The Importance of Troubleshooting Computer Builds: A Personal Experience

As a computer enthusiast and builder, I can attest that troubleshooting is an essential part of the process. Recently, I encountered a problem with one of my builds, and I had to take it apart to figure out what was going wrong. The issue started when the CPU temperature began to rise excessively, causing the system to throttle down significantly.

To diagnose the problem, I decided to lap the block itself, which is the metal component that sits on top of the CPU to dissipate heat. Lapping involves using a special tool to smooth out the surface of the block and remove any imperfections or debris that may be affecting its performance. In this case, I was able to lap both the CPU block and the 1873 block, which made a significant difference in the system's temperature.

After lapping the blocks, I decided to change out the thermal paste and fluid used in the cooling system. The current thermal paste was not providing adequate heat transfer, causing the CPU to run at high temperatures. I applied a new thermal paste using the X pattern method instead of the P method, which has proven to be more effective in the past.

The next step was to change out the coolant used in the system. The original coolant had become clogged and solidified over time, reducing its effectiveness as a heat transfer fluid. By changing it out with a new bottle, I was able to restore the system's cooling performance. I also made sure to clean out any debris that may have accumulated in the micro channels underneath the block.

One of the key issues I faced during this process was finding one of the screws that had been dropped. This presented a challenge, as I had to search carefully to avoid damaging any components or stripping the screw head. Once I found the screw, I reassembled the system and made sure everything was properly secured.

As I continued to troubleshoot the issue, I realized that there were two main factors contributing to the problem: the retention system and the lapping of the CPU block. The original retention system had been causing the block to bow slightly, which was preventing it from sitting evenly on top of the CPU. By using plastic washers against the motherboard and metal washers against the bracket, I was able to create a shim that prevented the block from smashing down onto the CPU.

I also lapped the CPU block again, this time using a special tool to polish it and remove any imperfections. This made a significant difference in the system's temperature, as the new thermal paste and fluid began to work more effectively.

To test the system's performance, I ran a series of benchmarks using Cinebench. The results were impressive: the system was able to reach temperatures that were significantly lower than before, with an average temperature of around 4°C below T.J.Maxx. The maximum temperature on any core was 85°C, which is well within a safe operating range.

The final test was to see if I could push the system harder by increasing the CPU voltage and fan speed. I was able to achieve a score of 353-57-58-59-60-61-60-62, which is significantly faster than before. The fans were not ramping up as much, indicating that the system's cooling performance had improved.

In conclusion, troubleshooting a computer build can be a challenging but rewarding experience. By following a systematic approach and being willing to take things apart and inspect components closely, it is possible to diagnose and fix problems that may have seemed insurmountable at first. The improvements I made to this particular system have paid off, resulting in better performance and lower temperatures.

The Importance of Attention to Detail

One of the key factors that contributed to the success of this build was attention to detail. When it comes to building a computer, there are many small components and details that can make or break the system's performance. In this case, I had to pay close attention to the thermal paste, fluid, and retention system to ensure that everything was working correctly.

The thermal paste, in particular, is a critical component of any cooling system. If it is not applied correctly, it can lead to poor heat transfer and reduced system performance. By using the X pattern method instead of the P method, I was able to improve the thermal paste's effectiveness.

Similarly, the fluid used in the cooling system must be carefully selected to ensure that it meets the needs of the system. In this case, the original coolant had become clogged and solidified over time, reducing its effectiveness as a heat transfer fluid. By changing it out with a new bottle, I was able to restore the system's cooling performance.

The retention system is another critical component that requires careful attention to detail. The original system had been causing the block to bow slightly, which was preventing it from sitting evenly on top of the CPU. By using plastic washers against the motherboard and metal washers against the bracket, I was able to create a shim that prevented the block from smashing down onto the CPU.

This experience highlights the importance of attention to detail when building a computer. Even small mistakes or oversights can lead to significant problems down the line. By being meticulous and paying close attention to every detail, it is possible to build a system that performs flawlessly and meets your needs.

Lessons Learned

One of the key lessons I learned from this experience was the importance of patience and persistence. Troubleshooting a computer build can be a time-consuming and frustrating process, but it is also rewarding when you finally figure out what's going wrong.

Another lesson I learned was the value of taking things apart to inspect components closely. When something doesn't seem to be working correctly, it's often necessary to take the system apart and examine individual components to diagnose the problem.

Finally, this experience taught me the importance of using the right tools for the job. In this case, using a special tool to lap the CPU block made all the difference in improving the system's temperature.

Conclusion

Building a computer can be a complex and challenging process, but with patience, persistence, and attention to detail, it is possible to create a system that performs flawlessly. By following a systematic approach and being willing to take things apart and inspect components closely, you can troubleshoot problems and improve your system's performance.

The experience I had with this particular build highlights the importance of troubleshooting in computer building. It shows that even when things seem to be working correctly on the surface, there may be underlying issues that need to be addressed. By being proactive and taking steps to diagnose and fix problems, you can create a system that meets your needs and provides years of reliable performance.

The Future of Computer Building

As computer technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see new challenges and opportunities arise in the field of computer building. One area that is likely to become increasingly important is the use of advanced cooling technologies, such as liquid nitrogen or high-performance air coolers.

Another area that is likely to be of interest is the development of more efficient thermal pastes and fluids. These materials have a significant impact on a system's cooling performance, and companies will need to continue to innovate and improve their designs to meet the demands of modern computing.

Finally, we can expect to see more emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility in computer building. As concern about climate change and e-waste continues to grow, builders will need to be mindful of the environmental impact of their systems and choose components that are designed with these considerations in mind.

In conclusion, building a computer is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail, patience, and persistence. By following a systematic approach and being willing to take things apart and inspect components closely, you can troubleshoot problems and improve your system's performance. As the field of computer building continues to evolve, we can expect to see new challenges and opportunities arise, but with the right tools and techniques, it is possible to build systems that are faster, more efficient, and environmentally friendly.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyesterday we finished building this piece of crap but today we had to fix this piece of crap this holiday season spice up your build with high-performance options from MSI like the Emmy Jeezy 390 god-like which supports up to 40 600 megahertz memory or their wide range of graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA EMA site also has full product lines including bare-bones workstations gaming peripherals monitors and more to see all that MSI has to offer click the link in the description below just because you can do some things doesn't mean you necessarily should I was a little concerned when I started building this system with how densely packed it was becoming that there may be some cooling issues in fact a lot of you within my last video were like hey where are the cooling numbers where's the temperatures where's the benchmarks why is I setting into that video I said load all my operating system and stuff on there and that's what we've done today and what we have discovered is that there are definitely some cooling inefficiencies in this so if you take a look right here you can see just how densely packed it is there's not a lot of room on the bottom the feet only stand about four millimeters off the floor so I've got it propped up right now because I can put bigger feet on the bottom to get more airflow in though you know through the bottom of the case this is an updraft case heat rises therefore we are trying to kind of have the natural you'll rise of heat give us some convection to where we're blowing the heat through the case and up through the top the problem is with the motherboard right there and the i/o shield we lose some volume there this pump uses up quite a bit of volume plus it puts off heat into the case because of this heat sink our RAM takes up some volume our power supply takes up a huge amount of volume which means that that much airflow going up through the bottom is already blocked we have our ribbon cables along there we have our tubing which is pretty warm we'll talk about that in a second and then of course we've got the top radiator right here which as you can see once again is blocked significantly by the ribbon cable it's also blocked significantly by the power supply and we are also taking the heat of the power supply and blowing it right into the radiator so here's what this has given us we have a GPU right now a Titan X it stocks beads on water that's sitting at 55 C naught terrible but approximately tendency higher than I would see them normally in a larger case with larger radiators and better air flow so we already know that that is causing us a problem in terms of just heat and saturation now I have 4 ek Vardar 2200 rpm fans on this and even when I run them at full speed we still sit about 52 C on the the GPU now the CPU the 9900 K this was a little bit of a concern of mine is a hot CPU we know that it has the s Tim or the solder throw thermal interface material we've also seen some reports that it's not good better than the standard thermal material but they've taken something made it slightly better but crammed twice as many cores in the same small package so basically you've got 8 cores and 16 threads worth of hyper-threading inside of a you know 1150 weighs 1155 socket thick run whatever it is and it's a it's a lot of focused heat and even though I have a decent block in decent pump on here the CPU factory voltages is getting extremely hot so I'm gonna have to do a couple of things today I'm have to take this apart again which I said in my last video I hoped I wouldn't have to yeah I feel welcome crossing my fingers wet I will show you guys right now in Cinebench I will actually hit a hundred C headstock voltages I've even down clocked it I've got it running at 4.3 gig gigahertz on all cores I'm not even letting any of the cores get to 5 gigahertz like the factory turbo will because the factory turbo will go to 5 gigahertz on one core I think it is and like 4.8 on 2 and then it steps down from there right that's the turbo that Intel Turbo I've turned off all of the Asus features on this because what I found was that I was hitting 105 C and throttling when I opened up Google Chrome now I've cleared the min/max on here so you can see but the package is idling at 42 to 48 C it kind of moves around we've got as high as 54 we're not under any load I also have the fans running a hundred percent speed right now as well as the pump you can see that our voltages here on the B core is only one point one that's nothing one point one degree or one point one voltage on a like at 8700 K would have my temperatures under load be somewhere in the 50s so if I go ahead and run the test right here watch our course granted this doesn't have all what does have all the eight cores here they're right there so check cannot keep an eye on the the core temperatures right there 70s 80s 9100 101 102 104 and now we're throttling at 105 as you can see if we look down here I'm throught only for 4 gigs 3.9 3.8 3.9 3.8 on some so we are throttling and our score was only a 1780 one because the CPU was throttling I don't know I think I feel like the retention system on the Swift tech is terrible so now we have to tear it apart and see what we find so part of my issue with this pump block combo is the retention plate here is it sits off the off the back of the motherboard and it has these little like foam pads the problem is those crush and then as you can see it's sort of like bows and I'm not sure we're getting a really good contact here on the block but the only we're gonna be able to check that now is actually take it off and I found it easier to remove the whole motherboard than to remove just the just the block because this brackets gonna probably fall off in the back and as you can see right here although technically is a cutout right here taking out the GPU and all that stuff does not make it necessarily easier to get to the back of this thing so I'd rather just work on it outside of the case it's just more screws ok so right off the bat though I'm not too happy with that thermal paste application if you look at it I mean it doesn't go all the way to the edge it's very thin I suspect this one might need a little bit of lapping as well where we have the lose at this point and it still spins a little bit so I means the block itself could be high centered okay so I lapped the CPU and left the block it's definitely flat now and cleaned out the micro channels underneath too so we'll be changing out the fluid obviously so I'm gonna put this guy back together I'm not expecting this bill to obviously be amazing on temperatures I just want something reasonable and I dropped one of these screws so I have to find it I've always got a screw loose if you know what I'm saying okay here we go lupus together my own special formula mix just drinking water and another concentrates but I digress let's go ahead and you know why I was worried I dropped coolant down inside of the power supply ah okay so right 24c inside of Windows right now all the same settings we had before so much better I'm gonna go ahead and go back to my fan expert now and put the fan curve back to where I had it let's just go standard fan curve all right moment of truth now with Cinebench remember last time we ran this I hit 105 on the package 105 on some core is it throttled way down to like 3.3 or something like that I remembered it was 353 57 58 59 60 61 60 62 and it's still sitting at 4.3 so this should be significantly faster right now you hear how the fans aren't ramping up I think this is a combination of a couple things I think it was a combination of lapping both the 1873 I think we might be able to actually put this back up to like the 4.7 and then allow a couple of course ago five gigs like it's supposed to but I think a couple of things happened here one it was clear that the temperature was getting too hot for the for the true fluid from primo chill as after one day it was starting to clog up and and like solidify like jellify is the best way to describe it inside the micro channel inside of the apogee drive - it's not a lot of space there it's very thin so that could really have been causing us a terrible inefficiency of the block we also so we change shut the fluid we also left the CPU IHS as well as the block I also left the IHS on the CPU as well as the base plate or the cooling plate for the block itself and then we applied more thermal paste I did the X pattern rather than just the P method like I did in the first one and our temperatures are significantly better so I'm gonna try I'm gonna try I want to try five two gigahertz 1.2 but I don't think it's way enough voltage see if it crashes though 77 ATC 81 82 83 fans kicked up we are still 25 °c below t.j.maxx and we know Senate bench pushes harder than Mike Adobe does sorry there 21:36 on our score and our max temp on any core was 85 and 85 on the package so and so 5 5 gigahertz all core super doable it fills laughing cuz he gets to play with this thing this is his little travel rig so of course he's happy alright guys we're gonna go thanks for watching this video sorry we had to do a third part on this but these are the type of videos that are important because seeing us put it all together and stuff is one part of these builds but when you have a problem finding out the problem is it's just as important and the other thing I changed I forgot to mention earlier was I came up with that better retention system on the back because I told you how it was kind of bowing down so I basically used plastic washers against the motherboard and then metal washers against the bracket so there's no short - to make a shim basically so that it couldn't smash down because what I feel is happening is the I feel like there was a little bit of a bowing happening with the bracket on the top which was causing us to not get a good even seat of the block versus the CPU so we lapped it didn't really polish it it was pretty shiny lapped the CPU block and came up with a new retention system changed out the thermal paste changed out the coolant and this is what we got I think most of the improvement we saw today though was specifically the retention system and the lapping of the CPU so there we go I feel so much better now is worried does it tear the system apart and then be guys I'm sorry but yeah we're done now thanks for watching guys and as always we'll see you in the next one now lobby guys really like this small form-factor build I did but if that's not your thing in size matters then you're definitely gonna want to check out this oneyesterday we finished building this piece of crap but today we had to fix this piece of crap this holiday season spice up your build with high-performance options from MSI like the Emmy Jeezy 390 god-like which supports up to 40 600 megahertz memory or their wide range of graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA EMA site also has full product lines including bare-bones workstations gaming peripherals monitors and more to see all that MSI has to offer click the link in the description below just because you can do some things doesn't mean you necessarily should I was a little concerned when I started building this system with how densely packed it was becoming that there may be some cooling issues in fact a lot of you within my last video were like hey where are the cooling numbers where's the temperatures where's the benchmarks why is I setting into that video I said load all my operating system and stuff on there and that's what we've done today and what we have discovered is that there are definitely some cooling inefficiencies in this so if you take a look right here you can see just how densely packed it is there's not a lot of room on the bottom the feet only stand about four millimeters off the floor so I've got it propped up right now because I can put bigger feet on the bottom to get more airflow in though you know through the bottom of the case this is an updraft case heat rises therefore we are trying to kind of have the natural you'll rise of heat give us some convection to where we're blowing the heat through the case and up through the top the problem is with the motherboard right there and the i/o shield we lose some volume there this pump uses up quite a bit of volume plus it puts off heat into the case because of this heat sink our RAM takes up some volume our power supply takes up a huge amount of volume which means that that much airflow going up through the bottom is already blocked we have our ribbon cables along there we have our tubing which is pretty warm we'll talk about that in a second and then of course we've got the top radiator right here which as you can see once again is blocked significantly by the ribbon cable it's also blocked significantly by the power supply and we are also taking the heat of the power supply and blowing it right into the radiator so here's what this has given us we have a GPU right now a Titan X it stocks beads on water that's sitting at 55 C naught terrible but approximately tendency higher than I would see them normally in a larger case with larger radiators and better air flow so we already know that that is causing us a problem in terms of just heat and saturation now I have 4 ek Vardar 2200 rpm fans on this and even when I run them at full speed we still sit about 52 C on the the GPU now the CPU the 9900 K this was a little bit of a concern of mine is a hot CPU we know that it has the s Tim or the solder throw thermal interface material we've also seen some reports that it's not good better than the standard thermal material but they've taken something made it slightly better but crammed twice as many cores in the same small package so basically you've got 8 cores and 16 threads worth of hyper-threading inside of a you know 1150 weighs 1155 socket thick run whatever it is and it's a it's a lot of focused heat and even though I have a decent block in decent pump on here the CPU factory voltages is getting extremely hot so I'm gonna have to do a couple of things today I'm have to take this apart again which I said in my last video I hoped I wouldn't have to yeah I feel welcome crossing my fingers wet I will show you guys right now in Cinebench I will actually hit a hundred C headstock voltages I've even down clocked it I've got it running at 4.3 gig gigahertz on all cores I'm not even letting any of the cores get to 5 gigahertz like the factory turbo will because the factory turbo will go to 5 gigahertz on one core I think it is and like 4.8 on 2 and then it steps down from there right that's the turbo that Intel Turbo I've turned off all of the Asus features on this because what I found was that I was hitting 105 C and throttling when I opened up Google Chrome now I've cleared the min/max on here so you can see but the package is idling at 42 to 48 C it kind of moves around we've got as high as 54 we're not under any load I also have the fans running a hundred percent speed right now as well as the pump you can see that our voltages here on the B core is only one point one that's nothing one point one degree or one point one voltage on a like at 8700 K would have my temperatures under load be somewhere in the 50s so if I go ahead and run the test right here watch our course granted this doesn't have all what does have all the eight cores here they're right there so check cannot keep an eye on the the core temperatures right there 70s 80s 9100 101 102 104 and now we're throttling at 105 as you can see if we look down here I'm throught only for 4 gigs 3.9 3.8 3.9 3.8 on some so we are throttling and our score was only a 1780 one because the CPU was throttling I don't know I think I feel like the retention system on the Swift tech is terrible so now we have to tear it apart and see what we find so part of my issue with this pump block combo is the retention plate here is it sits off the off the back of the motherboard and it has these little like foam pads the problem is those crush and then as you can see it's sort of like bows and I'm not sure we're getting a really good contact here on the block but the only we're gonna be able to check that now is actually take it off and I found it easier to remove the whole motherboard than to remove just the just the block because this brackets gonna probably fall off in the back and as you can see right here although technically is a cutout right here taking out the GPU and all that stuff does not make it necessarily easier to get to the back of this thing so I'd rather just work on it outside of the case it's just more screws ok so right off the bat though I'm not too happy with that thermal paste application if you look at it I mean it doesn't go all the way to the edge it's very thin I suspect this one might need a little bit of lapping as well where we have the lose at this point and it still spins a little bit so I means the block itself could be high centered okay so I lapped the CPU and left the block it's definitely flat now and cleaned out the micro channels underneath too so we'll be changing out the fluid obviously so I'm gonna put this guy back together I'm not expecting this bill to obviously be amazing on temperatures I just want something reasonable and I dropped one of these screws so I have to find it I've always got a screw loose if you know what I'm saying okay here we go lupus together my own special formula mix just drinking water and another concentrates but I digress let's go ahead and you know why I was worried I dropped coolant down inside of the power supply ah okay so right 24c inside of Windows right now all the same settings we had before so much better I'm gonna go ahead and go back to my fan expert now and put the fan curve back to where I had it let's just go standard fan curve all right moment of truth now with Cinebench remember last time we ran this I hit 105 on the package 105 on some core is it throttled way down to like 3.3 or something like that I remembered it was 353 57 58 59 60 61 60 62 and it's still sitting at 4.3 so this should be significantly faster right now you hear how the fans aren't ramping up I think this is a combination of a couple things I think it was a combination of lapping both the 1873 I think we might be able to actually put this back up to like the 4.7 and then allow a couple of course ago five gigs like it's supposed to but I think a couple of things happened here one it was clear that the temperature was getting too hot for the for the true fluid from primo chill as after one day it was starting to clog up and and like solidify like jellify is the best way to describe it inside the micro channel inside of the apogee drive - it's not a lot of space there it's very thin so that could really have been causing us a terrible inefficiency of the block we also so we change shut the fluid we also left the CPU IHS as well as the block I also left the IHS on the CPU as well as the base plate or the cooling plate for the block itself and then we applied more thermal paste I did the X pattern rather than just the P method like I did in the first one and our temperatures are significantly better so I'm gonna try I'm gonna try I want to try five two gigahertz 1.2 but I don't think it's way enough voltage see if it crashes though 77 ATC 81 82 83 fans kicked up we are still 25 °c below t.j.maxx and we know Senate bench pushes harder than Mike Adobe does sorry there 21:36 on our score and our max temp on any core was 85 and 85 on the package so and so 5 5 gigahertz all core super doable it fills laughing cuz he gets to play with this thing this is his little travel rig so of course he's happy alright guys we're gonna go thanks for watching this video sorry we had to do a third part on this but these are the type of videos that are important because seeing us put it all together and stuff is one part of these builds but when you have a problem finding out the problem is it's just as important and the other thing I changed I forgot to mention earlier was I came up with that better retention system on the back because I told you how it was kind of bowing down so I basically used plastic washers against the motherboard and then metal washers against the bracket so there's no short - to make a shim basically so that it couldn't smash down because what I feel is happening is the I feel like there was a little bit of a bowing happening with the bracket on the top which was causing us to not get a good even seat of the block versus the CPU so we lapped it didn't really polish it it was pretty shiny lapped the CPU block and came up with a new retention system changed out the thermal paste changed out the coolant and this is what we got I think most of the improvement we saw today though was specifically the retention system and the lapping of the CPU so there we go I feel so much better now is worried does it tear the system apart and then be guys I'm sorry but yeah we're done now thanks for watching guys and as always we'll see you in the next one now lobby guys really like this small form-factor build I did but if that's not your thing in size matters then you're definitely gonna want to check out this one\n"