Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S2:E8

this here is another viewer's broken gaming pc and well i suppose in the classical sense of the word it's not technically broken it does post it does turn on and boot into windows but it has a severe overheating problem we've got another overheater on our hands and uh this time i'm not gonna beat around the bush we're gonna try to jump straight into what i believe is the culprit are you ready stay with me the pixio px277 pro is a versatile 1440p gaming monitor with fast ips technology baked in it boasts a 165hz refresh rate and one millisecond graded grade response time along with 450 nits of brightness and i need to breathe here a wide color gamut covering over 130 percent of srgb you'll also find creature comforts in the px277 pro like the integrated usb type c port you'll find for both 65 watt charging and display alt mode simultaneously the kvm feature lets you control multiple devices with just a single keyboard and mouse making switching between setups a breeze and this is all just the start there's so much to uncover with the pixel px277 pro if you're in search of an all-rounder with excellent colors and peripheral support for intense gaming look no further my friends you can learn more by clicking the link below hey there my name is greg and this is fix or flop here we attempt to fix viewer systems that are broken in and around orlando florida for free we charge zero dollars and zero cents as long as they're okay with us taking on their systems for a few days and filming these processes i can monetize these videos on sites like youtube and i don't feel like offloading any of that cost to the owners who are already gracious enough to loan us their systems for a few days now the system here is pretty straightforward you got just a regular discrete graphics card with an aio attached to the cpu that's a 120 mil it does have a push pull setup and it's actually i just realized this is a it's got he's pulling in air from the from the rear so it doesn't really make sense to me we've got three intake fans up front and i know that this case is a bit restrictive in terms of airflow but the fact that you've got three intakes up front means that you should probably switch this around to an exhaust setup that way you have a natural flow of air whereas if you have air coming in from both sides of the case it's going to have to rise and i i guess that's fine but you don't have a dust filter back here there is a dust filter up front so that's just asking for your radiator especially to get caked up over the long term so just for the sake of claiming this and hygiene overall and and we also would probably prefer to not have all this heat from the radiator get thrown into the case we're gonna switch this around later uh and that's assuming that this aio is dead which it's possible maybe even probable that it is and if it's not dead the pump's not dead then maybe it is clogged like one of our previous episodes uh the cable management of this build looks decent a few things up top i would like to clean up but otherwise it's a very balanced build amd platform looks like 16 gigs of ddr4 get a discrete graphics card down here and a wi-fi card and that looks to be about it so yeah nothing fancy going on here i like these because again they're predictable so i'm going into this one expecting one of three things to be the culprit either the aio block is improperly mounted which is possible because if you use the wrong mounting gear that can change mounting pressure which affects thermal conductivity or connectivity across the two mediums right you have thermal paste in the middle to kind of help accelerate that because metals aren't perfectly smooth but you still have to have enough mounting pressure for that thermal paste to do its job and so that's that's one of the things i've run into in the past that can cause temperatures to skyrocket the next most obvious probably is a dead pump and we can check for that very quickly and the third is a clogged loop it's one of those three things assuming his fans aren't dead which that would be to me a bit too obvious of an issue and we could very easily remedy that as well so one of those three and i mean it all comes down to really yeah i mean just running a couple tests this video honestly shouldn't take too long so with all that out of the way let's get into the troubleshooting process starting first with attempting to power this thing on you guys know the routine by this point we need to make sure that the symptom we see is the same as what is described by the owner if we're seeing something different there's some sort of mismatch there it's possible something else might have happened during transport uh or maybe we're just being lied to right i don't assume that's what's happening but you never know with folks so we always have to do that bit of due diligence up front here we go so we've got the system hooked up i'm going to connect a keyboard just so that i can hop into the bios right away again i'm expecting it to turn on uh that shouldn't be an issue according to what the owners told me okay bit of a delay there no worries and uh let's try to get into this bios wow okay i'm not sure if you can hear that and oh what what is that what is that and why are we not getting picture what's going on with that i mean we gotta signal that at one point okay we're gonna try this one more time and that sounds awful by the way coming from the radiator area it almost sounds like something is snagging one of these fans because the pump as far as i'm aware is in the block this is not one of those aios that has the uh the pump in the radiator so let's try this again i'm not going to spam delete anymore just want to see if we can get a post because again that's going to kind of that's going to kind of allow me to lock in where we're going to spend most of our time here so everything oh yeah his pump is working there's a heck of a lot of fluid moving through here oh there we go okay that that took a super long time uh temperatures that's what i want to see so cpu temps right now at 58 degrees celsius that is high for idle temps or otherwise idle temps in the bios so this is looking like yep looking like a clogged aio or an improperly seated aio block those are the two things i'm going to focus on i want to check the seating of the block first because that's something i could visually inspect through the top of the case and you can see just a few more seconds of the system being on temperatures are now at 70 degrees celsius this is abnormal if you see this again look toward your cpu cooler especially if you're running an aio it's possible you have a dead pump or a clogged pump now i know this camera angle absolutely sucks for you guys but from my vantage point i can tell the cold plate is wedged against the ihs now how firmly it's wedged i mean that's that's really the ultimate question here let's check the two screws that mount the entire block to the cpu so that's these bad boys right here there's one on top one at the bottom one thing i don't necessarily like about these am4 mounts is that there's only two screws holding the entire cold plate against the chip it'd be better obviously if you had four of these one on each corner of the socket so they get more well-rounded mounting pressure so let's check here oh wow there's a whole lot of rotation left here these have to be tightened down a lot folks again mounting pressure is crucial i'm gonna check the bottom one and okay the bottom one actually is pretty tight and just because i'm curious hop back into the bios to check cpu idle temps and we're at 60 degrees celsius things are going back up so we might have fixed uh temperature issues to a very minor extent just by again twisting that top screw because it was definitely a lot looser than it needed to be but that's clearly not the biggest issue here temps should not be this high in the bios like at all so i'm going to check the thermal paste application next and if it looks good i'm just gonna outright remove the aio because obviously i mean something's not right here speaking of there's one thing i want you to hear as well and this this has got to be one of the worst sounds i've ever heard a computer make and it comes from right here in the back of the radiator i'm not sure if it's a fan clipping or if it's just like well sounds like like yeah that it's strange it almost sounds fluid like because i mean i'm pushing on this right if there was fan clipping this little bit here if there was no tolerance you would hear the clipping again i think it's inside the radiator i think that's fluid moving finally when the pump turns on it shouldn't make that sound which tells me that there's probably something clogging it that's just that's my guess at this point right so let's check thermal paste application and it looks pretty good no complaints i take that back a bit of the uh the bottom right portion of the chip from your vantage point is missing thermal paste again i think this is because it was improperly mounted in terms of mounting pressure the top wasn't screwed down a lot so we just had a bunch of thermal paste being pushed upward which is why it's all up here but not a lot of it was pushed back down because the top wasn't as tight as the bottom so again that's why it's important to you know tighten partially then tighten partially match at the bottom match at the top and keep going that way don't over tighten just one side and call it a day and then move on to the top especially if you're not going to be tightening the top as much as the bottom so i know that sounds super complicated just just make sure that again both screws are tightened evenly and firmly this here obviously isn't optimal but again i don't expect it's the reason why temperatures are shooting up so high so fast so even if we had fixed this i think we'd still see 60 70 degree idle temps and climbing so i'm going to swap this out with an air tower cooler one from be quiet that i think will be um in my opinion personally a bit of an upgrade even though you know radiator space isn't all that different between a 120 mil and a slim tower cooler and then i'm going to take apart the aio because i think i think there's something wrong with it yikes we're also going to tackle cable management while we're at it because it's it's freaking rough back here so again we'll get the aio out we'll get the fans out and we'll swap that cooler over make sure that temps are in check we'll then uh deconstruct the aio and see if we see a similar issue that we saw with that msi io from a previous fixture flop video and then we'll fix this because i just it it needs it so let's get this thing out of here it's gonna be a tad awkward am i missing a cable oh no they was snagged all righty there we go oh and would you look at that folks that is a radiator mounted pump the pump is right in this little chamber here and that would explain why we're hearing that weird like water hammering sound it's just probably something grinding in the pump uh but it's definitely on its way out the door and it's definitely a good thing that we're replacing it now we'll be swapping this aio with something much more dependable in my opinion and that's the dark rock slim from be quiet this is an air tower cooler not too large so it's most likely to fit any normal build out there unless you have some crazy like interference from a motherboard or whatnot uh these smaller tower coolers are fairly universal and they come with very quiet fans as well for silent operation you get a beautiful black ceramic construction aluminum fin stack copper heat pipes a decent looking cold plate down at the bottom and a pretty sweet top cover as well with the be quiet logo you also get a 120 mm silent wings 3 fan with pwm support these fans are among the quietest in the business if you haven't heard one of these up close well i'm not surprised they're virtually inaudible if you're interested in picking up dark rock slim check it out via the link in this video's description so we'll get this new mounting gear situated thermal paste applied i like to do the x pattern this came out a bit a bit juicy so it's a bit more than i usually like but more is not worse we'll then get the cooler tightened down and the fan installed now at this point i just want to check that idle temps are a lot lower um that should be a telltale sign that whatever we did fix the issue i'm also expecting to not hear any grinding noises from the rear i'm going to be spamming delete so we can hop into the bios here now we've definitely got to fix the fan curves this exhaust fan is just pumping out air for really no reason uh yeah any any minute now we'll get into the bias i'm not sure why this system takes so long to post but would you look at those sweet sweet cpu temperatures 36 degrees celsius is much more tolerable motherboard temps were always fine but cpu core temps are significantly lower and they are not going up either like they were with the aio installed so uh i think whatever we did just swapping out the cooler outright fix the issue clearly now we need to turn our attention to the aio itself figure out what specifically what's causing the overheating i'm expecting again some pretty disgusting coolant or a half dead pump and see for some reason system fan one header is set to set to dc mode at 90 percent so we're going to swap that over to pwm i'm going to see if i can move this down should be a lot lower than this yet way lower let's try like 40 42 something like that and then we can watch this rpm over here this graph to the right start to fall oh yeah system is already a lot quieter and i just confirmed the boot image is on the adata ssd so not the hardest drive that's a good thing now it's time to shift our attention to this aio i'm going to start first with the pump chamber which is located in the radiator and then we'll move on to the block where i'd expect to see quite a bit of clogging in the fin stack assuming assuming that is the issue maybe it's just a dead pump who knows this thing's also kind of dirty let's see what we've got here some torx screws and just so you're aware yes i did see many of your comments asking me to refill the msi ao that had really nasty coolant in it just wanted to see if we could revive it that is definitely a possibility i was just more concerned in the moment with getting that system up and running again this here is going to cause a bit of a mess so be prepared for that if you want to emulate what you're about to see um yep that that looks a bit darker than it should i did have issues trying to get the color of this fluid on camera it doesn't have to be clear depending on the additives they include it can change the color of the coolant in the loop however i don't think it's a coincidence that this coolant and the msi coolant that was severely clogged in the earlier fixture flop video are both this nasty red color yeah this is disgusting that that's a girl and it doesn't again it's the camera's not doing it justice this stuff is like orange red um it's basically like brown liquid really gross and it also smells so there's that my table is pure white it is a very neutral white it's not warm it's not cool which is what i like about it and you can see the coolant is just a very very warm tone and there's even bits of crap just kind of littered in here looks very similar again to the msi ao so this is uh it's almost like deja vu now we're gonna focus on the block side of this aio and this is where it becomes very detrimental to the cooling potential of the cooler when you have a bunch of tiny little fins that are designed to increase surface area and optimize fluid flow to pull that heat away from the cpu when they're all clogged up by this gunk then you just ruin the efficiency of the cooler the thermal efficiency of it so uh yeah i again i'm expecting to see just a bunch of nasty crap in here you can see a lot of fluid is already starting to pour out pretty gross again and let's see we'll pull this off let's have a look oh oh this is disgusting look at that this is the camera picking up all this nasty crap do you see this stuff it is so gross and that is what kills these things that's what makes them run so hot i'm also wondering at this point if any of this build up has to do with the pump's location i i find it a bit hard to believe but at the same time and we've had two in a row now where you get this same kind of nasty build up the same kind of red brownish fluid and both pumps have been in the radiators i i don't really know what to make of that i you know it's possible it's just a coincidence we need way way more samples than what we have now but uh i mean this this shouldn't be in here you know it really shouldn't and it's concerning because this is this is really going to push folks away from aios the fact that we keep seeing this over and over and it's the exact same symptom that hasn't clearly been fixed from the factory yet these fins are clogged and yeah that is just that's almost like sludge that is disgusting there is no fluid flow through these fins when this sludge is here right now you see the problem even though the pump is working we checked that early on in this video the pump is turning just fine but it's it's it's fighting against this build up here with this here the fluid can't flow through the loop it's it's not you know it's not circulating properly and you just get just you know cpu times skyrocketing because of this crap right here no flow is no bueno so we're gonna just douse this in some ipa then i'm gonna take my sim tray removal tool and we're gonna scrape this gunk up oh this is so gross yeah you guys have seen some of the dirty pcs i've cleaned this is grossing me out way more it just looks awful after scrubbing under hot water for a good while you can see this is the result it is a lot cleaner there's no more clogging and there are a few scratches just because the copper oxidizes so you see that contrast there but to answer the question again for those wondering if this is repairable the answer is yes so long as your pump wasn't undergoing just crazy amounts of stress due to the clogging you should be able to refill this with either some kind of glycol solution or distilled water add some biocide add some corrosion inhibitors what have you and you should be good to go i'm not too concerned at this point with repairing the io and replacing it again we've already got a very reliable air tower cooler installed but i just wanted to let you know that yes this is something you could remedy again as long as your pump is okay and we confirmed that this one was we could feel the fluid churning albeit with quite a bit of resistance then this is totally correctable the problem i have is that this shouldn't be something you have to do at home especially after only maybe a year or so is worth of use i mean i would i would expect to see this after maybe four or five years of an aio running you know on and off every other day or so but this is this is a lot of build up in excess and it shouldn't be happening this quickly and the fact that this is happening from another manufacturer's aio granted a lot of these are just rebranded but still a different brand selling a similar aio with a similar problem that's that's a problem and it's one that needs to be addressed at the manufacturing level the fluid that's going in here is not good and just to recap one more time you can see a lot of this gunk didn't even make it into the channels it got stuck here in the block housing it's just all around disgusting i mean imagine if this stuff had gotten in there as well i mean to have no fluid flow at all your pump would kill itself because it'd be essentially forcing a bunch of fluid into a brick wall it doesn't know where to go so that back pressures puts a lot of strain on the pump itself and that's what can kill it prematurely so uh yeah this is it's not good the last thing on my agenda then is cable management we're gonna give this thing some tlc try to clean it up a bit even though it doesn't really affect much of anything it's just nice you know peace of mind knowing that things are clean back here in case you want to add or remove components later on so uh give me a few seconds here i'm going to snap my fingers ah that's uh that's better it's not my best work and honestly to get some of these runs to make sense i'd have to completely disassemble like everything back here and start fresh start with the smallest cables and work your way to the very thick cables like the 24 pin there but i mean it's cleaner than it was and the runs make a bit more sense so again it should be pretty straightforward adding removing stuff in the future so here we are again system works it doesn't overheat anymore so that's that's always a plus right it's not overheating it idle i imagine those temps would also translate into uh real world heavy use as well this 180 watt tdp here for the dark rock slim is i think plenty for the 3700 x unless you're doing some severe overclocking which i checked his bio settings he's not doing that so i should be fine there graphics card was fine and we cleaned up cable management behind the motherboard tray it's still just a bit shocking to me that this is the second time in what a week or two that we run into the very disgusting clogged aio situation but of course now that i know what to look out for it made this video go by much smoother this process took only like three or four hours whereas before i was trying a bunch of different things because it just didn't really make sense to me that such a new relatively speaking aio was was clogged but it almost was like a splitting image of the msi ao i don't know what's going on and i really hope that whatever whatever qc issues were happening at the time these these fluids were added to these loops um you know i hope that that stuff was remedied and that modern aio is the ones that are coming out now especially ones with like the screens and things uh don't have these issues in the short run because these are should last several years and they're designed to if they if they didn't why would anyone buy them and they might like like you know look cool for a couple months but if you're gonna you know end up toasting your cpu after a year's worth of use which should not happen in the first place why wouldn't you just buy an air cooler so we'll be keeping our eye open for this if you or someone you know has had the same exact symptom as this viewer here where the cpu is just super hot at idle but you can feel the fluid is churning in the fluid in the uh the the tubing and you've checked that you've properly mounted the block it's very likely that your aio is clogged and i want to get a hold of it if uh if that's something that that you're open to i would totally pay for shipping and i would just disassemble it here on the channel and try to get a good list of of what aios are doing this document the color of the fluid the type of build of how nasty it was given its age etc i'd like to just put together a little catalog for that and maybe give it out to the vendors to the manufacturers moving forward to ensure this stuff doesn't happen again because it shouldn't and it's um it's just a shame because i don't want people to be afraid of aios i mean obviously there are a few extra failure points that these tower coolers steel tower coolers don't experience that said they are still plenty viable they look really cool and they can keep your cpu nice and nice and chill so we'll see but for now another one bites the dust now with that and tying onto what i said earlier if you or someone you know has a broken system in general doesn't have to be one that overheats but just one that maybe doesn't turn on or doesn't post or you just have a black screen where you should be having a picture out be sure to send me an email if you live in and around orlando florida i would love to take a look at your system and attempt to fix it for free and create a video like this for us all to uh to learn from and to be maybe kind of sort of entertained by if you want to see more videos like this in the future give this one a thumbs up that would be appreciated consider subscribing if you haven't already what are you doing if you're not subscribed smash that red button and click the bell notification icon to get notified when videos like these go live and leave a comment down below let me know what you think about this uh this mishap here and if you've at all experienced this with your aio my name is greg thanks for fixing a system with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 344,505

Keywords: fix or flop, viewer pc, broken gaming pc, broken pc, clogged aio, fix or flop season 2, how to fix a pc, gaming pc, broken computer, Broken cpu, how to troubleshoot, pc no post, dead pc, computer cleaning, cpu, cpu overheating, pc gaming, cpu temperature monitor, pc overheats, computer, tech, fix or flop season 1, pc doesnt turn on, computer runs hot, how to build a pc, aio, how to, how to troubleshoot a pc, no post, pc wont post, Pc doesnt boot

Id: 0RvIsMAhz14

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2022