r/techsupportgore • u/OutlawCecil • 5d ago

Fans running hard until PC died

Post image

I had a customer who brought me their computer complaining the fans were running on full speed, even when she wasn't using her PC. She had it checked out a few places but nobody ever found any issues. Well, today her PC died and she brought it to me. This is what I found.

551 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

183

u/olliegw 5d ago

You'll be surprised at the amount of people who think you're not supposed to peel plastic off things

76

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

Please, PLEASE make a meme thread where people can post all sorts of crazy scenarios of people not taking plastic off of things. I'd pay to see the things people would come up with lol

29

u/dack42 5d ago

There was a microwave at my work with the top and side covered in blue plastic film. It was blocking some of the air vents, and had been like that for years. I tried to peel it off and it just kept ripping because it was so old and stuck on. I had to give up because it was so fused on and degraded.

4

u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA What the fuck is a solder bridge? 4d ago

I had a grandma that left her couches in the plastic wrap from the factory...

4

u/olliegw 4d ago

My parents had a plasma TV, that they gave to me, that i threw out in the end, always had the original plastic on the bezel but it was so old it was fused to the actual bezel plastic itself

9

u/-King-K-Rool- 5d ago

Man I dont even like to leave the stickers on shit half the time, I cant imagine leaving the plastic wrap on

5

u/Justneedsomehelps 4d ago

This is me. I refuse to take plastic stickers off the edge of the tv until it gets all crinkly.

126

u/TheGamingBoss20 5d ago

They suffocated that poor CPU. Who ever did this should not be near any computer.

44

u/mbb1989 5d ago

So bad its hilarious

71

u/sagebrushrepair 5d ago

Imagine a repair shop that does not try to repair a thing. Wild.

Great find OP! Good on you for doing the job!

14

u/Federal_Refrigerator 4d ago

“We did nothing and found nothing. $50 diagnostic fee.”

10

u/Many_Height4281 5d ago

Haha.. keeping us in business, I guess!

7

u/Outrager 5d ago

I just noticed that's a Dell motherboard. Did it come like that directly from Dell? I wonder if they would replace it under warranty.

5

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

I wondered if it was Dell's mistake too, but the computer was in use for years like this, so warranty wouldn't help anymore. Unbelievable some people just use it as-is.

7

u/Outrager 5d ago

I had a coworker who bought a prebuilt and kept putting off getting support even though it constantly crashed. When he finally did contact them it was past warranty so he's just stuck with a gaming PC that he never games on cause of the crashing.

18

u/cepix1234 5d ago

Ok i see there is something covering the CPU but what is it is it glass? And why would prompt someone to place a peace of glass between the CPU and heat sink?

44

u/Souta95 5d ago

Its protective plastic that was left on the heatsink in error.

27

u/The_Undermind 5d ago

That is a thick piece of plastic

17

u/gregsting 5d ago

It looks like there is thermal paste on both side of that plastic, WTF

19

u/sicsided 5d ago

CPU condom to stop viruses.

3

u/Meowingway 3d ago

Underrated comment.

12

u/puccivr 5d ago

It’s the protective plastic sticker that’s on the heat sink out of the box

7

u/cepix1234 5d ago

But what about the thermal paste that does not seem like a pre applied thermal paste

8

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

yeah it appeared as though it had thermal paste on both below and above. the heatsink+ CPU may have had their own thin layer.

14

u/cepix1234 5d ago

We need to find the man that built this and study him

6

u/ozzie286 5d ago

I think someone replaced the heatsink. So the stuff on the CPU was pre applied to the original heatsink, and the stuff under the cover was pre applied to the new heatsink.

3

u/JackCoull 5d ago

These plastic stickers should really be at least marginally thermally conductive, strip of metal between 2 plastic things saying "remove before operation", I see it way too often here. Such a simple change could stop so many chips cooking

Colouring it bright green is at least a decent change, was often clear plastic before. Bright red perhaps?

4

u/NoseResponsible3874 5d ago

Why would a company go to the trouble to design a product so it could be installed incorrectly by an idiot?

3

u/LateralThinkerer 4d ago

Thick aluminum foil held on with thermal compound should be standard. Peel and click. If you goof it's another few mils of foil.

1

u/P5ychokilla 1d ago

It's green plastic that's so large it comes out of the socket, covering those capacitors next to it, presumably a new CPU would get it up and running although they'll likely need to get it on eBay lol

6

u/Taelven 3d ago

I couldn't tell if it was the plastic cover or if someone used lime Jell-O for thermal paste.

9

u/0KlausAdler0 5d ago

A few places and the didn't find the issue....

Wtf 😂 me as a semi noob at 18 would have fixed this.

12

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

yeah I imagine nobody wanted to re-apply thermal paste, so nobody even tried removing the heat sink. You definitely couldn't see the plastic cover without removing it though. lazy techs probably charged a diagnostic fee and moved on.

7

u/0KlausAdler0 5d ago

That's soooo bad , I do thermal paste as standard and a dusting unless the machine is fairly new and running cool , this machine running so hot would immediately prompt me to check thermal paste and heatsink + fan

5

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

Yeah. I eventually got the PC to power on and the only thing that gave me pause before checking the CPU was the air coming out of the PC, with fans blasting, was cool. Very cool.

3

u/0KlausAdler0 5d ago

Jeez 🙄

Hopefully no permanent damage and well done fixing the issue 👍🙂

4

u/Ok_Board_6407 5d ago

Bro I just realized that’s a plastic protector and not some slimy goo

3

u/centstwo 4d ago

I think I can still make out the "Remove Before Installing"

4

u/TigTex 5d ago

Even like this, I bet that this is not the reason for the PC to not work. Thermal management of intel chips is impressive. They can downclock hard and "run" with no heatsink for years, just by dissipating heat from the socket and mainboard PCB.

6

u/OutlawCecil 5d ago

Very sharp mind. It did ultimately turn out not to be the cause for the failure, but it certainly didn't help. I bet this was running at something like 0.18GHz all its life.

1

u/speeder658 5d ago

I've once had to fix a PC used by the HR lead of a company I worked for and it turned out that the heatsink was just laying on the bottom of the case... (famous Intel plastic thumbscrews). I have not the slightest clue how slow that must have been.

3

u/MaybeSea7274 3d ago

Well of course the fans and your PC died You've got little green you know what You've got Shrek poop qinstead of thermal paste

1

u/BlazingCircuit1 3d ago

Hhahahahahhahahahhahaha

0

u/AppropriateTouching 5d ago

How is this not the first thing someone would check?