Hi team,
1.5 years ago I built a water cooled gaming rig. At the time I wanted to do something different and watercooling was a new challenge. For about a year everything went great, it was reasonably high end for the time, Intel i7 CPU, RTX 2080 GPU, 32 Mb of RAM Nvme drive for the OS and 2 x SSD drives for local storage. I played around with some very very mild overclocking but none of the games i was playing needed any serious overclocking (at the time Witcher wild hunt etc) so I just plodded on. Ran the temperature monitors and never overheated.
Just after the start of Iso, around June 2020 I started getting loads of crashes, random times. I started fault finding. Event log was showing power crashes. I did all manner of virus scans (that came up clear) using different malware and virus tools (Kasperky, Malwarebytes, and a couple of the free ones as well). I reinstalled Windows, I changed some Windows settings, I updated all of the drivers and bought and ran several diagnostic programs/tools. Nothing touched it and everything pointed to a hardware problem. I started switching parts:
- New larger Power Supply, this was my initial thought but it made no difference
- New UPS, I wondered if I had a dodgy local power supply so I replaced my 10 year old UPS (which was on its second battery)
- New motherboard, I attempted to rollback a BIOS update on the old motherboard and, you guessed it, the system decided to crash half way through the BIOS update essentially bricking the MB. I tried removing the battery but the MB seemed bricked so I replaced it.
- New CPU
- New waterpump
Nothing touched it. I also ran a battery of tests on the SSDs and the memory. I flushed, cleaned and replaced most of the hoses in the cooling system. Pulled the water blocks for the CPU and GPU off and cleaned them.
Every time I thought I must have fixed it it went back to the same random crashes. Once after replacing the MB it ran for a day without crashing and i thought I had fixed it until ….. the next day it started all over again.
Massively frustrated i finally decided to seek professional help, tried a couple of local computer shops but as soon as I mentioned water cooled they ran a mile. Unless it was a laptop or I was a pensioner who needed help setting up my internet browser everything seemed too hard. At the end of my tether and sick of throwing money at the thing I eventually went back to the shop where I bought most of the parts and all of the watercooling stuff, PLE computers. they told me to bring it in and drop it off and they could do some diagnostics and have their watercooling guru have a look at it. The cost would be $79 to diagnose and then $120 an hour for any work.
This afternoon i took the rig out to PLE, rang them first to make sure they were open and let them know I was coming. Arrived and spent what seemed like ages whilst a junior guy asked me a few questions then went out 'the back' to ask the expert then came back with a suggestion (might be the graphics card etc) then when i asked if I could just drop it off and pay for their diagnostic service rather than drop another $1K on a new graphics card, he had to go out 'the back' to ask. In the end I was having a remote conversation with the young guy who would relay my responses to someone out the back and come back with half answers. Ended up I was going to have to sign some kind of contract indemnifying them before they would look at it (which I was OK to do), pay them the diagnostic fee (also OK to do) and the insinuation was that i would have to give them the OK to rack up the hours as needed at $120 an hour. I asked for an estimate and was told they couldn't give me one until they pulled it apart (which i understand). I said that I might end up spending more on their investigation and parts than what it would cost for a new PC and the young guy told me to wait again until he relayed this to the guy out the back. Frustrated i told him not to bother, picked it up and left.
Not sure what to do now:
Look for another guru that might be able to repair it?
Buy a barebones system that I know works and start switching in any parts I can salvage (PSU, RAM, drives etc) until something goes cactus
Write it off and buy a new system acknowledging that the busted one is 2 years old and a new one would be the newer architecture etc.
I don't want to keep throwing $$ at a money pit! It could literally be a dodgy cable connector somewhere causing it all or it could be the graphics card. At the moment it won't even hit the BIOS screen on startup.
Any recommendations?
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