.

[(Anonymous)]

So did Michael's. And for the record: I did NOT say leak. There was never a LEAK. Condensation is different.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

You did indeed say condensation. That's what I get for reading and replying before my first coffee of the morning. My reading comprehension in the morning is not always at its best without my caffeine goggles.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

:(



On a completely unrelated side note since you're not on MSN right now:
Got any dinner plans?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

We grabbed dinner in town. By the time I got home and saw your response we were already fed up. =(

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

(one pump chump joke)

That sucks, man; those things take long enough to put together once. How long does it take to fully drain, disassemble, then re-assemble and refill? I wonder about getting a backup pump but that just seems like a lot of space-taking-up.

Good luck!

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Heh. Actually the process went pretty quickly thanks to the quick-release hoses. The time-consuming part in the initial installation was the measuring, cutting and assembly of clamps and the like.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

Do you think the video card was tweaked from all that heat?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem to be any worse for the experience, but I've little doubt that the episode has affected its expected lifespan.

[tv5901.livejournal.com]

That's always a scary experience...I probably should have read this post before your newest post, but still.

I've always been hesitant and probably always will be to even use a watercooling solution. I guess it's just having always been told that water + electronics != good