- cross-posted to:
- iiiiiiitttttttttttt@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- iiiiiiitttttttttttt@programming.dev
It was long ago but I was this dumbass. I kept reading online people said a fan was optional and didn’t understand they meant a case fan not a CPU fan so I built everything and couldnt figure out why it wouldn’t turn on. Realized fairly quickly and bought one and everything worked after that
Honestly, I am envious of you, as well as the person OP posted above. You did something - learning from whatever source you could find best; having the determination and will to go ahead and sought help perhaps knowing too well you might be ridiculed. Because for the people that know this stuff, it is trivial and not worth of botheration. So the help is not enthusiastic - but for the new doer it is so challenging.
I wish I had the energy, time and courage of you all… Maybe someday I will but until then I can only love and admire your passion.
You just want something bad enough sugar
Technically, a CPU fan is also optional but you need to provide some other cooling (water pump?) or accept massive throttling.
noctua have a passive cpu cooler, NH-P1 https://www.noctua.at/en/products/nh-p1

But that will not work unless in a wind tunnel of some sort
It might be sufficient if the case airflow is good. Not sure if you could avoid any heat throttling that way, but I’d guess it wouldn’t need to shut down because of heat.
There’s always natural convection - on a 25W CPU you should be fine
I don’t get the point. You still need an exhaust fan for the case. Maybe in an open air setup I guess?
Depends mostly on the CPU “TDP” (even tho nowadays the TDP is not an actual power limit) and size of heatsink, check out Streacom passive cases for example.
But the essential part in a pc is the heatsink, before the cpu fan (or any fan).
I didn’t realise that I need to buy a power supply. I had a fully assembled computer and was asking myself how I can plug the thing in.
Also just bought a psu after and it still works like a charm to this day.
You can stick wires with mains voltage into any two pins of any motherboard connector but there’s a reason they’re not shaped like an AC receptacle 💥. Unless it’s a ZX Spectrum, that cheap thing used the most basic connector (3.5mm jack) for everything: cassette I/O, video output and, unregulated 9V DC power input from the transformer brick, and people would often fry it.
One thing I noticed and appreciated when I first tinkered with my computer was the whole “There’s only one place this can go” for the more critical cables. I did mange to mess up my fans, but that wasn’t a big deal.
It legitimately took me a second for my brain to un-break itself when I looked at the photo. First thinking…something’s not right here…and not for even a moment thinking it would be something as stupid as putting the heat-sink on the case fan… Then the realisation that yes…it really is something that stupid.
In the old days, before laptops, we used to call the case and everything in it the CPU. You had your monitor, keyboard, mouse, maybe printer, maybe modem, and they would all plug into the “CPU.” Yes, we knew there was also a chip inside called that but we didn’t get all pedantic about it.
With that in mind: Place the CPU fan on the heat sink… That’s exactly what they did.
That “we” isn’t global. Some called it “the CPU”, some called it “the hard drive”, some made fun of those two groups for not knowing what they were talking about.
And then came the iMac, and all the phone calls from Mac users trying use a PC and only hitting the monitor power button…
Oh, yes, I forgot it was also the hard drive! Now that I think about it, I’m not sure the proper name. Today I’d just call it the tower, but I’m not sure what the square ones that sat with the monitor on top would be called.
tower is fine, but I think what you mean is the desktop PC. and the little square ones are the mini PCs
I think those are where the name “desktop” comes from, though that term now refers to other computer things.
I refer to them as “tower”, “case” (which is technically just the shell and frame, but can include the contents), “computer”, or “machine”.
I must be stupid then because I’ve legitimately had that idea to put a fan on the radiator looking thing to maximize the precision of the cooling. Cooling the thing that gets hot
As in, the CPU fan right on the heat sink? Yeah, that’s a pretty standard setup. I’ve got it on mine. The CPU came with that cooler combo.
The key is to actually put that cooler on the CPU, not the chassis.
Ah I see. That IS a DUH moment
omfg, i caught the cpu was missing the heat sink, but completely spaced it being on the back exhaust.
I once inherited a PC from my older brother, he had built it himself and i decided it needed a sping clean. I opened it up and airdusted with the help of an old toothbrush, but couldnt get some fluff/dust out of the CPU cooler so i took it off to get behind it properly.
The little plastic cover over the thermal paste was still on the heatsink sandwiched between the heatstink and the CPU.
He hasnt heard the end of it.Wow. I’m surprised it worked for so long. I assume there were issues, such as high temp, that your brother didn’t diagnoze or didn’t know how to. Impressive that CPU is working all those years. Any damage to its function?
Back in the 00s, a story about CPUs getting so hot they’d start on fire went viral. In it was a video of someone removing the cooler while it was running and then a few seconds later a flame appears.
On the one hand, obviously you shouldn’t remove your CPU cooler while it was running.
But on the other hand, fans and mounts can fail, so this was still a risk even for people who were smarter than removing the cooler entirely.
It prompted CPU makers to add thermal protections that started out as “if CPU hits threshold, cut power”, but over time more sophisticated heat management was integrated with more sophisticated performance and power management.
So these days, if you aren’t sufficiently cooling your CPU, it won’t die much quicker, instead it will throttle performance to keep heat at safe levels. OP would have gotten better performance out of it after removing that plastic. Assuming it was CPU bottlenecked in the first place. Things like RAM choice and settings can make it a moot point because the RAM can’t keep up with the CPU at 100% power anyways.
I didnt have the analitical skills at the time to test its performance as i was ~12years old, but i remember it always ran full speed CPU fan and only very occasionally shutdown on overtemp, once i removed the plastic it went back to normal/expected fan speeds. It was probably the AMD Athlon generation CPU from memory, so it probably wasnt being pushed too hard to perform, mostly running Snes emulators and sim city 2000 probably.
It is surprising and Im sure it reduced the performance, but plastic still conducts heat and sounds like it was a thermoplastic and it didn’t melt.
Post his phone number so we can all tell him about it.
I love that they had the heatsink and fan, they just didnt know where it went and actually mounted it to the case. It wasnt just that they didnt have one.
I’m sort of surprised it fit on the 120mm fan slot. Maybe they just forced screws through the grill though.
Oh shit I noticed the exposed CPU but totally missed that part.

Must’ve gotten a faulty CPU that produces heat when it runs.
… as opposed to those ones that consume heat from the environment when they run.
I asked chatgpt to put my CPU into heat consuming mode and it then suggested I mine BTC to equal out the thermodynamics. I’m still trying to figure out where the BTC is, but it’s nice to go green
Wireless cooler
Stop trolling. No one knows why without a full diagnostic.
When you use ChatGPT for building instructions…
Tell them to switch to water cooling. You will get an even more awesome picture.
Those damned unreliable AMD CPUs, he should have gone with Intel!
I once installed Windows on a Pentium 3 without cooler - not on purpose though - and it worked!
Well, installing the OS was on purpose, the CPU being without cooler not so much.
Apparently modern CPUs are snow flakes 🤓Apparently modern CPUs are snow flakes 🤓
I think you’re confused about how heatsinks work.
For reference: modern CPUs are a lot of hot air. 😁
I beg to differ. I’m fairly sure I’ve heard about meltdown on modern CPUs.
Are you really sure they aren’t snowflakes?
Well, for the last… 10? 15? years, it would be just a slow sluggish experience. They under/overclock depending on cooling capacity.TIL: they get too hot still and thermal shutdown. Guess i overestimated the flat surface cooling.
This one is even worse than just removing the CPU cooler, because that cooler is now blocking the hot air from leaving the case via the rear fan.
A CPU without a heatsink on it reaches TJMax within seconds, so it would pretty much instantly shut down (just like in the title)…
The fan on my previous Intel CPU (bought a little over 10 years ago) went out, and that thing would shut off in seconds from overheating, even without load.
No
deleted by creator
Be innovative and don’t be afraid to break things! Isn’t that how you become a billionaire??
Did they pull the cooler and fan assembly off and decide to use it as a case fan? Or was it already assembled? I have so many questions
No, they pulled the cooler off thr CPU and decided to use it to block airflow entirely to the CPU case fan. Best guess is that they are trying to build an expensive smart oven.
Took me a second, but not more than three. I snorted.








