HSF install gone horribly awry

scandium · Post by **scandium** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 8:42 pm

My AC Freezer Pro 64 arrived today and midway into installing it had the stuff of nightmares occur.

I'd just removed the stock hsf and cleaned gunk off the cpu when I realized that the height & position of the northbridge HS prevented the AC Freezer from clipping on one side of the cpu bracket.

Since the mb was still mounted in the case, and I lacked a decent set of pliers on hand (as well as HS paste) to remove and "modify" (bend) the NB HS fins I decided to try the cooler rotated 90 degrees to blow out the 120 mm exhaust of my PSU.

So I'm sitting on the couch, shagging with the HS clip and the door opens: my roomate, his buddy & his dog have arrived. My cat freaks out and leaps onto the top of the entertainment center, where unfortunately my video card & case (housing my mb, bare cpu, 1 GB RAM, dvd, & 160 GB HD that's resting, without screws, in the drive cage) are sitting.

Anyway she landed on the video card sending it bouncing off the wall, where it came to rest on the TV shelf almost 3 feet below, before she careened into my case and sent it plunging 4 & 1/2 feet to the floor below.

I'm too stunned and horrified to initially mutter anything more than a few expletives and that "its definitely dead, she just killed my whole &*@!ing computer!

When I looked at the inside of the case the hard drive had slid from its cage and wedged itself between it, the mb, & the ram. So I'm totally convinced its all toast. Its an hour before I reinstall the stock hsf to try a barebones boot with just mb, RAM & PSU. It posts, so I kill the OC, and try everything one piece at a time: HD & windows loads; video, again it loads so I load drive checker & look at the SMART info where everything looks screwed (hd temperature for instance is reading @ 103C). But it passes a surface scan with no bad sectors. 3dmark also ran ok so the PC *might* have survived the unthinkable but I haven't fully tested it yet so the jury's still out.

But I was amazed it even posted (the way the HD had to have struck the mb & ram), let alone seems to check out ok so far.

theyangster · Post by **theyangster** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:11 pm

just be glad the (super) cat didn't jump onto the sprinkler and result in this

sometime hardware can survive the unbelivable

Krazy Kommando · Post by **Krazy Kommando** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:15 pm

haha, lucky!
computers are wierd like that. you think uve completely stuffed 'em, and away they go. you think everything went perfectly, and it decides to stuff up

Shadowknight · Post by **Shadowknight** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:34 pm

That's sad about the cat. But according to jaganeth, cats are usually very respectful about how they treat computers.

scandium · Post by **scandium** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:49 pm

I'm still amazed that it survived the beating it took. After about an hour or so of gaming all seems well and the only thing I'm really concerned about at this point, still, are the drives. The one that crashed into the motherboard is a few week old replacement for one that went bad on me with bad sectors after only 2-3 months of use (with no cat incidents).

Actually the only confirmed damage so far is some minor scuffing on the top edge of the case (the only non removeable part of the shell so the only piece that took a hit) and the wacked out SMART readings from the hard drive. All and all I seem to have gotten away very lucky (but fingers still crossed).