As I was writing and making preparations for tomorrow's slate of tasks and meetings this late afternoon, my PC - a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 2500 system - became unresponsive.
I rebooted and got this error message in BIOS - CPU Temperature Error. I went into BIOS and discovered the bar was RED. Shit.
I quickly turned it off and then went to bed.
After that, I opened the casing and wiped away a few years worth of dust and dirt. I rebooted the system and checked BIOS. The temp was steadily increasing beyond 55 degrees Celsius.
I know now that the limit would be 65 degrees, making allowances for Malaysia's hot temperature and high humidity.
I made some phone calls and had a possible diagnosis - the fan wasn't spinning fast enough anymore, or some material at its copper whatever is fucked.
So I took out the fan, rushed to Digital Mall PJ to buy a new fan, and then rushed back home. The whole trip and buying session took 30 minutes or less. All the while, I was yelling "Sandyyyy! Sandyyyyy!" like a character from a rom-com movie.
I replaced the fan and then saw the temperature hovering at a stable 51 degrees. Phew.
I love my PCs. They have served me better than any human.
All started in the early '90s with my brother's 486 machine.In 1996, my father bought a Pentium-S PC. It was the first Pentium 100MHz chip, overclocked to 133MHz. Hence, Pentium-S.
My own PC was a Pentium III machine. 833MHz, with 128MB RAM. Then moved to AMD dual-core. The AMD machine gave me loads of problems. Then I made the switch to Sandy Bridge and so far have been extremely satisfied with the performance of the hardware as well as Windows 7.
The fuck am doing? I need to go and finish that novel.
