[SOLVED] My CPU has a liquid cooler and has been working for over 3 years until the last couple of days

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Jun 3, 2020
17
0
10
Hey so my liquid cooler was cooling my CPU fine for the last 3 years until the last couple of days where my CPU randomly started overheating like crazy (reaching temps like 100 degrees celsius as soon as it starts up (within 30 seconds). I have cleaned and reapplied thermal paste, tried disassembling and reassembling my CPU and cleaned oyut all unneccessary programs from it. Furthermore, recently my CPU no longer boots up when I insert my second stick of RAM. I used to run on 16 GB of RAM but ever since I had this issue, the CPU won't boot up when I insert both sticks of RAM in (I've tried all the combinations of slots inthe memory bank of my motherboard and I've tried each stick individually and they both work individually). What happens is it will boot up for 15-30 seconds then turn off then reboot again and be stuck in a continuous loop when I insert both sticks of RAM in.
SPECS: i7 7700 K
1060 Nvidia graphics card
H60 Liquid Cooler Corsair
Gigabyte Z270 Ultra Gaming motherboard
 
Solution
Piece on the cpu is the pump head with an AIO. The actual heatsink (as in heat -SINK) is the radiator, same as any aircooler.

Aircoolers don't make noise, neither do aios realistically unless you get a lousy pump. What actually makes all the noise is the FANS, so you are just as likely to get a loud aircooler or a silent AIO. My nzxt Kraken X61 ran silent at 6-700rpm, my newer Cryorig R1 Ultimate is a noisy beast that doesn't get the same temps as the X61, and is audibly over 2x as loud at the same rpm, but gets much louder with a heavier than gaming load.

That fallacy bs about noise was started as a comparison between the Noctua NH-D14 and the Corsair H100 which at the time were the best cooling options but had vastly different fans...
It's possible the overheating of the CPU damaged the memory controller, thus the ram not working. But unless you ran it hot for an extended period, it seems unlikely.

It's also possible that if you removed the cpu and put it back, you bent a pin.

Once you replace the cooler I would recommend doing a memtest if the ram issue persists.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phaaze88
Jun 3, 2020
17
0
10
QUick question (as I am out of thermal paste and looking to buy some atm just so I can test). Does the brand of thermal paste matter THAT much? and if so which brands of paste are better/worse?
 
Jun 3, 2020
17
0
10
It is kinda strange to me... that it was working copmletely fine up until a couple days ago before completely giving way. You would think a clog would be more gradual increases in temperature
 

TRENDING THREADS