The Art of Fixing and Flopping: A Deep Dive into a Broken System

After 30 minutes to an hour, once the heatsink is heat soaked and everything's kind of stabled out anywhere in the 30s, temperatures are typically fine. You can see it's going up to about 32-33 degrees Celsius, which is perfectly fine if your idle temperatures are not peeking into the 50s. However, if your system is a hot box or you're running like a super compact mid-tower, I would start to be worried. But for this build, 30 degrees Celsius is just fine.

GPU Temperatures: A Different Story

Most modern cards out there are gonna have some kind of zero RPM function or very low RPM function when the card is idle. Right now, you can see temperatures up to 51 degrees Celsius, which is quite a bit hotter than our idle CPU temperatures. However, it's essential to keep in mind that our fan in this case is not spinning when these temperatures reach around 55-56 degrees Celsius typically. You'll start to see the fan kick in and once it does, these temperatures will drop back down. This is done by manufacturers to keep their cards cool and quiet while they're not being used.

Stress Testing the CPU

Not Set Avenger 23 isn't like the ultimate benchmark stress test out there, but from what I was told, this system would overheat and hit its junction at idle. So, if we can keep temperatures checked and running Cinebench, I'd say that's a job well done. We're gonna go ahead and run this and see what happens to temperatures as this benchmark plays out.

The Test Results

We're running right now, and with 100 load, we're not even hitting 50 degrees Celsius yet. That is insane! To be fair, the fan RPM here is a bit high; it sounds like they adjusted their fan curve quite a bit to compensate for the overheating issue. We could definitely fix that before sending this back, but at this point, I'd say job well done. Even if we ran the fan RPM by a significant margin, we're still going to have very acceptable temperatures under load.

This Test is Not About Being Better

The test mind you is with the left side panel on; just figured I'd throw that out there. We're not trying to make this seem like it's any better of a build than it has to be. So, here we are, and actually, we don't need two videos as much as I would like to milk this build and make two videos that I know we'll do quite well on the channel. Historically speaking, I think that's safe to say I'm not going to do it just for the heck of it.

Going in Blind

The whole point of Fix or Flop is to kind of go into it blind, like all of you. So, that's exactly what we're doing. When I took this build apart, I knew when I saw that bracket with the incorrect screw being used; I knew that was why temperatures were so high when you have three of the four screws tightened down and that fourth screw is basically not doing anything because it wasn't even threaded in it was just kind of sitting there.

You're going to see some pretty toasty temperatures, and in this case, temperatures were throttling at idle, which is never good. It sounded like a dead pump; if you don't mount your aio correctly, you could also kind of see that symptom where you know temperatures are just way too high.

We've actually talked about this in a dedicated video, so if you're interested in learning more about it in different cases where your CPU could overheat, check it out. It's linked below.

Conclusion

But for now, I'm satisfied with the way this build turned out. It is so much cleaner cable management looks so much nicer behind the motherboard tray, and we've got this pretty sweet upgrade here courtesy of be quiet! The Shadow Rock 3.

For those interested in learning more about our cleaning gear, it's nothing special; just a lot of household items. Save the electric duster, I think is the one more expensive thing you could buy if you wanted otherwise, just stick with cans of air or even an air compressor will do the job just fine. You can find all that linked below.

Your support through those Amazon affiliate links would be greatly appreciated. If you guys enjoyed this video, please leave a comment down below and give it a thumbs up; that would be greatly appreciated. Leave a comment down below, consider subscribing if you have not already, and I suppose I'll catch you in the next one. My name is Greg, and thanks for cleaning with me!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis here is the viewers very dirty gaming pc welcome to what is this the third season of pcds i can't believe we're this far into it already i would have thought you know in hindsight this would have been just a one or two season playlist but your support has been tremendous and that's why a third season exists now i have a bit to disclose about this one not only is it yes extremely gross in many respects but it's also kind of sort of broken see i picked up this system knowing that there was a thermal issue apparently the cpu just gets way too hot way too fast which sounds like a dead pump but according to them the pump isn't dead because i can feel fluid churning etc etc who really knows but when i when i got this i noticed that it had a few more problems cable management needs to be fixed i think that's something that definitely needs to be addressed it's also extremely gross it's it's frankly disgusting and i don't feel comfortable giving this back to the owner without giving it a proper deep cleaning so in this video before we tackle any of the thermal issues i guess so inadvertently we might be solving one of the thermal issues by cleaning it we're going to do just that deep clean it so you'll see this video and then probably in the future you'll see the fixer flop video pertaining to this build so if you see this build twice you're like what the heck's going on maybe you're watching these out of order um that is an explanation as to why we're doing things this way it was originally just here for fix or flop but i've decided that um yeah i'm gonna deep clean it because it really needs it so hold on to your horses i think you will thoroughly enjoy watching this transformation play out stay with me if you run a small to medium sized business and are looking for an easy to use software solution for online protection look no further than nordlayer nordlayer is an adaptive network access security solution for modern businesses transforming remote access with multi-layered security which is easy to start combine and scale it keeps things like remote team locations private and company data secure no matter where they are with nordlayer you can create encrypted tunnels and set up biometric and multi-factor identifiers along with conditional access for specific authorized users the updated user interface is designed to be both simple and intuitive allowing you to manage assets at an individual level or a corporate level and by using modern security frameworks alongside ztna and others nordlayer is an integrational tool to connect securely between peers devices and remote networks there's a pretty good reason it's trusted by over four thousand businesses and forty thousand active users in thirty plus global server locations so be sure to visit nordlayer.com forward slash greg salazar it's also linked at the top of this video's description and use our special promo code layer greg salazar that's kind of a weird promo code but layer greg salazar and you'll save 20 percent so for those who are new to this playlist the premise here is simple we reach out to folks in and around the orlando florida area and offer to deep clean their systems for free we don't charge them a dime that's right they get charged zero dollars and zero cents so long as they're okay with us taking on their systems for a few days and filming these processes i can make money by monetizing these videos on this channel and elsewhere and i don't feel like offloading any of that cost to the viewer who's already gracious enough to loan us his or her system so as i said this build is caked in dust it's gross and there's a lot of what looks like pet hair scattered across the top of the basement as well as a graphics card it's caked in this 120ml nzxt aio i don't expect that it's playing a huge role in the temperature issues the viewers describing because what what i've what i've been told is that cp temperatures will spike to like 80 or 90 degrees celsius by just idling for a few minutes again that sounds like a dead pump but we'll investigate that further in the fixer flop video pertaining to this build for now i mean there's just so much dust caked up everywhere that again i really don't feel comfortable giving this back to the owner without giving it a proper deep cleaning another thing we'll tackle later in the video is cable management so i mean it's yeah there's some weird things weird path like they've got the usb 3.0 cable like jacked between the graphics card and the motherboard just just very weird things that again it's not a huge deal in the sense that like we can fix it very quickly but it should not be run this way and if it looks like this from this side then it probably looks worse behind the motherboard tray so we'll uh yeah we'll cross that bridge when we come to it now i won't spend too much time talking about the gear we use to deep clean these pcs you've seen it all before check out previous pcbc videos or check out the video description where you can find links to buy these products if you're interested in doing something similar to your own rig and i do recommend that you do the the real good thing about cleaning consistently is that you won't need to get as in-depth as we do here because that dust won't be allowed to cake up and get really grimy if it's left untreated for several months to potentially years depending on the environment that these systems sit in then you're going to end up having to do what we do if you want that like new finish again so to prevent the need for this it's best just to clean your system once every few months and to do that all you'll need is a can of compressed air which is pretty cheap or if you do this on a consistent basis maybe something like an electric duster this isn't as strong as compressed air and it's certainly nowhere near as strong it's using a proper industrial air compressor which i do have the issue with these builds is that a lot of the caked up grime doesn't get removed by just using an air compressor i see comments like that all the time why don't you just use that that would solve all your problems you wouldn't need to scrub or anything that is not the case and i feel like people saying that have no idea how dirty these systems can get in such a short time period so maybe stick to something like this an electric duster or again just cans of air cleaning frequently will eliminate the need to do what you're about to see us do speaking of which let's get to deep cleaning here we go so aha i think i found why the cp was overheating sorry for the awkward interruption uh when i was disassembling everything i thought that it was a bit strange that this longer screw which is supposed to thread into this smaller screw here from behind this little uh bracket was kind of just loose it wasn't really tied on correctly and what i noticed is that this screw is actually a different thread size than the other three screws used in this bracket the way nzxt does it's really strange but anyway this doesn't thread properly and as a result of that this isn't mounted to the back plate correctly which can result in uneven mounting pressure in fact if you notice earlier in our footage when i first removed the aio there was a bit of uneven distribution of thermal paste one corner of the cpu did not have thermal paste covering the ihs and that's a big no-no because the entire ihs conducts the heat right not just a portion of it and that's what it's designed to do essentially it's why it's one big metal slab so i i'm willing to bet that that's why their temperatures continue to climb if you have one portion of a cpu that is not making contact with the cold plate of whatever cooler you're using you're gonna have a bad time so we have a solution now i don't have additional mounting gear for the previous aio used but what i do have is something better in my opinion that's the be quiet shadow rock 3. i know what some of you are going to say greg you're downgrading this person it's no longer liquid cooled it's just vanilla air cooled but on paper my friends the shadow rock 3 has a lot going for it first up it is objectively a better cooler than a small 120mm aio i mean the heatsink alone is massive it's also going to run extremely quiet thanks to the fan included in here and setting it up is fairly easy as you're seeing here 190 watt tdp again puts this above the 120 ml that was previously used as well so not only do i expect cpu temperatures to be lower with this cooler but i also expect the cooler itself to run quieter be quiet running quiet i think there is a relationship there i think that's safe to say i want to thank be quiet for supporting us and being the product sponsor of this video you can find the shadow rock 3 linked below check it out i can assure you you won't be disappointed with the potential packed into this box so all right let's get back to it all right and it is time for the moment of truth let's see first off the power's on if it doesn't we have a different issue on our hands and then second will ensure that temperatures remain stable and low especially at idle because apparently even at idle the cpu was overheating i expect that since we've swapped this cooler out and we've mounted everything properly we shouldn't have any issues if we still do then i think the only two variables at play here are the motherboard and the cpu i have seen it it's rare but i've seen it where the cpu itself will overheat just because of some sort of internal issue the motherboard could also be overvolting the cpu quite massively and that's something else we need to watch out for so let me sign in very quickly now it does at first glance at least according to cam appears though we fixed the cpu idle temperature issue right now we're fluctuating anywhere between 28 and 30 degrees celsius which is great that's what you should expect for an idle cpu especially after only being on for a few you know seconds to minutes after maybe 30 minutes to an hour once the the heatsink is heat soaked and everything's kind of stabled out anywhere in the 30s is typically fine you can see it's going up to about 32 33 that's all perfectly fine if your idle temperatures though start peeking into the 50s i would say and you're not running like a super compact mid tower or something like that or a case that's a hot box i would start to be worried but 30 is just fine now as for a gpu temperature it's a bit of a different story most modern cards out there are gonna have some like zero rpm function or like very low rpm function when the card is idle so right now you can see temperatures are up to 51 degrees celsius which is quite a bit hotter than our idle cpu temperatures but you have to keep in mind that our fan in this case is not spinning when this temperature reaches somewhere around 55 56 degrees celsius typically you'll start to see the fan kick in and once it does these temperatures will drop back down so it's just a way for manufacturers to keep their cards cool and quiet but not necessarily cool but quiet while they aren't being used so the next logical step then is to stress test the cp not set avenger 23 isn't like the ultimate benchmark stress test out there but from what i was told this system again would overheat and hit t junction at idle so if we can keep temps and check running cinebench i'd say that's a job well done so we're gonna go ahead and run this and i'm not too worried about the score i just want to see what happens to temperatures so we'll go ahead and click start here and then we'll pull up cam again and we'll see what happens to temperatures as this benchmark plays out so it's running right now and look at that 100 load and we're not even hitting 50 degrees celsius yet that is that is insane now to be fair the fan rpm here is a bit high it sounds like they adjusted their fan curve quite a bit try to compensate for the overheating issue we could definitely fix that before sending this back but at this point i'd say job well done even if we ran back fan rpm by a significant margin we're still going to have very acceptable temperatures under load this test mind you is with the left side panel on just figured i'd throw that out there we're not trying to make this seem like it's any better of a build than it has to be so here we are we actually don't need two videos look as much as i would like to milk this build and make two videos that i know we're going to do quite well on the channel just historically speaking i think that's safe to say i'm not going to do it just for the heck of it the whole point of fix or flop is to kind of go into it blind just like all of you so that we all as a collective whole can kind of share in the enigma that is the broken system at hand and i already knew i mean when i took this build apart i knew when i saw that that bracket that had the incorrect screw being used i knew that was why temps were so high when you have three of the four screws tightened down and that fourth screw is basically not doing anything because it wasn't even threaded in it was just kind of sitting there you're gonna see some pretty toasty temperatures and in this case temperatures were throttling at idle which is never good again it sounded like a dead pump but if you don't mount your aio correctly you could also kind of see that symptom where you know temperatures are just way too high we've actually talked about this in a dedicated video so if you're interested in learning more about that in different cases where your cpu could overheat check it out it is linked below but for now i'm satisfied with the way this builds turned out it is so much cleaner cable management looks so much nicer in my opinion especially behind the motherboard tray and we've got this pretty sweet upgrade here courtesy of be quiet in the shadow rock 3. now as i said before if you want to check out our cleaning gear it's nothing special really just a lot of household items save the electric duster i think is the one more expensive thing you could buy if you wanted otherwise just stick with cans of air or even an air compressor will do the job just fine you can find all that linked below and your support through those amazon affiliate links would be appreciated uh with that if you guys enjoyed this video be sure to let me know by giving this one a thumbs up that would be greatly appreciated leave a comment down below consider subscribing if you have not already and i suppose i'll catch you in the next one my name is greg thanks for cleaning with methis here is the viewers very dirty gaming pc welcome to what is this the third season of pcds i can't believe we're this far into it already i would have thought you know in hindsight this would have been just a one or two season playlist but your support has been tremendous and that's why a third season exists now i have a bit to disclose about this one not only is it yes extremely gross in many respects but it's also kind of sort of broken see i picked up this system knowing that there was a thermal issue apparently the cpu just gets way too hot way too fast which sounds like a dead pump but according to them the pump isn't dead because i can feel fluid churning etc etc who really knows but when i when i got this i noticed that it had a few more problems cable management needs to be fixed i think that's something that definitely needs to be addressed it's also extremely gross it's it's frankly disgusting and i don't feel comfortable giving this back to the owner without giving it a proper deep cleaning so in this video before we tackle any of the thermal issues i guess so inadvertently we might be solving one of the thermal issues by cleaning it we're going to do just that deep clean it so you'll see this video and then probably in the future you'll see the fixer flop video pertaining to this build so if you see this build twice you're like what the heck's going on maybe you're watching these out of order um that is an explanation as to why we're doing things this way it was originally just here for fix or flop but i've decided that um yeah i'm gonna deep clean it because it really needs it so hold on to your horses i think you will thoroughly enjoy watching this transformation play out stay with me if you run a small to medium sized business and are looking for an easy to use software solution for online protection look no further than nordlayer nordlayer is an adaptive network access security solution for modern businesses transforming remote access with multi-layered security which is easy to start combine and scale it keeps things like remote team locations private and company data secure no matter where they are with nordlayer you can create encrypted tunnels and set up biometric and multi-factor identifiers along with conditional access for specific authorized users the updated user interface is designed to be both simple and intuitive allowing you to manage assets at an individual level or a corporate level and by using modern security frameworks alongside ztna and others nordlayer is an integrational tool to connect securely between peers devices and remote networks there's a pretty good reason it's trusted by over four thousand businesses and forty thousand active users in thirty plus global server locations so be sure to visit nordlayer.com forward slash greg salazar it's also linked at the top of this video's description and use our special promo code layer greg salazar that's kind of a weird promo code but layer greg salazar and you'll save 20 percent so for those who are new to this playlist the premise here is simple we reach out to folks in and around the orlando florida area and offer to deep clean their systems for free we don't charge them a dime that's right they get charged zero dollars and zero cents so long as they're okay with us taking on their systems for a few days and filming these processes i can make money by monetizing these videos on this channel and elsewhere and i don't feel like offloading any of that cost to the viewer who's already gracious enough to loan us his or her system so as i said this build is caked in dust it's gross and there's a lot of what looks like pet hair scattered across the top of the basement as well as a graphics card it's caked in this 120ml nzxt aio i don't expect that it's playing a huge role in the temperature issues the viewers describing because what what i've what i've been told is that cp temperatures will spike to like 80 or 90 degrees celsius by just idling for a few minutes again that sounds like a dead pump but we'll investigate that further in the fixer flop video pertaining to this build for now i mean there's just so much dust caked up everywhere that again i really don't feel comfortable giving this back to the owner without giving it a proper deep cleaning another thing we'll tackle later in the video is cable management so i mean it's yeah there's some weird things weird path like they've got the usb 3.0 cable like jacked between the graphics card and the motherboard just just very weird things that again it's not a huge deal in the sense that like we can fix it very quickly but it should not be run this way and if it looks like this from this side then it probably looks worse behind the motherboard tray so we'll uh yeah we'll cross that bridge when we come to it now i won't spend too much time talking about the gear we use to deep clean these pcs you've seen it all before check out previous pcbc videos or check out the video description where you can find links to buy these products if you're interested in doing something similar to your own rig and i do recommend that you do the the real good thing about cleaning consistently is that you won't need to get as in-depth as we do here because that dust won't be allowed to cake up and get really grimy if it's left untreated for several months to potentially years depending on the environment that these systems sit in then you're going to end up having to do what we do if you want that like new finish again so to prevent the need for this it's best just to clean your system once every few months and to do that all you'll need is a can of compressed air which is pretty cheap or if you do this on a consistent basis maybe something like an electric duster this isn't as strong as compressed air and it's certainly nowhere near as strong it's using a proper industrial air compressor which i do have the issue with these builds is that a lot of the caked up grime doesn't get removed by just using an air compressor i see comments like that all the time why don't you just use that that would solve all your problems you wouldn't need to scrub or anything that is not the case and i feel like people saying that have no idea how dirty these systems can get in such a short time period so maybe stick to something like this an electric duster or again just cans of air cleaning frequently will eliminate the need to do what you're about to see us do speaking of which let's get to deep cleaning here we go so aha i think i found why the cp was overheating sorry for the awkward interruption uh when i was disassembling everything i thought that it was a bit strange that this longer screw which is supposed to thread into this smaller screw here from behind this little uh bracket was kind of just loose it wasn't really tied on correctly and what i noticed is that this screw is actually a different thread size than the other three screws used in this bracket the way nzxt does it's really strange but anyway this doesn't thread properly and as a result of that this isn't mounted to the back plate correctly which can result in uneven mounting pressure in fact if you notice earlier in our footage when i first removed the aio there was a bit of uneven distribution of thermal paste one corner of the cpu did not have thermal paste covering the ihs and that's a big no-no because the entire ihs conducts the heat right not just a portion of it and that's what it's designed to do essentially it's why it's one big metal slab so i i'm willing to bet that that's why their temperatures continue to climb if you have one portion of a cpu that is not making contact with the cold plate of whatever cooler you're using you're gonna have a bad time so we have a solution now i don't have additional mounting gear for the previous aio used but what i do have is something better in my opinion that's the be quiet shadow rock 3. i know what some of you are going to say greg you're downgrading this person it's no longer liquid cooled it's just vanilla air cooled but on paper my friends the shadow rock 3 has a lot going for it first up it is objectively a better cooler than a small 120mm aio i mean the heatsink alone is massive it's also going to run extremely quiet thanks to the fan included in here and setting it up is fairly easy as you're seeing here 190 watt tdp again puts this above the 120 ml that was previously used as well so not only do i expect cpu temperatures to be lower with this cooler but i also expect the cooler itself to run quieter be quiet running quiet i think there is a relationship there i think that's safe to say i want to thank be quiet for supporting us and being the product sponsor of this video you can find the shadow rock 3 linked below check it out i can assure you you won't be disappointed with the potential packed into this box so all right let's get back to it all right and it is time for the moment of truth let's see first off the power's on if it doesn't we have a different issue on our hands and then second will ensure that temperatures remain stable and low especially at idle because apparently even at idle the cpu was overheating i expect that since we've swapped this cooler out and we've mounted everything properly we shouldn't have any issues if we still do then i think the only two variables at play here are the motherboard and the cpu i have seen it it's rare but i've seen it where the cpu itself will overheat just because of some sort of internal issue the motherboard could also be overvolting the cpu quite massively and that's something else we need to watch out for so let me sign in very quickly now it does at first glance at least according to cam appears though we fixed the cpu idle temperature issue right now we're fluctuating anywhere between 28 and 30 degrees celsius which is great that's what you should expect for an idle cpu especially after only being on for a few you know seconds to minutes after maybe 30 minutes to an hour once the the heatsink is heat soaked and everything's kind of stabled out anywhere in the 30s is typically fine you can see it's going up to about 32 33 that's all perfectly fine if your idle temperatures though start peeking into the 50s i would say and you're not running like a super compact mid tower or something like that or a case that's a hot box i would start to be worried but 30 is just fine now as for a gpu temperature it's a bit of a different story most modern cards out there are gonna have some like zero rpm function or like very low rpm function when the card is idle so right now you can see temperatures are up to 51 degrees celsius which is quite a bit hotter than our idle cpu temperatures but you have to keep in mind that our fan in this case is not spinning when this temperature reaches somewhere around 55 56 degrees celsius typically you'll start to see the fan kick in and once it does these temperatures will drop back down so it's just a way for manufacturers to keep their cards cool and quiet but not necessarily cool but quiet while they aren't being used so the next logical step then is to stress test the cp not set avenger 23 isn't like the ultimate benchmark stress test out there but from what i was told this system again would overheat and hit t junction at idle so if we can keep temps and check running cinebench i'd say that's a job well done so we're gonna go ahead and run this and i'm not too worried about the score i just want to see what happens to temperatures so we'll go ahead and click start here and then we'll pull up cam again and we'll see what happens to temperatures as this benchmark plays out so it's running right now and look at that 100 load and we're not even hitting 50 degrees celsius yet that is that is insane now to be fair the fan rpm here is a bit high it sounds like they adjusted their fan curve quite a bit try to compensate for the overheating issue we could definitely fix that before sending this back but at this point i'd say job well done even if we ran back fan rpm by a significant margin we're still going to have very acceptable temperatures under load this test mind you is with the left side panel on just figured i'd throw that out there we're not trying to make this seem like it's any better of a build than it has to be so here we are we actually don't need two videos look as much as i would like to milk this build and make two videos that i know we're going to do quite well on the channel just historically speaking i think that's safe to say i'm not going to do it just for the heck of it the whole point of fix or flop is to kind of go into it blind just like all of you so that we all as a collective whole can kind of share in the enigma that is the broken system at hand and i already knew i mean when i took this build apart i knew when i saw that that bracket that had the incorrect screw being used i knew that was why temps were so high when you have three of the four screws tightened down and that fourth screw is basically not doing anything because it wasn't even threaded in it was just kind of sitting there you're gonna see some pretty toasty temperatures and in this case temperatures were throttling at idle which is never good again it sounded like a dead pump but if you don't mount your aio correctly you could also kind of see that symptom where you know temperatures are just way too high we've actually talked about this in a dedicated video so if you're interested in learning more about that in different cases where your cpu could overheat check it out it is linked below but for now i'm satisfied with the way this builds turned out it is so much cleaner cable management looks so much nicer in my opinion especially behind the motherboard tray and we've got this pretty sweet upgrade here courtesy of be quiet in the shadow rock 3. now as i said before if you want to check out our cleaning gear it's nothing special really just a lot of household items save the electric duster i think is the one more expensive thing you could buy if you wanted otherwise just stick with cans of air or even an air compressor will do the job just fine you can find all that linked below and your support through those amazon affiliate links would be appreciated uh with that if you guys enjoyed this video be sure to let me know by giving this one a thumbs up that would be greatly appreciated leave a comment down below consider subscribing if you have not already and i suppose i'll catch you in the next one my name is greg thanks for cleaning with me\n"