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.
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.
