Happy New Year. Here's a dead PC

Happy new year!

Now that the formalities are out of the way, here's a little promise: I'm going to update this blog a lot more often than the dismal effort that was 2011. You can blame Twitter. Or, more specifically, @anmarmansur for introducing me to micro-blogging in the first place.

This year decided to start with a PC disaster. If you remember, I had a core i7 920 CPU cooled by a Noctua DH14, overclocked to 4.2ghz. All ok until the last couple of weeks or so. As I played Battlefield 3, the PC would lock up and turn itself off. No BSODs, no error messages, nothing. This made me think that something was overheating. Badly.

The GPUs and NorthBridge are all watercooled, and the Reserator wasn't overheating. So, it had to be the CPU, right? Of course, I hadn't cleaned the PC not once since installing it (I know I know, papa don't preach!). I decided to upgrade the CPU cooler to one of those all-in-one water solutions, specifically an Antec Kühler 920. I couldn't really add the CPU to the reserator's loop, it would have overheated.

I dismantled the (very dusty) PC on Friday night, and was very pleased when the delivery man delivered the Kühler at 08:30 in the morning. Always a good start when the courier company gets it right! I put Kraftwerk's excellent Minimum-Maximum DVD on, prepared my handheld vacuum cleaner, and some cans of compressed air.

I worked away feverishly, and carefully! I cleaned anything that could be cleaned. I dusted all the surfaces, washed all the filters, cleaned all the fans and even emptied the watercooling fluid. I took the CPU out gently and cleaned the thermal paste off it. By the end of it all, I had a shiny new PC, and a very painful back.

I then tried to decipher the Kühler's installation instructions. In typical German style, it was just a bit more than useless. It wasn't as difficult as the Noctua though, but it did take me a while to figure it out. I installed it, and then decided to turn the PC on "bareback", ie just CPU and RAM to make sure the cooler actually works before shoving everything in to the case.

I turned the PSU on and the reassuring gentle throbbing of the asus logo on the mobo came on. As did a nice Antec logo on the CPU cooler itself. A quick press of the motherboard's "start" button, and then........

Nothing.

I tried again. Nothing. I pressed the case main power button. Nothing. I disconnected all PSU cables and reattached them. Nothing. I took the cooler off. Nothing.

You probably get my drift. I tried at least 25 different variations. You guessed it, nothing. Nothing means no POST, no fans spin up, no bleeps, literally as if there's no CPU installed.

Could it be the CPU then? I removed that and even tried to power on (nothing). It was then that I noticed that some of the pins in the CPU socket were bent out of place. At least eight of them, in two seperate locations! How? Why? What? Who?! I ran through how I'd cleaned up and, as of this moment, I still can't remember going near those pins.

A quick glance online and I found many people with issues like this, mostly accidental bending/breaking of pins. The good news was that, if you're careful and very lucky, you could bend them back and they sometimes worked. I sat myself in a brightly-lit area, got a small tweezer, and set about bending things back in place. Worryingly, one of the pins seemed as loose as a child's milk tooth. But, you know how it is, a blind sort of optimism grabs hold of you during crises like this, and you cling on to the hope that maybe, just maybe what you're doing is going to work, all the while you're trying to ignore the sensation of dread and despair that's creeping up from that horrible dark place in your mind that knows from years of experience that you and your PC are well and truly fucked.

That horrible dark place was right. The PC was well and truly fucked. No matter how many times I tried, no matter what I did, or how I realigned the pins, it just wouldn't turn on. After about the 50th time in total trying to resurrect this dead puppy, I gave up. I admitted sour defeat and decided to replace the motherboard with the cheapest alternative.

But, you're gonna have to wait till tomorrow for that story :p