[SOLVED] Booting a system with no CPU/GPU cooling

[therealcrash8]

I'm building a new water-cooled system with the Asus Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial motherboard, Intel i9-12900K processor, and EVGA RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra Hydro Copper GPU. This motherboard has space for 5 M.2 hard drives, with one slot that is under the massive monoblock that covers about half the motherboard. You don't HAVE to use that slot, but any drive installed in that slot will have the benefit of being cooled by the monoblock. Once that monoblock is installed, and especially after my loop is built, it will be extremely difficult to remove the drive if there are any problems. As such, I'd like to be able to at least boot up into the BIOS to make sure my system is recognizing my hard drives before proceeding. Obviously if I do that, neither the CPU nor GPU will be cooled at all. My question is how long can I realistically expect to be able to run my system without any kind of cooling before damaging the CPU or GPU?

 

[hotaru.hino]

My question is how long can I realistically expect to be able to run my system without any kind of cooling before damaging the CPU or GPU?

Not long enough to verify anything in the system is working.

 

[DSzymborski]

No seconds.

If you're that worried about getting into BIOS and confirming the drives work ahead of time, then buy a cheapo $20 CPU cooler and mount it on the motherboard, and test outside the case. If you're not worried enough to get a $20 cooler, then you're not really that worried enough to try.

And you don't need a GPU to reach BIOS. Your CPU has integrated graphics.

 

[Zerk2012]

No don't do that. As above buy a hyper 212 or something, remove the video card and use the built in graphics if you must see.

 

[therealcrash8]

If you're not worried enough to get a $20 cooler, then you're not really that worried enough to try.

Good point 🙂

 

[helper800]

Good point 🙂

You don't even need a new cooler, any old cooler including intel stock coolers of the past will do fine. Just clean the TIM off the heatsink and hold it in place on the IHS while checking. That should give you enough time to check everything you need to.