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The Filthy, Rotten, Nasty, Helpdesk-Nightmare picture clubhouse

This thread defies humanity in every way imaginable. Pure essence of WTF.
 
I'm pleased to say that she collected the offending article on Monday morning. At least she was pleased with the work I did and I hinted that perhaps she should look after it a little more.

I'm glad to hear it, I hate hardware abuse on any level....
 
I love abusing hardware but I typically do it a different way...

*cackles in excessive voltage*

Of course, I vent the heat with high rpm blower fans. I'm not a savage.
 
I'm guilty of hardware abuse, it seems; I didn't take any pix, but it was disgusting what that poor video card went thru.

I have a TV pc that I use to play 3d Blurays, and store a bunch of stuff on.

It's been shutting off every time I quit looking at it for about the last two weeks.

I finally took it apart yesterday, and pulled all the cards out; I have cats, so it gets cleaned pretty often, or it would probably catch on fire, lol.

Everything looked fine, but as I turned the video card over in my hand, I noticed a rattle.

Inside the XfX HD 6870 video card was the bell out of a cat toy.
It apparently was getting stuck in the fan, and overheating the video card.
:D

After a bit more examination, I noticed the fan was kinda rough, so I looked into what Its deal was, and it needed a new fan as the bearings were toast.

I have a bunch of used video cards around, but it takes at least a 6850 to do 3d bluray.
I have a 3d plasma TV, and some 3d blurays, so that's a must have feature.

So I have a 7970 sitting here, so I thought I'd use it instead, even tho the jacks are different, and I'd have to change cables.

The I hit the big roadblock; I have a raid card in the only PCI slot, to run 2x 10TB disk arrays; the 7970 is a triple wide card, and won't fit.
:)

So, I dug thru the very buried junk box, and came up with a 10yo Zalman heat pipe cooler I never used, and rigged it onto the 6870, and put it all together and have it working great.
49C at full load.

I mounted the bell on the front with some wire, just for decoration. :)
 
It's hard to say for how long this gunk was building up, not to mention the fan, which still worked - just.
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It's hard to say for how long this gunk was building up, not to mention the fan, which still worked - just.
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Is that from a high humidity environment? That definitely isn't just plain dust, but it doesn't have the signature brown and crusty look of smoking close to the PC. I'm guessing dust with mold and other fungi.
 
Hard to say, although Buenos Aires can get very humid in the summer. I doubt the heatsink had ever been cleaned because most users don't give a second thought to such details.
 
From zotac instagram


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that must be the rare kaby beach ED :).
 
Lloyd's Register must be a mucky place.
 
BTW, Formula 409 will dissolve all that crap off fans/heatsinks; you just have to wash it all of with warm water, and let it dry.
 
I let dust accumulate on my external backup SSDs. I'm both abusive and terrible. :oops: I don't deserve to own this equipment. :cry::cry::cry:

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Actually, these two external backup 2.5inch HDD/SSD enclosures (last post) are both electrostatically charged positive (+) and pull negatively charged (-) dust particles from the air much like your tv or computer monitor screen - so not really a case of neglecting hardware, lol.

I can vacuum and blow clean all desktop setup components and these two drives will be coated with thick dust within 48hours, geez. :rolleyes: Maybe it's improper internal grounding or the silicon protective skin emitting a strong positive ionic charge?

Believe some routers also behave the same way - what can ya do?


...pic below - all clean and waiting for the next filthy rotten dusty layer to arrive. (pass the popcorn) :)


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A NogaNet PSU trying to keep up with RDR2.
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I bet that comes in handy to warm the CPU up to LN2 temperatures to get it to boot, on those long winter nights. :)
 
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