Question Did i fry my cpu and gpu

[lingarajug]

Long story, i own asus rog vi apex mobo, 7900x cpu, zotac 2080ti amp, evga 1600w psu, 32gb ram, so i removed stock ilm, installed der8auer direct x frame, setup watercooling, didnt run it though, thought to see if pc boots and as i feared it didnt and on cpu removal found few socket pins bent, painfully bent them back and re did setup and it posted with q code 53, installed memory again and finally pc posted, still waterloop not running, i started to smell plastic melting and while in bios pc started to throttle and i was not sure what it was and in monitor settings cpu temp was 99c and i immediatly turned off pc in less than 10 seconds of noticing throttling and gpu was also hot, so ran waterloop for 5 minutes in testing to cool down and the vrm block leaked really bad and water all around socket, refixed it and its good now after an hour of loop testing, did turn PC on again after loop testing as i was exhausted by then, what i am worried about is if my cpu and gpu fried, after all this i just plan to buy same new mobo as a lot happend to it today but not sure if my cpu is also damaged, any advice appreciated.

 

[DavidM012]

You shouldn't activate the pc without the cooler in full operation. And you shouldn't switch on the pc without having tested your wc loop for leaks.

Not straightforward because ideally you'd need a 2nd power supply & some sort of molex to pwm power lead converter or hub to plug in the pump to test it.

I avoided all the issues of a built into the case custom loop with my design of custom loop which is a 12v dc pump on a seperate dc psu, in a reservoir (aka bucket of water) connected by 1.5m of tubing to the cpu block and radiator which is dangling from underneath a cupboard held up by string and hooks, in other words, my pump and reservoir are situated outside the pc case, and I tested the entire assembly for leaks, for a week in a sink, prior to installing the cpu block on the cpu. My radiator is not a standard pc water cooling radiator. It's a motor transmission cooler.

So you might have got some drips from the vrm water block that caused a short, before the major leak, but nothing seemed to go flash or bang, but components can also die slowly after being shorted rather than instantly.

Pins bent in socket, plastic burning smell well the cpu certainly warmed up without the cooler being operational, the only way to find out if things are still working is to dry out the system, thoroughly so that means, disassemble the pc, take out the board, inspect for moisture, let it rest for 12 hours, and make really sure the water loop is water tight, and test it by switching it on from a different psu and having the pump plugged into a pwm hub powered off the 2nd power supply, so that no power is going through the PC power supply & motherboard while you are testing it, you should test the loop for leaks separately with the pc totally powered off.

Might all have been a near miss but I haven't seen anything that definitively says anything fried, the burny plastic smell is like ozone

Ozone has a distinctive smell that humans can detect even in small concentrations — as few as 10 parts per billion. Here are some of the ways the smell of ozone is described: Metallic. Like a burning wire.

That could be simply because when the cpu warmed up the socket some volatile chemical compounds evaporated from the material of the printed circuit board that is the mobo but nothing necessarily 'melted'. Ozone has a strong odor. You should however inspect the board for anything that looks burned in the cpu socket / vrm area. Can't say for sure either way but it would have been preferable not to overheat the cpu.

Just be careful when you reassemble the system and test the water loop with the pc components powered off, in future. You will need to buy that separate molex to pwm hub or lead so you can power the pump from a second psu, situated outside the case not near where water can spill, standing on some books so that any water spills don't run over the table into it, you get the idea, don't power the pc until the leaks are definitively not leaking and won't ever leak. You can switch on the 2nd psu with a paper clip which is inserted into 1) the green wire and 2) an adjacent black wire, or else, you can get some sort of plug thingy or micro switch to simulate an 'on button'. For example.

You could also for example, use some pvc pipe glue where you connect the pipe to the compression couplers, which is one more layer of drip prevention, though nobody really does that with their compression couplers, but doesn't mean that you couldn't if it was worrying you. Glue isn't all that convenient for couplers that will some day be undone anyway that's something optional but not strictly necessary. Tubing of the correct size in the same size couplers will not drip, tubing mismatched to the coupler size leaks.

Some varieties of compression coupler can leak, such as elbow couplers in this video. The main point to stress again, 'test for leaks separately from the pc, don't turn on the water cooling loop and the pc at the same time, the first time, and well read around for any issues known to affect the hardware you're using. Not many people would've guessed the join in the elbow coupler would leak with a bit of lateral pressure. Be totally careful.

 

[lingarajug]

Thank you for the thoughtful answer but lemme clarify a bit, first of all when i booted pc to make sure it boots or posts there was no water running at all and loop was off totally, finally after the post i got that overheating smell and cpu and socket and waterblock felt hot to touch and so was gpu and i turned off from the wall plug within 10 seconds of noticing smell, and i then ran waterloop with mobo 24pin cable and pin installed to turn on psu and no other connections to pc were present except for the pump directly off the psu so no electrical short of any sort happened, redid the whole loop and leak tested for 3 hours now and no leaks but since the first leak that spread like a wave around the whole socket and remember there was no power to mobo just the pump i cleaned with paper towels as much i could and let warm air blow onto sorrounding areas while leak testing to dry out, my only concern was if the cpu and gpu got fried in the process as both the waterblocks were warm to hot to touch and whole pc turned off within 10 seconds of throttling noticed while in bios, thank you.

 

[DavidM012]

The system is likely ok that ozone smell can come off warm electronics and, since you did actually have the mobo powered off at the time of the leak, it couldn't have shorted, but you need to be really sure that there is no residual moisture anywhere from the initial leak, before powering the system back on.

Modern cpu's without any cooler attached, or a non-pumping water block attached, tend to have thermal safeguards and switch off at a certain temperature, but it's not ideal to cause that to happen. My pc won't even stay on for 10 seconds without a cooler on the cpu, it switches off automatically very quickly if the cooler isn't attached or working properly, however mine's an amd cpu, intel cpu's can reach higher temperatures before switching off.

Just make absolutely sure everything is dry before switching the board back on. 3 hours isn't really all that long for a loop that is going to run for years on end. Like in Jayz Two Cents, unforseen problems can occur after months or years when all seemed fine.

My radiator was perfect for 3 years 'til one day there was a drip from one of the hose clamps I'm using on it, why'd it happen, because over time, materials degrade, and a drip developed. So I glued up every single join to make it totally water tight as well as clamping the tubes, but anyway that isn't so relevant because it's not standard pc cooling parts and materials, but, things can look ok when they may not be.

At least run the water loop for 24 or 48 hours, but even that is by no means a comprehensive test, and it's always possible to make a mistake and forget to screw in a cap on the reservoir or gpu block or something.

If you don't feel comfortable with the tribulations of custom water cooling, and the risks, you'd certainly be best advised to switch to an all in one closed loop cooler with a 360mm or 420mm radiator. All the systems have their drawbacks, pumps can also fail in the aio which necessitates the entire unit is replaced, where the custom loop is modular and the parts are individually replaceable.

But hassle wise the closed loop aio is less likely to leak on you. There is also a semi modular aio that lets you add a gpu block and another radiator, have to look it up.

The noctua nh-d15 should work with your cpu if you don't plan to overclock, and decide to stick to an air cooler, according to this thread.

The whole thing is really about, what's economical and the answer is, whatever doesn't break down and fry the system! There is obviously some additional risk attached to overclocking your model of cpu with water cooling.

 

[lingarajug]

Finally after clean up and setting up waterloop after unbending could socket pins and installing direct x die frame with ek velocity block thankfully system is fully backup and running, it was great learning experience for me to not overtighten stuff inside of especially components, now to bleed the loop.