There I was, working away on my computer, Predator 2, the one I'm on right now, and it suddenly turned off. I thought there might have been a brief power outage, so I powered it back on. Thirty seconds later it turned off again, then again, and again. After opening up the case to look for a mechanical problem such as a dead cooling fan, I discovered the heat sink/fan bracket for one of my CPUs had snapped, allowing the heat sink and fan unit to come away from the CPU. I was able to lay the computer on its side then pressed the heat sink against the CPU. The thermal grease between the CPU and heat sink held. I was able to power up the computer and everything was working fine, except that if I stand the computer back up into its vertical position, the bond won't hold- the heat sink will come away and the computer will power down. my computer is thirteen or fourteen years old. I can't find a replacement bracket for it. Today I'm going to build a new bracket in my other computer, Predator 3, then 3D print it. I hope this works. I built Predator 2 as a server with two dual core processes. In it's day it was a very powerful computer. Today, it still runs most newer software but, by today's standards, it's abilities are only average. Still, it's a great computer capable of running 4K video, editing, sound processing and the rest, but it's not a computer powerful enough to render advanced CGI renderings. I'm going to power down now to remove the damaged bracket so I can begin building a new one. I'll post pictures later.
computer-related Gotta fix it
- Thread starter James Rogers
- Start date
Well, Predator 2 is up and running again. I did take some pictures, but there really isn't anything interesting to show. Once I got the bracket out, I saw that all I really had to do was re-attach the small broken part, the clip arm, then make a doubler out of steel to sit on top of the repaired area. The screw that holds the bracket to the motherboard also goes through the doubler. What I ended up with is a repaired piece of plastic that would surely break again under stress, but the doubler, since it's right above the damaged clip arm, bears the load of the heat sink clip. Even if the clip arm breaks free, it won't go anywhere and the doubler will still be carrying the load. Also, while I was working, I saw that one of the clip arms on the other CPU was also broken!! So, I made another doubler and fixed both heat sink brackets at the same time. All told, the repair cost about $1.00 plus 3 hours of my time.
Glad you got it fixed! I feel your pain. I built my computer back in May, bought one of the biggest coolers I could find (Noctua D15) and I still get overheating when rendering at maximum speed in Resolve. I have to render at 50% speed in order to prevent it from overheating.
Thanks, Chris.
Yeah, render power continues to be an issue for all of us Indie guys. I was watching Prometheus again (don't ask me why), but all I could think was, " Predator 3 would probably take 2 days to render a single frame from some of those shots. That's why I mostly concentrate on creatures and things that can be comp'ed into a live shot. Backgrounds lit properly take forever, but objects and creatures don't..
Yeah, render power continues to be an issue for all of us Indie guys. I was watching Prometheus again (don't ask me why), but all I could think was, " Predator 3 would probably take 2 days to render a single frame from some of those shots. That's why I mostly concentrate on creatures and things that can be comp'ed into a live shot. Backgrounds lit properly take forever, but objects and creatures don't..