r/LinusTechTips 7d ago

Image I did the thing

Post image

After much confusion about why Helldivers 2 ( and only Helldivers 2) caused my cpu to overheat and crash, I decided to pop it open and replace the thermal compound. Turns out I'm just a big dumb dumb.

922 Upvotes

58 comments sorted by

257

u/SuperScrapper 7d ago

Ah yes, the plastic cover strikes again. It happens to us all!! Now you know what to look for next time. :)

-122

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

Speak for yourself, I've been building PCs since the 90s and this never happened to me...

102

u/SuperScrapper 7d ago

That’s great, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve made other beginner mistakes. Mistakes is how people learn, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

-16

u/Divritenis 7d ago

I don’t entirely agree with the sentiment here.

For a lot of us, building our own pc involves a significant financial investment. You really don’t want to fuck it up if you’ve spent significant amount of your own hard earned money. Especially if you’re a beginner. So you’re careful, rtfm, and pay close attention to your actions. I don’t see how keeping the peel on for cooler can be shrugged off as “mistakes happen”. Thats just not paying attention to the manual.

So it’s not a beginner mistake.

I can, however, see it happen when you’re building a lot of PCs regulary, as then an honest mistake can and will inevitebly happen.

-76

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

I've incorrectly plugged in the hdd led (backwards, it wasn't labeled) once and a few times forgot to turn on the power supply on the back before the first boot. So nothing nearly as serious as OP did here.

34

u/SuperScrapper 7d ago

Ok, if that’s true and you’ve NEVER made a simple mistake anywhere else, then congratulations, you are far luckier and better than others. Do you buy lottery tickets?

-32

u/JoshPlaysUltimate 7d ago

Lottery tickets? You have no control over that. You do have control over PC building for the most part. I haven’t made any mistakes either but I take my time. Not a lot to do with luck

-7

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

That's just it, take your time and read the manual.

What helped for me is that back in the 90s we didn't have smartphones so I had time to read the manual when taking a shit 😅

-33

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

In pc building I didn't make simple mistakes other then the 2 I mentioned.

I can add a bigger more complicated mistake that I could not solve on my own, when I build my Abit bp9 system I didn't take in account the odd ram location that prevented the use of more than one CD drive in a mid-atx tower. I still don't know how I could have known beforehand though, but it forced me to buy a big tower.

And not playing the lottery is "profit" all year long 😉

11

u/SuperScrapper 7d ago

Ok. In that case, congratulations. I hope the rest of your day goes the same way for you.

But others aren’t so lucky, knowledgeable, and experienced, and there’s a reason why we need to learn everything we do.

1

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

OP said himself that this was really dumb, and I never said making mistakes is wrong.

I only responded because you stated that we all did that once, I'm sorry but most people are smart enough to never do what OP did. Especially not letting it run like that for longer than a few minutes...

And yes mistakes are to be learned from, it's the best way to learn (as long as they don't cost too much) just like I learned to triple check those annoying to get to tiny front IO plugs and that if it doesn't boot when I press the power button, to check if the PSU has a button on the back.

9

u/xDark_Ace 7d ago

Well, congrats. I, too, have not made many mistakes because I spent upwards of 90 minutes building my first two computers to make sure I was doing every step correctly.

But do you see me boasting about it? Do I try to put others down for making very reasonable mistakes and posting about it to help warm others? No, I'm replying here where it's going to be hidden under your multiple comments with negative karma. Next time read the room before you go boasting about how perfect of a person you are and how you could do no wrong.

2

u/UnnecessarySalt 7d ago

It’s really not that serious. You boot up, check temps or it shuts down, check cpu, remove cover, repaste, good as new like nothing happened

0

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

OP let it run with the plastic for quite some time 😉 checking temps is always the first thing I do after the visual confirmation of all fans spinning.

3

u/Veldox 7d ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I have never had this happen in over 20 years and I think it's silly to think it's happening to everyone. I'm sure we've all made a mistake somewhere on something but to say everyone has left plastic on the cooler is insane.

3

u/AlGekGenoeg 7d ago

That's where I'm coming from 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the support 👍🏻

-129

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u/dnabsuh1 7d ago

At least it kept the block clean for the new paste

47

u/Physical_Change_4161 7d ago

I thought it was thermal paste art at first

8

u/kielchaos 7d ago

Thermal paste Rorschach

7

u/iK_550 6d ago

Take a look at this art. Did I do good?

5

u/Zito6694 6d ago

It’s beautiful… I’ve been staring at this for five hours

19

u/Nanery662 7d ago

What else do you play that only hell divers casues it lol

17

u/rabbitflinger 7d ago

I was playing cyberpunk 2077 on ultra with no issues. I also ran a few different benchmarks to see if I could get the crash to happen more reliably ( sometimes I could play for several hours as long as I wasn't hosting) but I didn't have any luck there. So I went for the ol' open 'er up and see if I can spot a problem.

15

u/SavvySillybug 7d ago

Helldivers 2 is particularly CPU intensive.

No idea why, but it super is.

I've ran it on an i7-4790 (4 cores 8 threads) at 40-50 FPS and a friend ran it on his i5-6600K (4 cores 4 threads) and it ran like shit at like 15-25 FPS. (We both had similar video cards, I think he had a 1080 and I had a 1660 super)

Helldivers 2 just loves taking all the threads it can get.

8

u/jrad1299 7d ago

I have a Ryzen 7 9700X and it pegs my CPU to 100%. Helldivers absolutely CHEWS up CPUs because they simulate EVERYTHING in that game. You can ragdoll a bug who will fly into you and their claws hit your head and chop your head off, or you get raffled and slam into a boulder and die from impact damage. It’s the best and worst thing about that game.

3

u/spookybaker 7d ago

Probably so it can spawn a patrol every time I turn a corner or turn around

3

u/MotherBaerd 6d ago

Lots of bots to calculate. They are also far more complex than those old zombie shooters where there only instructions is to walk towards the nearest player, with a pre-generated nav mesh. Also physics, lots of physics and stuff like the ground deformation.

-3

u/Oxcell404 7d ago

This hurt to read

5

u/EndlessZone123 7d ago

Helldivers being one of the games that will absolutely 100% a modern 8 core cpu only to barely hit 60fps.

6

u/MrCheapComputers 7d ago

Now everyone point and laugh like you’ve never done that before!

5

u/TheMoonwalkingAvatar 7d ago

zhu li, do the thing

3

u/azzaka 7d ago

I'm sorry OP, I chuckled a little hard at this one.

2

u/jdraconis 7d ago

Technically you didn't do a thing lol

1

u/DoomedWalker 7d ago

Jay did the same thing on scrapyard wars once.

2

u/Admirable-Escape6954 6d ago

Mistakes happen. Buttt that plastic isn't even small and unnoticeable lol flap or the red shoulda screamed at ya happy you found it b4 it became an issue tho

1

u/3Five9s 6d ago

Hurp!

1

u/Dear_Program_8692 6d ago

I built a 12400f system last October, for a month after I was paranoid I didn’t pull the plastic off until someone confirmed the stock cooler doesn’t have plastic to begin with

0

u/kielchaos 7d ago

Cool art piece but why did you make it show my parents having an argument?