Well I came down stairs to my computer room this morning to check my email and when I got to my comp it was off. I thought, that's strange. As I leaned down to press the power button I got a whiff of that all too familiar smell... smoked electronics! I quickly ripped the power cords out of the back of the computer and surveyed the situation. I don't use the case sides or the front fascia so my computer is wide open. When I looked at it the first thing I noticed is my res, which is polycarbonate and usually crystal clear, was black. My res also houses my submersible pump. Looking closer at the res I noticed a few of the seams had come apart and there was coolant blown about 4' to 5' out the front of the case. There were also spatterings of coolant all over inside the case as well as a little puddle at the bottom. This is where my 10 day old Seagate 7200.8 250GB hard drive was sitting as I hadn't had a chance to mount it yet. So far I've pieced together the comp I'm on now from some spare parts for a system to start testing all my hardware. I've also started taking apart my main computer and taking lots of pics along the way. I'll post them as soon as I'm done the autopsy. Wish me luck that at least some of my hardware is still functional.
Whoa, this is the sort of disaster story that puts me off water cooling I hope you manage to recover the components, I can't imagine how you felt when you discovered what had happened.
Well I have to admit, I won't be all that sorry if some key parts don't work any more. I've been modding and abusing my nf7-s, 2500 barton, 9800pro setup getting my wheels on how to do all of that kind of work. You know... over volting, overclocking, voltmods, and cooling methods... so the way I see it I'm sorta on borrowed time anyway. Sure it would be really nice if all of the hardware works (it would surely be a waste otherwise), but if not, it gives me an excuse to go get a A64 setup. Though now would be a bad time. Hopefully I'll get those pics up tonight or tomorrow, as soon as I get it all sorted out. It slowed me down a bit when windows corrupted a file so it wouldn't boot and I had to do a fresh install . One of these days I'll actually make the windows recovery disk.
I finally finished testing all my parts. So I'll show and tell the whole story. Here's what my computer looked like before the blow up. And here's the after. Notice the res just below the optical drives. Here's a couple more pics of the res and the opticals above it. If you look closely you can see all the bonded seams of the res have been blown apart. The only thing holding it together are the screws than anchor it to the chassis and the screws that hold on the copper plate on the front that the plumbing is attached to. And some of the optical drives removed... charred goodness. My DVD-RW My CD-ROM. This is the drive that was directly above the res. This is the HDD that was beside the res. Notice the spatterings of coolant left after being given about 16 hours to dryout. Also the copper mounting plate shows the outline of where the drives were. This is Ground 0. The res and the pump... err bomb. The bulk of the res is still being held together by the plate at the front, but when I removed the res from the chassis the bottom fell off. Close up of the bottom. And of the top, The pump was mounted to this piece. A few close ups of the pump, notice the large crack or "eplosion vent" in the bottom. Now onto the testing. Below is a total list of the equipment that was in here and the prognosis: PSU -> Antec TrueControl 550 -> Working mobo -> NF7-S -> Working CPU -> 2500Barton -> Working RAM -> 2x512MB OCZ pc3200 Plat. Rev.2 -> Working HDD -> Maxtor 40GB -> Working HDD -> Western Digital 60GB -> Working HDD -> Seagate 7200.8 250GB (my new drive that was at the bottom in a puddle) -> Working Video -> ATI 9800 Pro -> Working DVD-RW -> Plextor PX-708A -> Working CD-ROM -> Panasonic 48X -> DEAD! That's right the only lost equipment was the CD-ROM!! and the pump of course. My 9800pro gave me a bit of a scare though. When I put it in to test it I had a checker board pattern of blocks with messed up pixels. But I gave it a good wash down with the "magic juice" and all is well! Now back to the drawing board to setup my WC system again. I do have a Mag3 that I got for water cooling a while back. It has awesome output but its a little too noisy for my taste. I'm trying a few hings to quiet it down, but I think I'll eventually get a different one. I hope you enjoyed my story!
Why didn't you test if the pump still worked? What you should do is, no matter if you have receipt or warranty left, is to take the pump, all the black parts and the broken optical unit to the store where you bought the pump during afternoon rush hour on a salary friday and complain loudly that the pump they sold blew up and fried your CD too... No matter what, a pump should not do what yours did.
I don't think he knows cause he came down in the morning to check his email and he saw his pc was off. Mayb you should hire some forensic detectives to see what happened CSI:Casemod
It was a little giant pcl-010 IIRC. The pump ran for about 10 years before it gave up the goat. it was originaly used in an aquarium setup. The pump certainly shouldn't have blown up the way it did but no matter how good something is eventually it will fail. It was a good pump and I'd buy a little giant again.
