Stupid Things You Have Done With Your Computer...

Last year I was looking into making my computer quieter, and ended up buying a somewhat unusual fan/heatsink for my CPU. The stupid part of this was that I decided to do it in the middle of the school semester when I really couldn't really afford break my computer (or mess with it at all for that matter).

To be honest, I'm still not actually sure if I damaged anything or not. I took my whole computer apart since screws had to go in from under the motherboard, and although I tried not to mess anything up too much I have a feeling I broke a lot of computer-building rules. In any case, I put my PC back together and gave it a test boot, but the darn thing wouldn't even start. I tried removing parts, reseating things, etc. but I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I took it apart again. It looked, to me, like the CPU was fried or possibly even the motherboard, so I ended up ordering replacements for both. Put everything back together, including the new fan, and the computer wouldn't boot. Took it apart, looked at the CPU again, and it looked like the other one. I felt pretty dejected at this point since the only alternative was an old Mac G4 I had (coincidentally) brought up from home, but I just couldn't take being without my PC. On a whim, I decided to try putting on the old heatsink/fan combo with the new CPU/motherboard, and it worked on the first try! Furthermore, I'd cleaned a fuckton of dust out of the heatsink/fan which made it even louder than it'd been before!

One of these days I'm gonna try putting that Zalman fan back in, but first I have to figure out why it was giving me problems in the first place.

Jam it back in, in the dark.