ThanksGiving: the perfect time for PC to die...

what can i say? Get Well NeverMore (see sig)

backstory:
the Helm's Deep expansion for Lord of the Rings Online launched this week, and after DLing and starting the game, every few hours the game would crash, citing dtdll.dll (i have no idea what this dlll is even associated with, several of my gamer friends are in the IT support industry, and have never heard of it.) as the cause of the crash. i figure no biggie, google told me i might have to reinstall the game, or at worst case, the OS.

yesterday, saturday nov. 23, 2013, Guild Wars 2 informs me of an overheat alarm and needs to close. so i reopen HWmonitor to find a CPU temp of 107 C. (??!?!?!?!?) and the PC turns itself off. i checked all my water levels and looked for signs of leaks and sure enough, there were no leaks and water levels were fine. i booted into BIOS, shut off the OC, and temps were showing 40C in the BIOS. then windows hang at the "starting windows" screen.

google said it could be anything, (used the backup PC, Earth) so i thought i'd start by repairing windows. well, windows setup also hanged for hours before it could give me any menus (and never gave me any menus.) better remove RAM sticks and try one at a time. well, either all 4 of my RAM sticks went bad at the same time, or my motherboard died. each of the RAM sticks wouldn't even start windows either. and trying the third stick of RAM, wouldn't even POST. so i retried each stick of RAM in the #1 DIMM slot again, and again, not even POST. just a loop of lights coming on, then a few seconds later the MOBO shut off, then turned back on, then off, then on, etc...

i cleared the CMOS next, and powered her on. endless on/off loop. yay.

/sigh /cry /heartbroken

next three days is gonna be some heavy hauling in the 18-wheeler, so no time to do anything else until ThanksGiving, and well, does MSI customer support work on the holidays? (you don't need to answer, i'll find out myself.) RMA's are fun.

of course, during the complete tear-down next weekend, i may find some other answer, but until then, it's a good thing Earth is still my backup... /whew

and we thank you for your emotional support during these trying times. there is plenty of bacon in the frying pan, help yourselves to it.

Not to point to the obvious, but did you make sure your pump was in fact running and circulating coolant as expected? The symptoms you describe sure sound like what would happen with a pump failure.

I did forget to mention that I listened for the hum of the pump, and also visually checked for water agitation in the reservior, and both were present. But I will check again over the holiday weekend. I have been assured by my IT professional friends that the motherboard is supposed to post even if there's nothing but the power supply plugged into it. I really think I bricked both the main and backup BIOS on the board. And i can't seem to UNbrick either, even with clearing the CMOS. I guess I should try the 3rd BIOS included on the chip. I totally forgot about that feature.

If worse gets to absolute worst... i'll use it as an excuse to just build another rig... /facepalm

Your IT friends misled you. Most (all?) Motherboards will not post if cpu or ram or video is dead. 107℃ on the cpu sounds like a failed pump or a clogged loop, and unless you tried to flash the motherboard bios during this time of instability, you almost certainly didn't brick its bios. First thing I would do is pull it out of the case and slap on the stock cooler to test.

/sigh... i'm puttin it off til the weekend... just so i can build up the anticipation of possibly seeing a burnt up 3930k. I'll have to fry up some bacon and take snapshots. Wait a second. Am i supposed to be this hysterically excited to burn up a hex core? Or is my 50th annoversary Doctor Who excitement getting the better of me again?

Well, for what its worth, my quad core sandy bridge has run with no pump till it overheated and blackscreened then cycled through a fail to post and reboot for hours before and lived to tell the tale. I just had a loose Molex pin in my pump plug.

/threadnecro

i know i aint really been active lately... i blame my lack of time on my love for truck driving. finally ordered my new parts... 4930k, Rampage IV Black Edition, and Noctua D14 cooler. /sigh. yeah i know. air cooling. why?

because the water bug got me so bad, that to continue w/c, i would want a caselabs h10, a pedestal, at least a 140.4 rad to go in that pedestal, and a MCP35x at the bottom of the loop pushing through the 140.4, another one on the CPU block for redundancy, possibly a 3rd for another 140.4 so i could criss-cross the pump>rad>pump>rad for looks, and then a pair of waterblocked titans or K|NGP|N's... that would only set me back about 4 grand. so i'll wait for now. my pair of GTX 670s can still run 2560x1600 just fine on all the games i play.

and i should still get 4GHz on air without it getting too hot. if only i could keep my GPUs cool enough to keep o/c'd...

and yes, i know i need to rework the case fans a little now, too... maybe i'll post some picks, but i'm still a little shamed that i burnt out the 3930k