Examination of the hoses show bends but no actual kinks. Water (or whatever the coolant is) should be flowing freely. Everything is plugged in tightly. The copper heat sink attached to the CPU (that the water passes through) heats up very quickly, the copper reservoir (at the radiator) is cool to the touch. Will be backing up the hard drive this evening and then disconnecting the computer for taking it into the shop. Hopefully, it’ll get through the backup without failing.
Wish me luck. And thanks for all the help and advice.
Never hurts to do your own. I try to make a back-up about once a week.
The problem isn’t likely to be the PSU. As I said earlier, I replaced it Saturday with a brand-new ThermalTake PSU (the one replaced was also a ThermalTake, and I have a feeling there’s not a thing wrong with it, either).
Based on the finger test (touching the copper heat sink through which the fluid flows to cool the CPU) the cooling system isn’t working. That block is HOT. My problem may be as simple as a failed pump (yes, I checked, the pump IS plugged in), but I need someone with more savvy than me to look at it.
In any case, the problem seems to be a matter of overheating, as slaphead and SpaceDog surmised.
I had a similar problem with an AMD Athlon 64 3200 shutting the whole system down unexpectedly. Normally this was after some hours use or when the processor was working hard but sometimes soon after start up. The ABit μGuru 3rd Eye mb was showing elevated temperatures of 50-60 degrees fairly constantly with sudden excursions up to 80 degrees plus at which point it would shut down. In other words, the temperature did not rise gradually over time, it just suddenly took off for no obvious reason.
Not water cooled but it had a good quality heatsink and fan fitted. Reseating this and eventually replacing it made no difference. In the end I replaced the CPU – keeping the old heatsink/fan – and from then on no problem.
Best of luck with sorting that out. I have to say, if I was going to water-cool again, I would probably go with someone like Coolermaster, Corsair or similar rather than TT - nowadays it’s a pretty mature technology but still one where it’s worth going for quality.
You think they had a bad run of CPUs? That’s a tad worrisome.
At any rate, I took the computer into CompUSA last night. They told me they no longer sell, install, or repair water cooling in systems because the equipment failed too often. They will, however, remove water cooling equipment and install the standard finned heatsink (with fan, I think), so I left the box there and will probably be able to pick it up this afternoon.
I wish I weren’t so twitchy about working on CPUs and heatsinks, etc., because it would certainly be much, much cheaper to do this myself. On the other hand, I remember feeling uncertain of my not-so-mad-skillz when installing the business in the first place, so perhaps it’s just as well. [Note: I’m moderately confident of my abilities with computer hardware, but I’ve been uncomfortable working with the CPU since the time I ordered one and it arrived with a couple pins broken off before I even touched it.]
I doubt it is a bad run of CPUs - you say yours is an XP (dual core) while mine was the basic 64. There may be something about the AMD technology that makes this a failure mode but I’ve not seen lots of other reports of similar problems.
This is where it pays to be an old-timer. I started off on a 166Mhz Pentium the size of a brick with a couple of dozen pins made out of recycled nails. Every upgrade the chips get smaller, have more pins and seem more fragile, but it’s only an incremental step each time.
That CPU I ordered with the broken pins? That was an AMD of maybe a generation later than your brick-like Pentium (read, maybe a year or year-and-a-half after your Pentium 166; I’ve been an AMD fan for years).
I don’t have too much issue with installing a CPU (as long as I move very, very, VERY slowly and carefully), but I really wasn’t sure what all I’d need to do to convert this system back from LCS to standard heatsink cooling. When I installed the LCS, I had to remove a couple of long screws from the socket and attach a plate to the back of the motherboard, as I recall, and I really, really wasn’t sure if I (a) needed to remove that back plate and (b) could remember where the extra hardware (including the original heat sink) went to that came with the CPU. They’ll have all that stuff, and I won’t have to disassemble the entire computer to get at that plate on the back of the motherboard if it has to come off. And I won’t have to worry about breaking pins or damaging the CPU.
I just hope I’m having this done before any damage to the CPU or motherboard has actually been done. It’s been going on for about a week to 10 days . . .
The tech at CompUSA confirmed that this was an overheating problem. The Thermaltake LCS has been replaced with this , which looks like something left behind by aliens. But it’s certainly keeping things chilled!
Hehe. I followed that link and got a"Sorry, we’re restocking our inventory" page with a picture of some guy in a red poloshirt who looks worryingly perma-tanned and suspiciously happy about whatever is in his boxes.
But from the URL it looks like you have joined the ranks of Zalman users - nice.
