We had a power failure today at our house while I was at work. When I got home I restarted my web server and it ran for about a minute then shut itself off. I tried this a second time, and enjoyed a repeat performance.
I’m a bright boy. I quickly concluded “something is wrong”. Off came my server’s side cover, and I powered on again…this time, I could see that the fan on one of my two CPUs was spinning anemically- I could almost still read the writing on its center label. Sure enough, the heat sink on the CPU was a bajillion degrees, while its partner was just pleasantly warm.
You’d think that, with all the computers I’ve rebuilt in my house, finding a CPU fan would be easy. No such luck- I eventually canibalized the CPU fan from an old Pentium III- its the wrong size, but its amazing what you can do with a few pieces of miscellaneous plastic. I also activated CPU throttling via the system’s BIOS.
With luck, this will last until tomorrow when I can go and buy a couple of new CPU fans. Hopefully the overheating didn’t do too much damage…