Things got a little heated last night

novicegeek

Member
Greetings all,

I was working on a rebuild, after a power surge from lightning killed my precious motherboard. You know what that means. Right. Time for an upgrade. So, in the process of rebuilding (Intel Core i7 9700K, Gigabyte Z390 Arorus Pro MB, Crucial Ballistix RGB RAM, & Cooler Master i71C CPU cooler), I turned my computer on to see all the pretty lights on the motherboard, RAM, and fans, and to make sure things were working thus far. But here is where I made my dumb mistake. Previously, I had unplugged the CPU fan from the motherboard and attached it to a fan controller; however, the fan controller was not powered up. Didn't think a thing about it, since I had the fan on prior to this. Then, in a moment of distraction, I got something out of the garage for my wife. When I came back, I immediately noticed that though the LED lights were working on the CPU fan, the blades were not spinning. In a panic, I shut the thing down with the power button (SSDs not attached yet). I felt around the heat sink and noticed it was somewhat warm to the touch.

I had left it in this state unattended for maybe five minutes. As there were no hard drives attached, I'm not sure what activity might have been going on with the CPU. So, the question lingers in my mind...

Any chance that I've done some damage to the CPU?

Thanks.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
It should be alright, those will even throttle without a HSF attached to avoid damage. It also wasn't scaldingly hot, I think you should be fine.

Sitting in BIOS is generally an idle state anyway.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Generally, if it got too hot, the system would shut off. So would think you are ok at this point.
 
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