I can still smell burning

January 4, 2008 by
Filed under: Uncategorized 

I decided I should drain the remaining coolant out of my old server today, in case I’m going to rebuild it and also to prevent any further leaks (not that there was much fluid left). It’s not many people who can say they have to disassemble their PC in a sink! :)

Still, at least I now know why the server wouldn’t start up back in September: (Click on image for larger versions)
Can you spot the problem?

I wonder if that could be it?

I couldn’t see this before because it was virtually hidden under the CPU and the cooling system, but it looks like something overheated (presumably because of a problem with the cooling system) and burned out a bunch of components … and even warped the motherboard a bit!

So there’s definitely no chance of getting that machine running again until I replace the mobo. Hopefully the RAM, CPU and PSU are all OK, but I can’t really tell until I start rebuilding it … but that means buying an out-of-date (~2 year old) motherboard, and if the RAM or CPU are also faulty then it’ll probably be cheaper to have just replaced the whole thing!

Tags:

Comments

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!