Hi guys, So it seems that I have the worst luck when it comes to PC builds, my first had a catastrophic mobo failure and then I tried to replace with a like for like, but it worked only for a small period before just failing again. Then my brother (user: Huge) gave me his old build as he never uses it, and as much as I love his build, I have no experience with water cooled systems and therefore am scared witless about trying to fix on my own as my brother is too busy and far away now to help. Basically, the cooling system doesn't appear to be doing its job at the moment as I've had more than a few system shutdowns due to the CPU being too hot. Even as I type, SpeedFan is reporting a system temp at a healthy 27°C, but the GPU is running at 56°C and the CPU at 86°C. The water cooler in question is the Corsair H-50 and the rest of the build is: Mobo: ASUS P8P67-M Pro CPU: i5-2500k @3300MHz RAM: 2x 4GB Corsair DDR3 GPU: XFX Radeon HD 6870 Black I will admit that my knowledge here is so minimal that I don't want to do something stupid after watching a shady YouTube guide, so any further information needed I'll give if I can. As far as I can see, all the power cables are set up right, but when you boot the PC, you can't hear the cooler start pumping coolant around. Thanks in advance for the help, Druyii
It could be the pump that's either failed or is running intermittently. Rather than Speedfan use Real Temp which is generally more accurate. You can configure Real Temp to run a bat file (I'll post the details if required) to shut down the system if the CPU hits a certain temperature outside the expected range rather than wait until it overheats and shuts down. The H50 is supposed to be plugged into a fan header that is delivering full power at all times rather than having variable speeds. If you touch the pump/block and can't feel it running then either replace it or fit a air cooled heatsink instead. The pumps don't last for ever.
Very simple, sir. Plug it into a Molex so it is fed 12v directly from the PSU. You can get a Molex > 3 pin fan cable for pennies on eBay if you need one of those.
Put your hand on it, there will be a bit of vibration. This isn't a 100% guarantee it's working the impeller could be broken and the pump still spins up, but it's a starting point. Plus as the others have said plug it into a fan header for a constant supply.
If the pump does seem to be working, check that the heatsink is firmly attached to the CPU, it could be just down to poor contact (check the pump first though).
I got the Corsair H55 to replace the H50 that was in the machine, but now that I've installed it, all the fans power up and I can hear the cooler pump doing its thing, but the GPU isn't sending a feed to the monitor and my USB devices don't seem to receive power either. Plus when you boot the machine, it starts to power up, then turns off almost immediately, but then turns itself back on again straight away. I'm so damn confused by this right now, but I don't want to try anything and risk doing damage to the machine, I don't have enough to replace the parts in this thing if I screw something up. Plus I can't find an actual power draw figure on both the coolers to see if I needed to upgrade my PSU and it's just that I don't have enough juice for everything to run at once.
Your power supply is fine. Try removing the battery with the power out for 10 seconds and then put it back in. Are you sure you've got all cables connected? It sounds like the CPU isn't getting power.
I reconnected everything as they were before installing the new cooler, and got to love the mobo battery being stuck under the GPU. Going to have to pull stuff out yet again then.
I made sure that I reconnected every cable I unplugged as it was set up before I began the change of the cooler. Even down to placing the new fan in the same pin setup the old one was. Now, thankfully the machine doesn't power down and up within the first twenty seconds of booting, but there is still no feed from the GPU to my monitor and no power seems to reach any of my USB devices includiong my keyboard and mouse, so I'm not too sure what to try right now.
Having left the machine off for a while, trying to power up again, the machine is yet again turning itself off within seconds and then rebooting. Still no graphics card feed and no usb connection, apart from my capture card shows a slight sign of life upon the machine repowering, but even that gets dropped quickly. I've removed and reconnected the GPU, although I had to do that anyway to get the mobo battery out and rechecked every cable that is plugged in to the mobo too. I still don't feel entirely comfortable with tinkering as this was my brother's build before it was mine, so I don't know enough to feel confident with knowing what each connection does.
I cleaned off the old paste from the back of the CPU and the H55 comes with paste pre-applied, so I was under the belief that I didn't need to apply more. Was I wrong to leave it? I did buy thermal paste in case it was necessary. By bad mount, do you mean of the cooler or something else?
The CPU getting warm wouldn't turn your system off that fast. There's something else wrong here. Try loosening the cooler a bit to release the pressure on the CPU a little. Maybe a quarter of a turn, if not, another quarter. Try up to one full rotation of each screw and see if that helps.
I ended up doing the full rotation without anything changing. Each time I'm testing it for now, I simply have power and my main monitor plugged in to see if the feed will come through there. The machine is still powering down and then back up on it's own and the monitor is still getting nothing. Before attempting that, I had noticed that the wireless base for my mouse was getting a flash of power when the machine initially is booted, but it is just a flash of power before it goes dark again, which given that my capture card was the same, I assume is the same for all USB devices. I don't know if that helps identify the issue at all. If need be I could take pictures of how the machine is set up right now, not sure if that would help at all.
It will be the same for all USB devices as they aren't initialised until later in the POST process. The next thing to try is to remove all but the most essential bits of gear, so strip down to one stick of RAM, no USB devices unless it's your mouse/keyboard, remove the capture card, and try to run it on just the MB, CPU, one stick of RAM, and the graphics. Remove the HDD/SSD too.
I have been putting this off because it honestly scares the crap out of me. I don't want to make a mistake and screw something up because I really don't have the spare money to replace any parts in this damn build. Someone suggested checking the seating on the CPU which is what I'm looking to check right now, but if that fails to fix it then I'll have to turn to your more daunting option of trying to figure out disconnecting this machine.
