Unfiltered Story #109665

(It’s the middle of December, and I’m working in my cousin’s computer shop doing some repairs. It’s been a relatively easy day for me – a couple of HDD wipes, a replacement optical drive, changing over an old laptop’s OS. Then, a guy in his late 20’s walks in carrying a brand new tower from a serious computer gaming rig – complete with partially external water cooler – and complaining about his PC rapidly overheating to the point where it crashed and wouldn’t start back up. Slightly unusual, but it’s summer and the temperatures can get up into the mid-40’s here. It happens. I start out by checking the intake fans.)
Me: OK, your intake fans aren’t the problem. You might want to give the filters a clean, but it’s nothing serious. You mind if I open this thing up?
Customer: Go ahead.
(I take the walls off the case, and at a glance the cause of the problem becomes glaringly obvious. The fancy water cooler, which would normally act as the CPU’s heat sink, isn’t stuck in directly above it. It’s all wired correctly, but somehow the water cooler isn’t attached to the CPU.)
Me: Um, I think I see the problem. There’s no heat sink on the CPU.
Customer: But I don’t need one. I’ve got the water cooler there instead.
Me: That water cooler is the CPU’s heat sink. It connects to it just like a fan heat sink would. How did you manage to wire all this, but not attach the water cooler properly?
Customer: (stunned) I… I don’t know. Can you fix it?
Me: I can, but it won’t be cheap. At the very least, this thing I gonna need a new CPU, probably a new motherboard, and I’ll have to test the other components in here to make sure you haven’t fried them as well.
(Upon hearing this, the customer lets out a deep sigh of resignation)
Customer: Shit. How long until you can have it up and running again?
Me: A few days, hopefully. Longer if the graphics card is busted – I’ll have to order that in from Sydney. Everything else is pretty easy to get, though.
Customer: Fine. Do what you have to, let me know when it’s ready for pickup.
(I take down his information, then after he leaves, start testing the components in his PC. The CPU and motherboard had to be replaced, but luckily for him, everything else was in working order. Four days later, I called him up to come pick up his PC – with the water cooler properly installed as the CPU’s heat sink. I still have no idea how someone could wire it correctly, but mess that up.)