Drunkard's Walk Forums

So I was playing a little bit of Champions Online this morning, and then the screen went all jaggy, the sound stuttered in a high-pitched squeal. This was no normal "Windows BSOD" moment. I had to turn off the power with the 5 second "force shutdown". I opened up the case, pointed a fan in there just in case it had gotten too hot in order to cool it down, waited 5 minutes, then hit the power button. 

Nothing. I mean - absolutely NOTHING. The power button lit up, the fan came on, but that's ALL. No post test, no hard drive light, no indication from the monitor that it was getting ANY signal from the computer at all. 

It's dead, Jim. 

*SIGH*

I don't know if you'll see me in-game for the forseeable future.I'm sending this from Dad's computer. But I'm not sure it can run City of Heroes or any other game at any kind of decent framerate even at lower graphics settings. I'm going to check and see tonight.  

Ok - good news, bad news time. 

The good news: 

It is NOT my hard drive. It's a SATA hard drive and all I had to do to confirm it was stable was pull the SATA cables from the DVD/CD on my dad's PC, hook them up, boot up and I can see everything on the drive just fine. Everything is there. No loss. 

The bad news: 

It's probably my motherboard. Several things point to this. The main one is:

I THOUGHT I'd been keeping the interior clean by using canned compressed air to blow it out from time to time. Apparently I wasn't thorough enough. 

The cooling vent system sitting on top of my core(s) is a LOT more involved than I'd thought. I found this out when I opened things up to get at the hard drive. Which involved removing the RAM chips, the video card moved, and that cooling tower just so I could get the angle to get at one of the screws holding the hard drive. 

(Irony: I actually didn't need to go to all the trouble that I did. Turns out I missed an obvious screw. If I'd undone THAT one first, I could've lifted the entire assembly containing the hard drive straight out without having to unscrew the hard drive from it at all. Oh the things we learn...)

Anyway - because I DID go to all that trouble, I noticed something that made me both want to jawdrop and facepalm. 

Let's see if I can describe this - the Core is at the "back" of the computer from where the access panel is. The cooling system sits on top of that, it consists of an array of cooling fins about an inch square all around the core, sitting on top of THAT is the fan, and sitting on top of THAT is the fan hood that ensures that the fan draws air not from the computer well, but from directly outside through the grill on the opposite side of the computer from the core. The grill is in the access panel. So basically this entire "stack" runs straight across the middle of the computer. 

I'd opened up the case before and looked in, of course. I'd even stuck the little "straw" of the air bottle into many of these recessed places. 

Would you believe I NEVER saw the mass of cooling vents at the bottom of the "stack" before now? The Vent hood and fan assembly (along with the generally crowded nature of my case) obscured the cooling fins from view from almost every angle UNTIL I started truly disassembling it all!  

Well I've seen it now. I wish I had a long time ago. I'd been cleaning the fan because I could SEE it. But I'd missed the cooling FINS entirely. And they were caked in dust. CAKED.

So even though the fan was going like hell, the cooling system had apparently lost a LOT of ability to cool. 

So yeah. I think my core overheated. 

Before I went to the store for a diagnosis I took the case outside to the garage and hit it with dad's mini air compressor (that we normally use for airing up tires) and used the blower attachment. Jesus the dust cloud that poofed out of that case!

I've left the main unit (sans hard drive, because I'm paranoid with my data and because they don't need it to test the motherboard) at Fry's Electronics to diagnose. Just to be sure. I gave them as good a description of the problem as possible. Initial reaction of the tech at the desk was along the lines of "ouch, that does sound like the motherboard, but we'll do a full check just to be sure it's not the power supply etc." 

The slightly ok news: replacing the motherboard might just be doable. I think I can convince dad that it's cheaper and worth it to just get a new motherboard and replace that rather than try and replace the entire computer. (which at this point, I think he'd be unlikely to do, since the computer is less than 4 years old. Heck, it's barely over 2 years!)

I'm HOPING that a replacement motherboard of the same type is available. If I can get an exact replacement, then I don't -think- I'll have to also re-install the OS. Or the RAM. 

As for Champs Online/City of Heroes on the other computer?  Maaaybe. Dad hasn't utilized very much of his existing capacity on this computer. I doubt he'd even notice the installation. (Not that I wouldn't tell him anyway. Just so long as I explain what I'm doing and that it won't affect anything he want's to do.)

City of Heroes I think would run ok. Probably not the Ultra mode. But "standard" probably would work. 

Champions Online? Not so sure. It's actually a lot more of a memory/graphics hog, I think. At least if you want it to look halfway decent. I can try though. 

Team Fortress 2 - I don't think I'll even bother. The graphics aren't too bad for dad's system, but I'm not sure it can keep up in real time online. 

Still... even though my data and HD are okay... God damn but this blows. And the worst part is that it was completely preventable. I'm pissed at myself for letting it happen. 

If it's just the core, can you swap that out? CPU replacement is a lot cheaper than mobo replacement, after all.

If the core is soldered onto the mobo, you're out of luck, of course.

(And I thought my computer trouble today was a pain. A few loose connections is a breeze compared to something that you have to pay money to fix...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Hummina. That's some bad news to discover, all right... I'm kind of concerned about my laptop, actually, since it runs all the time in a dusty old house with wood heat and not the greatest seals on the stove, either. The only problem there is that while it's already out of warranty and I have no particular fear of cracking the case to apply some air to the parts that might need it (a previous laptop had to be disassembled and the RAM re-seated every month or so due to inadequate mounting fixtures; I quiclky lost my dread of such things) the problem is that I can't actually find how it comes apart - the case seems to be devoid of screw holes.

Granted, a search on the model number and "how to" will probably turn up the info I need or at least point to it, but then there's the problem of it being the only computer in the house. Oh well, hopefully you can get things straightened out without too much difficulty, Logan, but finding an exact replacement mobo is not something I would bet on, even after only two years - in hardware time, that's decades.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

well that sound like 13 flavors of suck.

I had thought that most cpus/motherboards had temp sensors on them now a days, that would auto-shutdown if they got too hot?

Or is that not as standard a feature as I thought?

Good luck with finding the exact same motherboard. What version of windows are you running? I know Win7 has been remarkably flexible about re-installing itself on top of an existing drive and handling the little fiddly driver stuff in a nice manner.

-Terry
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

It sounds like he's got a brand-name box, along the lines of either a Dell or HP. If it's the mainboard of one of those, then it should be available enough to enable replacement. Temp sensors can be tricky things I was installing a Dell workstation the other week that was quite insistent that it's probe was missing - it wasn't. It just some how got discombobulated during transit. Unplugging it and giving it the NES-treatment fixed it right out.

It's an Acer 5800 actually. And it was running Vista. (NoooOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!)

Seriously, I wasn't having trouble with Vista. I'd WANTED to upgrade to 7. And Acer supposedly had a free upgrade available during the purchase period. But the discs never worked. I could never get the update to happen. (Found out later that was common.)

Anybody got any info or good deals on a two year old Acer Aspire 5800 series motherboard or core for same?

If you were in Ottawa, I'd point you at Trailing Edge. (goes and looks) No, they have a 5700, not a 5800.

Are there any used/refurbished computer stores near you?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

In case you need a good reference, this is my computer here. I made some mods, of course, so the pictures of the interior are slightly different, but essentially this is it. The article even has excellent pictures. 

If the fan started and power button lit up, I really doubt that it's the power supply.
There is a screen that comes up from my motherboard at the start of the boot (although it isn't often visible because of the screen booting) and I'm assuming yours would do the same, so if you're not getting that, I think you're right and it is a motherboard failure.
There's a bit of a pain about replacing motherboards, because Windows assumes that that's the core of the system and if it changes, you've tried to install their software on a different computer. Also, you have to unplug and reconnect EVERYTHING.

Well I was close, it's a brand-name system. Haven't had to do much with Acer's, apart from doing the odd governmental department refresh of their computers. Sections of the Australian Fed government use 'em as their desktop computer of choice - in enough numbers to warrant their own "special" production run.

Yeah, if it's POSTing and peripheral parts are functioning in another 'puter then the motherboard's blown. I'd still be checking the power supply carefully first, in case something in that blew killing the m'board that way first.

I'll chime in and note that the last time a computer of mine went south, it was the power supply, as counterintuitive as it seemed to me from the behavior. That diagnosis came from the good folks here, and it was spot on.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

If it's not POSTing, then it's definitely either the PS or the mobo, and not (or not just) the CPU. If the PS and mobo were fine, it would POST and give you the beep code for "we don't have a working CPU" (five short beeps is standard, but it varies). And if the fans and lights are working, then it's probably not the PS.

Stop beating yourself up, Logan: an overheating CPU has little or no power to damage the mobo. If you've been cleaning the case fan as well as the CPU fan, then you've been doing everything right as far as the motherboard is concerned.

(Though as an aside, I'm kind of surprised you didn't realize there had to be a heatsink (that block of metal fins) between the fan and the CPU. A fan will improve the efficiency of the cooling system, but a heatsink is absolutely essential.)

Well this is the first computer I've owned apparently that had one. Or at least had one that BIG. Others have only needed the smaller fans/heatsinks. And this one was largely out of direct view. 

Still makes me mad that I should've thought about it and lifted up the vent hood to check for it though and I didn't. 

Well, if your lucky it might just be a blown stick of RAM, or one of your other expansion cards. If it's causing a short, I've seen exactally the problem you've described. If you do have to replace the mobo with the same model, then you shouldn't have to reinstall everything. At least, you don't with Dell or Lenovo's, and I don't see why ACER would be different.
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

If it's the same model of motherboard, Windows'll work fine. If it's a different model, then Windows will likely blue screen on startup, and you'll need to reinstall. If you have some Windows Activation drama with the new motherboard, you may have to call up Microsoft to get it straightened out. (I had to, once.)

Wow! I'm REALLY glad I had the thing diagnosed. All hail the Fry's service department!
I don't know HOW I lucked out like this, but amazingly, when tested - the problem was NOT the CPU/Motherboard. It seems both the power supply and the videocard fried at about the same time.
The technicians couldn't get it to power on properly. So they tested it with an in-store power supply. Then it would post, but no video, so they used an in-store videocard and they got video. It posted properly and they were able to boot to the BIOS/CMOS.
That makes things a LOT easier to deal with. And a lot cheaper. All I have to do is get a comparable power supply and a videocard and do the install myself and I'm golden! I might be back up to speed by tonight!
Heading out to the store now - wish me luck!

Excellent news, Logan! Luck to you, indeed!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

That's great! Good luck!

It's always nice when problems aren't as bad as they first appear to be.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Lucky!
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

It's alive! IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!!!! 

Yes! I'm back, and better than ever! Just ran an ITF with the Legendary folks on the refurbished machine. Full Ultra Graphics mode. Didn't even have to ramp down that one ambiant occlusion slider that I had to with the previous card. It was GLORIOUS. 

I am resisting the urge to pull a "Boris" and pump both fists in the air, shouting "I AM INVINCIBLE!!" because 

a) I'm not. and 

b) I know what happened to THAT guy at the end of THAT movie after he said that! Although being dumped in liquid Nitrogen doesn't sound all that BAD at the moment. DAMN it's hot here in Texas!

Still! It could've been MUCH MUCH WORSE. 

It *sounds*, from your description, like you had too much beef on your card for your PSU to handle.  I've had this happen multiple times in the past when using a PSU that's juuuust barely rated to handle the wattage my card and other components want.
I'd recommend getting a PSU replacement that beats the minimum required wattage by at least 250.  If your graphics card says it requires a 400w PSU, get a 750 or better.  That sort of thing.
Just a suggestion...

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Well crap... I just got the replacement unit. And I didn't want to screw things up by making it too different from what I had, so it's a duplicate 500 W.
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but my old vid card was running directly from the motherboard. The new one is drawing it's power from a 6 point connector straight to the power supply. So (optimistic) with it getting it's needs direct from the PSU, it won't be trying to draw -through- the motherboard and it gets enough power to do what it needs? Versus (pessimistic) it needs enough power to justify the 6 point connector, maybe I -do- need a bigger PSU?
In any case, it seems right now to be running perfectly. Several 10s of hours of gaming in max graphics mode in CoH, Champions, and Team Fortress 2 seems not to be a problem. (Crossing fingers)

Well it's a start, and yeah should'da remembered that a dead PS can resemble a dead motherboard. You might be okay with the 500 W especially if it's better than the OEM.

Although if your worried, it used to be possible to buy a power supply that's just dedicated to powering a video card. Or you can get a higher wattage one & have a spare to either ebay or build into a basic system.

What graphics card, specifically, do you have now?  There are calculators out there to tell you how much juice you really need.
http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html
That's just one of them, but it's fast and easy and doesn't require you to jot down the specific model numbers of every part in the case.

Here's the thing about power: the PSU will *try* to supply however much juice the rest of the system wants.  If there's enough draw to pop the circuit protectors, you're fine -- you're out a PSU, but, you're fine.  So a box that requires 750w with a 500w PSU is going to die almost immediately.  But, if you're only over your requirements by a little -- say, 550w on a 500w PSU -- then it'll slowly but inevitably cause damage to the rest of the system.
I've got a machine in my closet that I should take pictures of, to show you.  But basically, there are scorch marks along the connectors between the PSU and the motherboard, all due to a slightly-too-hefty graphics card that I 'upgraded' to.  The system ran fine for at least 8 months, though.  My PSU was rated to 400w; my calculated draw with that card in there was 460w.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

According to that calculator, I've got at least 40 Watts to spare. That's assuming the drive is 10,000 RPM. Which I don't think it is. It's probably lower. 

So seems like I'm using between 440 and 460 watts of the 500 the PSU can maintain. So it looks like I'm good.