Note on the 2nd thing not to do: After turning off the power supply or unplugging it, it can also be a good idea to press the power button on the case/motherboard to discharge any residual power that may still be present.
Some computers retain a lot of power, some....not so much. I've had one computer I was working on retain enough power to actually turn on for about half a second.
@@gamechaser002 Mine does that :D Powers the fans for almost a second while holding the button - kinda like watching it get starved for breath... :( (Super Flower Leadex II Gold 1200W)
You are not wrong. When I turn off my psu, and then hit the main power, I see LED’s light up as well as all fans spin for a brief second until all power is discharged. I do that anytime I work on my PC. Better safe then sorry, especially when the GPU itself costs a ton of cash!!
1. Don't interchange PSU modular cables 2. Don't plug/unplug components with the PSU powered on. Switch it off at the back or unplug from the wall. 3. Don't vape or smoke near a computer. 4. Don't put your PC or other heat generating electronics in a cabinet. It will overheat. 5. Don't run a water-cooled PC unattended.
For the first point I was a little confused, because a lot of people are rocking these very popular Lian Li Strimer cables. I wonder if that could be an issue.
I'm building my first complete new system since 2010 soon, so this is a great refresher for me lol. I've built every PC I ever owned since '95 and used to work in a local PC store. This is great advice about the PSU and it's also good to point out that leaving the IEC power lead in is a great way to keep the system grounded as well.
Always press the power button a couple of times after you unplug it to drain out the capacitors. Also, you can tell if you have juice flowing by checking the network light if it's plugged in both ends. (Thanks Joe!)
Especially since we are all running bigger wattage PSUs cause of today's power-hungry components. 15 years ago a 550watt was considered overkill for 2 sli gpus . Gtx 4090 sounds like 1200watts will be recommended. Mise well just future proof yourself and get a evga t2 1600 watt for your 6090 in 2026
Here's a fun one. Don't overtighten your cpu blocks. Don't have blind faith in the springs to moderate the pressure. You can still bow your motherboard, and crack traces
It looks like my ekwb classic CPU block did me dirty on my msi z590i unify board. It'll randomly start throwing cpu errors via bios diagnostic lights, and not even show bios. Only 'fix' is to reseat CPU, and that's temporary
Another good tip is to power cycle after unplugging, before removing or installing components. Even if you unplug the power, there's still power for a brief time and if you just start pulling stuff out or install something... same thing can happen. And I've worked on smoker's/vaper's computers... yes, they both get a thick coating over time that insulates the crap out of everything and slows fans and eventually will stop them up. One of the worst things you can do around any electronic or mechanical device, especially if it's sucking in air for active cooling.
I'm a smoker ( for my sins) I clean and wipe down my pc with ipa once a fortnight give it a good blow out with an air duster ,and deep clean it once every three months. so far I've avoided any nasty tarry residue. ( with a predominately white build it needs to be done :)
@@grumpyratt2163 I used to smoke, now i vape. I used to smoke a pack a day, but it never really affected my pcs. A couple of years ago a bought a used computer, and OMG this guy must have smoked 3-4 packs a day. Everything was COVERED in nicotine and smelled horrible. I litteraly pullede everything apart and washed every components multiple times. It took about 4 days, but finally the smell went away
Thanks for another great video Jay. I love the advice about vaping. An old engineer told me that back in the 80's, computer pros were accustomed to the "no smoking in the computer room" rule. This was from the previous experience of smoke tar actually slowing down connections and causing irreversible bugs. Not really an issue today, but defintely telling.
As both a journeyman electrician, and an electrical engineer, I can confidently suggest disconnecting all voltage sources when making or breaking any form of electrical connections, regardless of system. Changing the resistance of a connection while current flows is a good way to see the "arc'y sparkies" and let the magic smoke out.
A tip which cost me 6 months to find. When installing the video card make sure all power supply pins into the card made a klik. I was afraid to break the socket but didn't realize the smallest part wasn't totally in the socket. So i had 4 crashes last week and just by accident I found the problem. Even my neigbour who works a lot with computers overlooked this tiny problem.
They normally have some sort of edge that makes them stick together or be unable to move once plugged in. But when your new to it pretty much everything can be overlooked. Especially since most youtuber builds focus on making sure the XMP profile is loaded up...
Probably because there's no need (from the PSU manufacturer's perspective) for a standard. Sure, it would be nice from a customer side, but no one is going to buy one PSU over the other because the cables are standardized. It would take someone like Intel to step in to force the standardization but there's no reason for them to care what happens on the PSU side of the cables.
@@nanoflower1 on the contrary. Modular PSUs are generally more expensive, they are touted as the top of the line. With that expectation, we, the customers, should expect some sort of standards After all, the wrong cable then becomes a major Safety issue.
@@Jules_Diplopia Not really a major safety issue when you hardly ever hear about it. It's like evolution; if there's no evolutionary pressure, nothing happens. No adaptation
Because while every PSU manufacturer does want there to be a standard, they also want to be the one to MAKE that standard. Big money in that but because everyone's trying to do the same, it's just a mess.
Don’t let your cats lie on top of your tower case. I had a cat that used to love the warm air coming out of the top three fan holes. I ran the fans slow to reduce noise and they still kept the temps down… until one point where my computer alarm went off from overheating and I looked down and my long haired cat had splatted himself on the top of my case, blocking the airflow out of the case entirely.
getting a cheap multimeter is crucial when doing cable modding so you can check that the pinouts are correct. Yes for some plugs you can also just follow the cable too
Caveat, do not use said cheap meter on anything with serious current or voltage. The very cheap meters can have poor input protection and can be hazardous. I wouldn't trust an Amazon 10$ meter. That said, 30$ will get you something capable of handling more juice. Of course if all you're going to do is check pinout, etc. even the cheapest meter will be safe.
What you said about putting a pc in a cubby or cabinet is so true, I used to put mine in a cabinet that was attached to my desk because it didn’t fit on the desk and I didn’t want to put it on the carpet. I always complained about my room getting hot and my pc feeling laggy. After getting a new desk and putting my pc on top of it the temps have been way better and pc feels way smoother.
@@mostlypeacefulrowan8747 not sure what you mean but Jay misspoke but is still kind of right. As the air heats up in a sealed container the pressure will go up. In a cabinet this air will push out till the pressure equalizes which will be pretty quickly then you just have an oven. Pressures we are talking about are super low. Like less than an inch of water low.
@@cbrunnem6102 a cubby hole heats up coz the only place hot air can go is to the front where the intake is. If you turn the computer around or swap direction of fans the hot air gets blasted out into the room.
I work as external IT support for many local companies and private customers and have seen quite some cases over the years. I have seen the dirt from car workshops getting sucked in by the fans and sitting there for years, but I have never seen something as disgusting as a PC from a chain smoker. The smell when I first opened a smoker PC was so disgusting I still vividly remember it.
Yea, Jay really understated how bad that crap is, all the nicotine and tar basically. - It's probably worse than vaping. Actually, I'm quite sure. My neighbor still smokes indoors, as he lives on his own, and everything including the glass of the windows is yellow. - I can see it from outside. And to think that people suck on that crap. -_-
@@michaelmonstar4276 I vape and build pcs , never have any of my builds have crap in them , some are years old and clean as a whistle . Smoking on the other hand creates tar so they are going too suck crap in , not so vapes .
@@gazzertrn Back when I worked in a PC repair shop and vaping was much newer, we did see a handful of people who would cloud chase near a PC, and it did get kinda sticky in there. Those were guys with huge mods and subohm coils, though. Not likely to be a problem if you use a Juul or some other modern system that produces less vapor, so long as you aren't blowing it directly into the intake fans. Edit: Even the worst ejuice filled PC wasn't as bad as when we got machines in from chain smokers, though. Shop manager ended up telling us to just refuse to work on those and refund the customer, it was just too disgusting and probably a hazard to the technicians.
@@samuraiBSD yeah i used to smoke and and the the tar mixed with dust is such a pain to clean. i deep cleaned my system every 6 month or so and sometimes it took 2h just to clean the heatsink of the cpu cooler. it's really bad
Yeah cigarette smoke isn't just particulates, it has various vapours including tar and nicotine. Buy a house from a smoker and you will have to strip the paint, throw out anything permeable (window coverings, carpets, underlays, etc.), and scrub all surfaces. That includes all the ducts and air handling equipment. And wear PPE while doing this - good mask, gloves, disposable coveralls - because what you are dealing with is concentrated carcinogens.
Taken my eye off the ball over the years. Built MANY systems (and NOT blown or damaged a single component in the process) but was NOT aware that PSU cables are now potentially non-interchangeable !!! I really thought the PSU pinouts were an industry standard. Luckily I've never swapped cables, always using the ones that come with the PSU, but forewarned is forearmed, and I thank you for that snippet alone, and stopping the possible financial loss that would ensue if I'd continued to be ignorant of it.
I think I just learned this lesson 1 week too late, coworker gave me his old 970 to SLI with mine, I was short a cable from my power supply so I grab an old one, no "smoke pressure" was released but....more testing to be done. This is good to know going forward with the trial/error
Wow, I never knew the power cables could be different. I assumed if they're all ATX power supplies they would be the same. I guess I got lucky because I did mix some cables in my current PC.
I work in a company's computer lab and we mix AC power cables all the time. Never once have had a problem. Don't know if Jay means something like those PCU's with the removable cables for inside the case tho.
@Jason Fitch only someone without electrical knowledge would just say hot and ground. PSUs have 12V, 5V and 3.3V pins. If you put 12V on 5V SATA pins, your SSD or HDD will blow up.
They are the same, I don't know why this guy says that an MSI standard PCIe 8x is different from Seasonic PCIe8x cable, because it is not. It is the same. Never had any problems for over 32 years now!
there is no standards body to govern it. PSUs were never designed to have removable cables in the beginning. One of the manufacturers just decided on it as a cool gimmick and everyone followed but nobody ever agreed in a standard.
It's only weird until you realise why they do it - money. If you change the pin-outs from time to time, customers need to buy YOUR specific cables rather than your competitors' cables.
As a person who was console gamer most of my life and moved into PCs, I love the upgrading and modifying of my PC, but man o man so much could go wrong. I guess that's part of the game. I'm way more knowledgeable than ever before on computers since getting into it at least and that's thanks to channels like Jay's, GN, Hardware unboxed etc.
As long as the PC is not powered on or plugged in while you work and you're not mismatching architectures or using a very staticky sweater in winter, you'll be fine
@@Galgamoth Yup. Water can't kill electronics by itself. The device also needs to be powered on. If you remove one of the factors, the shorting will not occur, and the hardware won't die. You do have to make sure it is completely, 100% dry by the time it's plugged in, though.
Building a pc and upgrading it is so easy. Even updating the bios is not even stressful. I'm not even that knowedgable on computers and I've built and upgraded the pc I'm using right now over the years. I even just updated the bios on my b350 board so it can run the r7 5700x3d I'm getting tomorrow in the mail.
Note on the potential leaks on water cooler system. (I'm a plumber ) put a water detector that sends a message to your phone if water is detected. The more expensive the device the better chance of it telling you earlier rather than later. Not full proof but that might let you turn off your computer (even remotely don't know if possible) before damage can take place and assess where your leak is coming from. All products can have problems just be prepared when they fail never hope that they wont.
There should be a standard for #1. It's a safety hazard currently when companies use whatever connectors they feel like using and the cables have no labels to indicate what pinout or what unit it works with.
@@rednarok Dell even went further with moderboards and PSU that switched the orders of the cables on the *motherboard* side. Just to block use of arbitrary PSU. But resulting in fire for some motherboards and PSU.
Well, I like to use my 3080 as a room heater. It works quite well too, especially considering how with the snow storm this works as well as any other heating source for me
I would add "Don't use incense in the same room as the computer." I've had to clean plenty of PCs from my past clients where the motherboard and other components had a film buildup of resin coming from the incense, causing the parts to fail. Component failure was even more likely when the air became humid (during or after it rains, etc.). The humidity and resin buildup from the incense will actually corrode the circuits and boards and eventually cause a short circuit. Also, the resin cannot be cleaned with any kind of chemical or product. I would still recommend using an air purifier in the room where the computer is even when the incense is burnt in the room on the opposite side of the house.
I assume it wasn't mentioned due to RUclips being RUclips, but the same goes for weed. I have a friend that practically breathes more weed than he does air, and he gifted me a video card once...astoundingly, the fans turned, but not only did it stink my room up almost immediately, but after a couple gaming sessions it left syrupy puddles at the bottom of the case.
@Casual Scum Unless you're reaching condensing levels of humidity where your computer is literally dripping wet, then nothing. In OP's case, the resin is trapping moisture to where it can't get away from the components and thus corroding them. Outside the realm of computers, though, I'd recommend getting a dehumidifier if you don't want your entire life to be mold (I was there before I got mine), and even though they're hundreds of dollars, get a real one that's comparable to the size of a mid-to-large desktop computer case and pulls gallons of water per day. The
Note on the 1st: BeQuiet has a compatibility site on their site. They tell you which cables you can interchange between your old BeQuiet PSU and the new one.
Also, when making sure the power supply is powered down, you can also discharge remnant by holding down the power button to clear any power to make certain there's no hiding juice.
I would really love if companies actually agreed on a standard for modular PSUs. And for the case front panel connectors. I freaking hate those tiny single cable plugs.
I agree. The ATx standard is already there for slot locations, lengths, and SATA connectors among other things, so why not apply that to other things like pinouts for the internal side of modular power supplies. The case manufacturers have gotten pretty good with their connectors more recently. Instead of plugging in all those tiny connections on the headers we can't see, they're now using a single-piece header that plugs in across all the pins at one. This isn't true of all brands, but the bigger names have gotten smart that way.
But you must live the knowledge gained in gauging, tracking, maybe using a multi-meter. I agree, but there's something about the plug and play nature of things seems ....... idk, further from the metal. Like a built a PC, but I don't feel like I built a PC, It was easier than Ikea lol; Legos for adults.
@@thehotdogman9317 That's right we can't, but what's stopping the manufacturers of these modular power supplies from following a standard pin layout? It doesn't matter what their power supplies do on the inside or outside. The only difference is how they lay things out for their wire connections. If they adhered to a standard just like there is now for pinouts for the ATX power supplies, then if someone had older cables leftover, they could use those instead. This is the same as standard network CAT5 or CAT6, serial ports, RS422 ports, and so on. To sum it up, they all need to use a set standard for pinouts to the connectors. Simple, Pin 1 = +5, Pin 2 = -12, Pin 3 = Ground, etc.
The "unplug the PSU" one, it's been a reflexe since day 1: turn off the computer, switch the PSU off, press the on/off button on the front I/O panel (with my Antec NX210 the rgb fans would turn on for like a sec before turning off) just to "remove" the juice left, then finally unplug the PSU.
I prefer to switch off the power at the wall socket (an advantage of UK sockets is that most have their own switch) but leave them plugged in, to provide a known good earth (ground) connection for the whole system. But I've only been working on them since CP/M powered anything smaller than a room-sized computer, so what do I know. Holding in the power button after everything is switched off will usually discharge the huge capacitors in the PSU as well, which is a jolly good idea.
@@galgrunfeld9954 There is still considerable power in the huge smoothing capacitors in the PSU even after it has been unplugged - enough to briefly start a PC for up to a second, or enough to present a serious health hazard, so do NOT test this by poking around inside.
On the Vape note get a small standalone hepa air filter blow it right at in the intake. It can take hours with ipa and cleaning tools to get the condescending juices off compents. The hepa filter cuts the build up down by 99%
And then you have the same work or issues with the air cleaner 😂 I vape and smoke for years next to my pc and aside from more work with cleaning, there is no issue. At least if you have air intake filter that keeps most of the dust outside
Just finished my first pc build and u help ALOT! i knew absolutely nothing about computers and was very overwhelmed by all of this stuff and u made it alot easier so i want to thank you for all of your content!
I was a total noob too, when I started over a year ago. It’s nerve racking stuff at first, but building PC’s is easy and fun to do now. It just requires patience. PC’s are sooo advanced now a days.
@@Thesyndicate11111 Not how fast or slow it takes you, but the joy in the journey and the final outcome. Your very first PC. I know mine was truly awesome that I actually built a computer from scratch.
Good point on the water cooling. That's exactly why my server is air cooled. Dropping the temp a few degrees is great but it's not worth the risk in my opinion. Especially since my server typically doesn't have the cpu pegged at 100%. Uses cases may vary of course
To me, the point of liquid cooling is never that it cools better, but that a radiator-configuration spits the hot air right out of the case, rather than keeping it inside first, with a hot GPU, while it's waiting to be transferred outside with some kind of airflow. - Of course, for a server that won't be as much of a problem, as it usually doesn't have a raging GPU inside that needs all the cooling it can get. - But generally high-performance PCs do and need to get rid of that hot air as quickly and efficiently as possible. But a server needs to be left alone and be reliable, so it makes sense to keep it away from any liquids and potential failures.
@@michaelmonstar4276 You can simply make internal ductwork for your case to isolate it into 2 or more airflow zones. This improves thermals by 3-5C for me.
I must admit I needed to stream Ultra Music Festival Miami high res in 2014 after my old tower died. So I put my laptop on ice packs. Rotated them out. Monitored the moisture and it kept going. Not advised but it worked.
I have a 16 year old gaming rig build with closed liquid cooling by Falcon Northwest that I had on for most of the years and never had any issues. Still gaming on it.
Modular PSUs come with bags to store parts in. I keep the PSU cables and documentation of a specific brand together in each bag. Also, no water-cooling for me. Air-cooled is the closest to maintenance-free PCs. The rest are time-honored practices I've done since my first DIY. Also, an additional practice I do is skip overclocking. The last time I had a real NEED to OC was with the original software-based Quake. I stopped after 3D cards and GLQuake came out and the game was very playable. If people want to strain their PC further, that's their business. Me? I tend to keep my PCs reliably doing it's job, sitting at a corner forgotten.
Instead of simply calling it overclocking, I like to think of it as tuning your components. Because it's possible to lower the voltage of your CPU or GPU (referred to as undervolting) and end up with lower temperatures. And for those components, you can sometimes increase performance while lowering the temps, compared to stock. Though for RAM, when you tune that or enable XMP, the voltage goes up and so does the temp, but I wouldn't consider that anything to worry about and it's generally always worth doing in order to hit the listed specs for it (but going much above the XMP voltage can be risky).
I always test my modular cables with a multimeter before I use them, for the most part, most of the PCI-e and CPU power modular cables have been pretty much the same across multiple power supplies, but the molex/sata cables have been always different Just double check them before you jam them in, dont just assume that its fine because it fits.
Hey Jay! Just a headsup! There's a shutdown command you can use for systems when they're unattended. It doesn't eliminate risk, but it reduces it! Simply pop the following into your CMD prompt! Dead simple! "Shutdown /s /t 3600" - Tells the computer to shutdown, and set a timer for 3600 seconds. Tinker with the arguments for different times and results! :)
In the case of a leakage with a watercooled system - my guess is, that it makes no difference if you are there or not in most incidents. I mean - how should you being present prevent the fluid from dripping onto the GPU and shorting it out? I'd rather say: Build the system with as few weakpoints as possible. If you are concerned about leaks - build with soft tubing ...
Yeah, I mean even the example he gives doesn't support that. He only realized cause he went to clean it not cause he was there when it started happening. A much better advice would be to do regular checks to the inside of your PC, easier nowaways since so many cases have tempered glass. Just take a peek inside your pc
Thing is IF you are there, and you DO notice it (which, unless you're looking for it, I'd say it'd be easy to miss) you can mitigate the damage. But, in most cases, people aren't going to notice or be looking for a leak.
As an enthusiast who has only built a couple of aircooled systems in his time, usually preferring even basic watercooling to air, I will say that there is a great deal of salience to the last point. My father is an engineer who designs power quality management and cooling systems for datacenters. His work can be found in datacenters operated by Microsoft, Samsung, MSI, and others. As an engineer who is used to continuous uptime low maintenance environments, my preference for watercooling seemed insane to him. He went as far as to say he would never mix liquid and computing. As enthusiasts, we have the luxury to be present during uptime; but we should draw the line between uptime and offline time at the extent of our presence.
I literally have not shut down my PC one single time in the 6 years it's been built (outside of Windows Updates of course) and I have not ever once had an issue. I've also done this with every computer I've had since I built my first gaming PC with an AIO 17 years ago.
I have an AIO in my PC and I leave it unattended all the time. Honestly, even if a leak did happen while I was using it, I probably wouldn't notice. I'm not staring at my tower when I use my PC, I'm staring at the monitor. And even then, chances are pretty good that any leak would either be immediately catastrophic (in which case it wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not) or it would drip in such a way that it just exits out the bottom of the case without hitting anything important (in which case it also wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not, the liquid might ruin something on my desk but the PC itself would be fine until the loop ran dry, and then it would probably shut down from overheating). Granted, I also don't keep my PC in an office where I might not see it for days at a time either. It's in my bedroom, and even if I don't use it I have to walk right past it multiple times a day, so there would be plenty of opportunity to catch a non-catastrophic leak.
Honestly, I've been running an AIO for almost 10 years and always leave my PC on, I run games servers and other things I don't want to turn off... Also, even with PC off, the power is still live just like Jay said, so a leak even when off while you're away will also immediately be catastrophic and short out the boards etc.
Agree... I run my computer 24x7 except when I'm clearning it or something. Current system with AIO running for 2 years now, I just don't worry about it... If the unlikely event happens that it leaks fluid I'll deal with it then, but won't change how I keep things on all day / night.
I posted about this but i had a drip that i couldn't even tell was there until the computer died. You really have no idea until it kills everything. Still sticking with liquid cooling though.
Hey, Jay!; Thank you for all you do. My wife heard you talking about power supply cables. She said; "With great power comes great responsibility". I say LABEL the modular cables w/ the brand & model. Even if its just a piece of tape w/ the brand name & model number. I've got a Seasonic w/ modular cables; I keep them in the bag they came in. If possible, organize modular cables WITH the power supply they came w/. Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!
Great video thank you Jay. While I can never dispute with how well liquid cooling works I will never go near it - precisely because of the risks you mentioned. Noise from a PC does not concern me and gimme all the big slow RPM fans in the world but nope to liquid cooling!
As Gabriel also replied it typically isn't bad. You do run significantly higher risk on custom loops than with AIOs. I've run water cooled AIOs from Corsair going on about 4 years straight without issue in both my system and my wife's system. I do run air cooling on my server that runs 24/7, but I need the water cooling for the massive overclocks we run on our gaming rigs. We do sometimes leave them unattended, however we try to shut them down at night and when we aren't on them. I've never had an issue, but you can have issues and you should be mindful to mitigate risks. Don't be afraid to move to water cooling if you want it quieter or need it for overclocking, but don't feel like you have to switch if your air cooler is getting the job done well.
I've been running CPU AiOs exclusively since 2013. I've never had one fail or leak. Realistically, if an AiO is going to leak onto expensive components, you probably aren't going to catch it in time even if you're there. And even if you turn it off, it will still leak and the next day you fire it up and... well, you might really fire things up. If you're really worried about it, non-conductive cooling fluid can be purchased, though with an AiO you might have to get crafty.
For the cubby/cabinet bit, that's actually not a terrible idea if you don't have room on your actual desk. I don't, and I do have that little open door area for my pc. The manufacturer actually included a back end for the desk, so air can get out. I basically took that, covered only the necessary parts with it, and cut out the rest. I also have no shelving in there. Air can get in easily, when door is open and pc is on. Air can get out easily, because nothing but the desk is above it (quite a bit of space in between too), and a huge opening in the back. You also have to make sure your case is thin enough, because airflow does have to go through the sides a bit too.
I am a mechanic by trade. I have a suggestion for the installation of O-rings with the custom water cooling. Obviously make sure your hard pipes have a smooth edge after cutting to size. I use a product called Sil-Glyd. it is silicone lubricant that I use to lube O-rings in my trade work. it helps protect the O-ring during installation.
It sounds like good advise, but it feels a little overkill too. It's a very specific extra purchase. A bowl full of water with a drop of dish soap is standard practice for getting the inserts into hardline tubing for bending them. A dab of that mix with a finger also works well as o-ring lube.
@@tassadarforaiur but dish soap is also a de greaser so when removing it is possible to split the o ring. I understand though if you wont be removing it. I also use nautical lubricant for o rings in cooling systems
@@Alucard-gt1zf No. Certain types of o-ring materials will absolutely perish if any oil is used. You can't know the material, unless it's specifically stated. There's like epdm, viton, nbr and ie. silicon options available in pretty much all systems. Some withstand ie. grease, some don't.
Weirdly enough I once, years ago, had extremely convenient, one might say considerate, failure. I had three hard drives, basically every drive in the system, fail within two months. But they failed in such a way and order that I lost zero data and ended up with just moving my data to a mix of SSDs and larger hard drives. Of course I still lost money but given how big an upgrade moving to SSDs is and how lucky having multiple hard drives fail without data loss is I am not complaining. In case anyone is wondering one of the SSD advantages is that they do not cause a large transient load when they start up since they do not need to spin up anything. This matters when you repeatedly have multiple hard drives connected to the same power circuit spinning up at the same time. This is the original reason people advocated leaving PCs on. Not really relevant with SSDs and modern power supplies I think? Just do not connect a bunch of hard drives to the same thin wire. IIRC servers started using staggered spin up years ago. It is a SATA feature but not sure if all consumer systems implement it.
Your PC should have its own dedicated outlet if possible, or at least its own surge protector. A single US home outlet can support up to 15 amps or about 1800 watts. But its recommended to stay below 1500 watts. So maybe plug the window AC, printer, space heater, vacuum, and minifridge into a different outlet... And even then, we're assuming the 1500 watt limit doesn't apply to the whole room. When in doubt, you can flip breakers to see which outlets are on the same circuit.
@JayzTwoCents Good tips. On 11:00 - 12:00 something to clarify. Hot air is less dense than cold air and when air expands it creates positive pressure. If a PC case is in a closed space, like a cabinet, even if the door is opened or it does not have doors and the back is open, hot air will heat nearby surfaces, they will radiate heat back to the environment and the case panels. The case(inside and outside) will get hotter and hotter because of the hot air loops back in the system and the heat radiation of surfaces. Then the air will get hotter and hotter and less dence, lowering it's mass per volume results in it's heat exchange capability getting lower with time. The system will overheat sooner or later.
I think a lot of people made these mistakes, myself included, but I appreciate Jay saying that him and his team are guilty of it at one point or another.
Yeah. I too was working on my older PC the other day and was flipping the switch on and off as I tested things, forgetting to do it at one point and shoved a power cable right into my GPU. Had a mini heart attack when I saw it was plugged in. Card died, but fortunately it was an older one. Still feel like shit tho. Glad to hear this happens to Jay as well lol..
Great advice on Power Supplies and Cabling are to be treated with special care. I matched my new EVGA PS with my new EVGA Graphics Card & paid very close attention to the new PS cables and made sure that I matched the cables to the plugs on my Graphics card, Motherboard, etc. I didn't want to fry any components. All worked out well. Your advice is top notch. Thanks.
Yeah the psu off thing is really important. I have a specific use case for needing my system to power on when AC power is restored. Once when doing a cpu swap, I forgot to power off the psu and I saw sparks under the cpu as the system tried to start. That cpu is now dead.
Jay: "Do you leave your PC turned on overnight? NO!" also Jay a few months ago: "So, I left this watercooled giant PC alone for dinner and forgot it, returned 1 month later"
I have garbage internet speeds (thankfully no data caps) because there's only 1 provider for my area. To fully download something like doom eternal 80+ gigs it takes me nearly a week of uptime.
My main rig is on 24/7, and it does have a custom loop in it. Not too worried about it failing since a) I built the whole thing from scratch and took some precautions and b) I built it for the cooling benefit, not at all for looks, which is why it's set up with 16x10mm EPDM rubber tubing (the same black stuff you'd find on cars) and running G11 (blue) car coolant premix, because I've had bad experiences with boutique pc-specific coolant not even lasting a year before deposits started blocking the fins in the blocks. The car coolant has been going for 2 years now with no discoloration or deposits. Only maintenance I had to do so far was clean the rad and fans
Instead of using different pinouts on the MB side they should have just used "passthrough cables". Use the same MF connector on both sides. Like extension cables but for MB's
Really glad to see comments contradicting Jay on leaving systems unattended. I guess if you're only using your system for gaming you're less likely to *need* to leave it unattended, but there are many of us who have legitimate reasons to want to run a system for weeks/months/years: should water-cooling just be an out-and-out no-no for those builds?
Agreed, that point was a bit ridiculous. Maybe it might be good practice to use air cooling if you're going to leave your system unattended often, but realistically speaking I doubt the probability of a leak killing your system is higher than the large variety of other factors that could cause your system to fail.
The thing with water cooling is regular maintenance. You inspect it (are there wet spots around fittings or radiators, are there indications of degradation on the tubes etc). You perform regular maintenance (renewing tubes & liquid every few months) and of course you thoroughly test it after each risky activity (maintenance, moving the case...). Lastly, some external monitoring with emergency shutdown may be sensible. Relevant anecdote: ran a system without any maintenance for 10 years. So yeah, it might work if you're lucky.
@@HupfderFloh Meh. There are no moving parts in a water-cooled rig, so there is nothing to maintain beyond any other PC. Renewing tubes & liquid every few months? Are you nuts? You clearly don't have a water-cooled rig. It's a sealed loop, there is zero water loss. And then you say you ran one into the ground for ten years? You're just typing to hear yourself click. You simply use quality parts, & build the rig properly, & you have little to worry about.
@@JeighNeither "no moving parts", suure... Basically you retain all the failure modes from an air cooled system and then you add many more (pump failure, clogging, corrosion, dissipation, thermic pressure changes etc). With careful setup and proper initial testing, sure, the failure probability is low and you could very well get away with it for a long time without issues - see my anecdotal evidence. Also if you know what you're doing™ you can certainly engineer a very reliable system (looking at IBM z15, for example). However as an amateur, I wouldn't trust my rig running unattended in my parent's basement while I'm out on vacation. The renewing of tubes and liquid parts is mostly for aesthetic reasons, but inspections are necessary e.g. to reveal bent tubes after moving/modifying something or check for sediments, improper water levels etc.
Learned #1 the hard way. In my defense, every other cable in a PC is interchangeable. I can use any Sata Cable with any peripheral. Never imagined those cables would be the exception....
@@scaryhobbit211 It wasn't the AC cables. It was the modular cables going from the Power Supply to the various bits inside.. Specifically, the ones that caused problems were the ones going from the Power Supply to the Hard Drive and Disk Drive. .
Well, unfortunately - *unlike virtually everything else* - there's no standard on the modular side of power supply cables. Some manufacturer just innovated (and might have pantented the pin-out?) and others copied it their own way, with different pin-outs, so now we got this mess. That's why I just got extension cables from cablemod. Replacement cables for your specific PSU are more expensive and possibly need to be replaced when you change your PSU for any reason. Who's gonna see the difference anyway?
@@thomasbedient9191 I see where I got mixed up. I couldn't tell from his phrasing that he was talking about *Modular* PSUs only and not *all* PSUs. I mainly work with just normal PSUs with cables that are attached permanently to the PSU. So when I hear "power supply modular cables", the only "modular" cable I'm familiar with is the AC. Tho admittedly I've just recently swapped out a dying PSU in my main PC for a fresh one (both are just regular, not modular), so there was a bit of paranoia at play.
One tip to make sure your system is fully drained from power - When the PSU is unplugged or turned off, try pressing the start button to have the system attempt to start. This will drain all power from the system.
I'm working in a computer (repair) shop and can only confirm that with the vaping. We've had various defective laptops because of it. Unfortunately, there were also laptops with warranty, which of course does not apply to liquid damage.
@@damienholland8103 It doesn't matter what you vape. The basic substance that produces the smoke is deposited on the components. On desktop PCs there is more space and most of the smoke "only" touches the coolers and not directly the PCB. In other words. Desktop PCs are not as susceptible, but depending on how much you smoke, a desktop PC can of course break.
@@bradclapp4022 Yes, it's disgusting too, but since it's not a liquid, the likelihood of it shorting out, for example, is much lower. On the other hand, it makes cleaning much more difficult and clogs smaller coolers much faster.
The problem with modular PSUs is that there is no standardization at the PSU end, only on the end point connectors. As such, each manufacturer can change the pinout at their whim. The PSU connectors are basically standard MOLEX connectors, but the pinouts can be all over the place. I just got a modular PSU for my new build thinking great if the PSU blows I just have to swap out the PSU with the same brand, but that is fraught with danger if the new PSU is a new GEN from same maker with different pinouts and POOF! there goes your system. So if you have an older modular PSU that needs to be replaced and only new GENs are available, the advantage of modular cabling is negated. Hopefully PSU makers can at least stabilize their designs to last at least 5-10 years.
It's just fkn insane... imagine in the future when people have PSU's and cables lieing around and someone ask for spare parts... how the hell was this allowed to happen, blows my mind.
@@markcorrigan3930 not really a question of regulation so much as no standardisation. ISO standards, for instance, move slowly and while they are working the companies have time to invest in their own products. This leads to fierce fights regarding the final version of the standard. Change of pinout for a companies own products though I really can't get.
They do make water sensors that you could put in your case that can be connected to your wifi to alert you if moisture is present in your computer. These are typically used for water heaters.
I have a flow meter and an aquaero programmed to shut it off of the water flow slows. Furthermore, my case is configured in such a way that all of the potential leak points won't drip on components.
@bruh memeWe are talking about less than 2 feet of square space to cover. Two sensors would be adaquate , and $100 is not much compared to the $2000+ for a mid-tier rig. I'm sure a skilled modder could come up with a way to make it work. Bonus, some of the sensors can alert you to temperature target settings (if it's overheating) and if it is moved (like stolen, or your psyco cat knocks it over).
I always watch my system shutdown fully before I walk away. With modern SSDs, it's seconds. Worth the wait. Also I see a lot of people water cool that never overclock. Most people should just air cool with bulky air coolers. If cpu fans die your cpu can still keep at safe temp with passive cooling. My cpu fan died once and I noticed after a few hours as I walked away, I have Aida 64 dashboard always up on 2nd monitor and temp went to 70 and stayed steady, while I was afk in a game. About 30% usage. Never throttled. Case fans were pushing enough to keep it from burning up.
My PC used to turn on randomly (thanks, Windows 10! 🙄) for a year and I couldn't figure out why. Everything in the BIOS was disabled. So I just bought a switchable socket adapter and cut the power to the power strip that feeds the PC before I leave or go to bed. It also cuts down on standby power draw from monitors and such.
Modern CPU's and GPU's will thermal throttle before they burn up. Had a CPU fan die and before I noticed the CPU had throttled down to 500mhz, changed the fan and 6 years later that same CPU is still fine.
@@LRM12o8 yeah had the same issue with my PC waking itself back up no more than ten minutes after I put it to sleep. The fix for me was disabling automatic updates in group policy and disallowing most ports in the device manager from waking the computer.
@@Sir_Tachyon I'm not sure, if I tried group policies, but I defo did the thing in devmgr too. If I recall correctly, I found the culprit was my ten year old mechanical keyboard, which for some reason (n-key rollover, I guess) has four devices in devmgr, but the checkbox would randomly be reactivated again, so for me it was just a temporary fix. Must've been a bug. It has no flashy "smart"/connected mombojumbo that could cause such behavior (I love this keyboard). I also had a problem with my AsRock Mainboard that could kill the display output or cause the computer to reboot when plugging in devices and when I got zapped when touching the PC. Guess the board's grounding/shielding didn't work properly. Maybe this issue could also have made it that random voltage spikes in the grid or smth similar could act as a power on signal in the Mainboard. I swapped it out after years of struggling and suspecting other components like the case and PSU. Since I moved into my own place and finally have my PC in a separate room, I don't always cut the power overnight anymore. Whatever caused the problem seems to have been fixed by an update sometime in the last two years. I only came home to my computer running once or twice and that was within the first months after moving. Still good practice to cut the power, especially when you're not home.
I'm about to used water cool to a non OC unit. But my reason would because I will do 3d renders and video edits. Especially I'll use 5800x which they say run hot. Is it better to use air cool instead of water cool?
Had a buddy push a RAM module in one time and he ended up breaking/cracking is MoBo PCB from it bending with the force. He learned the hard way to give the board some support when popping them in. Some of them require a little bit of force.
Holy crap mate, I've never needed to apply force to install a RAM module before. Sounds more like your friend thought "is this tight enough" when it was already in place and just kept going to make sure. (Kinda how people inexperienced with bolts/nuts do, where they keep turning it until their arm almost pops off. Ever seen a car mechanic tightening the bolts on the wheels? They literally jump on the cross thingy [not sure what the name of that is].)
I had a nightmare on first rule mentioned here. I upgraded my psu from Corsair 550 to ROG 850. I used all the correct cables for rog except the drives because i thought surely they are the same, nope!! Luckily it didnt harm my system but it took me about 2hrs to figure out and swap in the build so didnt end up being a short cut 😂
It's common to forget that the 5Vstb voltage is expected to be always on. So even when the computer is turned off, the PSU has a side circuit for 5Vstb so that the computer can have wake-on-lan, wake-on-keyboard etc. And one side effect here is that inserting an expansion board can result in the computer turning on the PSU fully. Some motherboards has a LED explicitly showing 5Vstb, so there is a LED still on when the computer is off. It's there to warn that it isn't safe to plug/unplug boards. The normal 5V/12V/... are off, so no power to disks etc. But the 24-pin connector has this 5V live. And 5Vstb is sent to all card slots. And that's why it's important to remember to disconnect the cable and then have the juice run out of the PSU.
I know the power supply thing is true. But, before I got my first modular PSU, I thought the whole point of modular PSUs was a universal system so that you could just buy whichever cables you needed. How wrong I was 🤷
I absolutely HATE proprietary plugs, but if they needed to exist ANYWHERE, it's in modular power supply cables. It would make it a little more difficult for companies that make custom psu cables, but I think it would be worth it.
@@King_DarkSide ya I get that. And any expense added to the standardized manufacturing process would undoubtedly be passed on to the consumer. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t kinda situation.
@@King_DarkSide That's what standardization means... Although each power supply is different than another in terms of efficiency and total power output, they DO the same thing. they supply the same thing. they are already standardized in terms of dimensions and hole placement (ATX SFX). are already somewhat standardized in terms of output cables too. 20+4 pin, 4+4 pin, sata power, molex power, etc... is it so much to ask that the other end of those cables is standard too? they are just wires in plastic blocks, you can put them anywhere you want. can we just all agree what goes where?
I had my PC in a cabinet. It’s a miracle that this thing didn’t completely die. Whenever I looked at the CPU temps it displayed a constant 100 degrees. That little I3 was suffering but it worked as long as it needed to. Had the nice side effect that I didn’t need to put on the heating during Winter. My I7 doesn’t run that hot so now I have to heat during the winter.
In my Corsair power supply manual: If this power supply uses modular cables, use only manufacturer supplied cables. Other cables might not be compatible and could cause serious damage to your system and power supply.
#1 I had personal experience with this. Upgrading from a Corsair semi-mod to a Seasonic full mod. Forgot to replace the sata wire and tried to run the old ones. Luckily just kept tripping some sort of surge protection and didn't affect anything.
Thanks for the last tip, I once upon time was thinking about water cooling. As someone who often leaves PC running over night this is good warning for me. I think I will pass on that water cooling.
I thought the same but I don't think being there would help any. You still have to notice it so it doesn't really matter whether you are there or not. Regular checkups are enough since leaks are soooooooooo rare. Although, unless you have a high end cpu and plan to oc, a good air cooler will do the job. Depending on where you live at least, here good air coolers are prohibitively expensive and there's a brand that has AIOs at decent prices
@@Duke49th not at all. I used to vape inside a lot, noticed a build up on walls, tested both the juice itself as well as a separate test of the vapor build up. Both did carry a current. The reason you don't short out your atomizer when using it, is because of the high resistance that vape juice has. You can say and think what you'd like and I appreciate that you put forth thought in the situation. Perhaps a little more mature and respectful questioning would allow you to not look like an ass AND be in the wrong. Cause surely being in the right makes it okay to be an ass.
When I bought my PC, it was from Origin PC. It was during their black friday "sale" a few years ago, so they gave a free "upgrade" to the cooling in the form of some unbranded 120mm AIO with an Asetek pump. Well, less than a year later, that AIO decided it was a piece of crap and should act like one. It leaked all over my GPU and pretty much killed my system. Had to replace the GPU, get a new CPU cooler, and replace the PSU because it decided to die as well. I reached out to Origin for any form of support, but they ignored me for a couple weeks before telling me there was nothing they could do. Moral of the story: Don't trust Origin, don't trust cheap AIO's, and air cooling is superior.
Exactly! There is no justification for water cooling over air when things like this are a real possibility. Most water cool purely because they think they should, after watching advice from wealthy RUclipsrs who have no problem replacing a $2000 system if things go sideways because of a liquid leak. Most people though can't afford that kind of accident.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter What do you mean by no justification? Water cooling is justified as a better cooling method. No air cooling will ever come close to the response time water cooling has at keeping your temps low. With proper water cooling you will never see your parts passing a certain temperature degree. No matter the environmental conditions and temperature, no matter the stress your PC is under. Don't get me wrong, there are amazing air cooling options that do an amazing job. But water cooling in terms of cooling performance is just superior. AIO's leaking is something that you have to live with. And it's pretty much the same as any other part malfunction that can happen to your system. You can't make sure an AIO won't leak as much as you can't make sure that your power supply won't suddenly decide to spike the voltage briefly for whatever reason for example. Or your GPU start artifacting because of silicon wear.
@John D A leaky aios are very rare, and pretty much restricted to crappy brands if you get a decent brand you will be fine I've had aios for 4 years and haven't had a single problem also aios are superior to air cooling especially at higher level cpus.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter Sorry but you are talking garbage. Water cooling is a lot better and failures are extremely rare. For every one you read about, there are thousands that didn't . I've been water cooling for 20 years in multiple machines, never had a single issue due to water.
1 To be fair you should discharge the main capacitor in the power supply before working on your computer, (try to turn it on after you unplug it from the wall). 2 Don't have your computer working in your bed sheets or other blankets, it blocks the air and overheat's the system. 3 Touch the ground wire or discharge your self before working on your system, blue sparks sometimes kill expensive components. 4 Ask your self, If you need fan's to cool the water in a liquid cooled system, why not just have a nice big air cooler with fan's. 5 If your are not sure if it is compatible, make sure, then use what you are working on under power. Mistakes can cost a lot of money. 6 Do not wear clothing that makes a lot of static electricity when working on electronic equipment. 7 Wape and smoking puts tar on your stuff, old tv and vcr's that come from homes where there is smoking are yellow inside or covered in tar and wape has the same effect.
Vape doesn't have tar, my PC's been in my room for 5 years al all 5 years I've vaped in the room. Just the other day I went to clean my pc tower and it was spotless so do tell me how vaping damages your computer 🙃
Only problem with 4 is that the big air coolers may not fit due to ram or even their height. I use water coolers instead bc of that. But I've been reading Noctua air coolers can outperform many 360mm while producing less noise, so maybe I should change the case?
I've unplugged and plugged stuff into the PSU while its plugged in and switched on before, nothing happened to me but I will be more cautious about it in the future
The only thing that can really get a pass here would be USB. But even then, there could be a small chance that a short will ruin that plug or worse. I've had it where I plugged something into a usb port and it shorted or had static and the port died :
Dude, I love your videos! I'm no expert on this subject, but I DO build my own and have done so for 18 years now with (thus far) total success. I've learned so much from you and a few others in the last 4 months on building a PC the right way and I thank you for that!! May you have years of success!!
Always properly measure your case to see what will fit in there, basic but saves a lot of hassle. I bought a 2 fan 6600 the other day, and have been waiting a while for the market to stabilise after using Vega 11 for a while. It has literally only just fit because of how the ram slots sit on the Asus prime mobo and if I got a bigger GPU I'd have to have returned it. I brought on intuition rather than by what room I actually had and it could have easily backfired.
Did not expect to actually learn anything from this one but damn I had no idea about power cables being rather brand specific. Might well have saved me as I have been thinking about buying some extra cables the next time I add another HDD to my build.
You should have said that you should always discharge the capacitors inside the PSU after unplugging it. I had a case where the PC even started up for a second just with the power inside the caps.
I'm building a computer for a chain smoker and would like to recommend an AV cabinet, but they don't have much money because they spend it all on cigarettes and pot. To each their own but I worry about that PC. He's pretty handy, though, so maybe he can build something and add a couple exhaust fans.
After Many years of dealing with chain smoking gamers, my advice is to make the recommendation and explain why you made the recommendation and then let them destroy their PC after they ignore your recommendation. Don't let their stupidity cause you to lose sleep at night, because it's not your fault they are too stupid to give up smoking.
Love the channel and advice. Listen, a video demonstrating the steps someone would take if the just upgraded components for their computer might be helpful. Like for instance, if someone just purchased a brand new CPU and MOBI…..what steps would they take in relation to using their current SSD, drivers etc. lia it as simple as slap it in the case, plug in their existing storage and stuff. Just an idea.
disconnect power then press power button to surge residual energy swap parts reconnect everything and boot your welcome saved you 45min to an hour long video
@@joshph2716 Yup I do that all the time and have done that for years. The residual voltage is still in the capacitors and is still enough to spin the fans and light up the LEDs on the motherboard. I showed that to a coworker once because he wasn't taking any precautions after powering off a machine before he was adding in RAM. Some people think it's funny, but when working around power supplies, I still keep my left hand in my back pocket. It's a habit I got into while working as an electronics technician way back when. I used to repair video terminals with flyback transformers and other high voltage devices including switching power supplies. It wasn't uncommon to encounter 30KV off a flyback -transformer or getting zapped by residual voltage still left in the CRT tube. I know it's a bit outdated for the PCs, but after getting zapped a few times old habits stick.
Jay nailed the reason why I've always passed on AIO water coolers...every now and again I do have to leave my PC on overnight unattended, especially if I'm out of town and need to remotely connect to it. I've stuck with clunky CPU air coolers as a result. Sure, they take up more space and add weight to your system, but you'll never see an air cooler leak. A good quality high performance air cooler will provide sufficient cooling (nearly as good as an AIO water cooler), especially if you keep your PC out of a cabinet or closet and in an open room that is always cool, such as a basement (if you live in the NE US like I do where it's cold 8 months per year, it's relatively easy to keep your PC running cool without the need for a water cooler).
I leave my computer on almost every night, and my AiO is at least 5 years old now. Now I'm worried about it, LOL! Next build is getting a fan for sure.
Water cooling is 100% for aesthetics. There's just not a benefit people will see either in cooling or noise. People think they need water cooling when they absolutely don't.
@@ddog17billybob For 99% of people, it's true. The benefits of water cooling become relevant when you have an expensive enough water cooling and a computer with greater heat throughput. An _extreme_ example being a custom build with a watercooled overclocked cpu and two gpus, all in the same circuit. You won't see any real benefits beyond aesthetics if you have a computer with AIO water cooling on some average cpu. At least, compared to similarly priced air cooling. It's just not worth the extra cost, unless you want to pay for the aesthetics. The problem is people think they _"need"_ watercooling, when it's in fact a luxury product. I'm not saying it s a waste, just that people overestimate the benefits, and underestimate the negatives.
@@Nina-cd2eh that's a fair point and I would agree. But even a single water cooled loop on a high end GPU will keep temps much lower than stock GPU fans. So I disagreed with you 100% for aesthetics point.
Guilty. I was just upgrading my cpu and putting my old parts into my gf's new build and was trying to be efficient and left the Corsair psu cable in the cpu socket with her new Seasonic and I thought the board was shorting on the case. Just watched this video right now, swapped the cables and voila! Everything fn works! Thank you Jay!
I can personally vouch for tip 1. Last year I was switching out the stock cables of my EVGA 650 GT for a set of Cablemods cables. I didn't pay attention to the details on the Cablemods and found out AFTERWARDS that they were designated for Asus Thor PSUs over 1000W. I completely killed a brand new Asus ROG B550 WiFi board, a perfectly good Ryzen 7 2700X chip, and 1 of my 2 Crucial Ballistix RAM sticks. A pretty expensive lesson for something I could've learned quickly and easily for free if I had just done a tiny bit of due diligence.
It would be nice if there was consistent labelling going on here, I have a bag full of old modular cables and aside from the standard "CPU" or "Motherboard" there isn't anything that really tells you what PSU it came from, will just end up going in the bin once I can be bothered finding a local ewaste centre
14:39 Don't do this, wet paper towel is still conductive. A thick coated paper plate placed on the back of your graphics card with some cotton balls in it should help to reduce splashing. The failure of this method will be the plate falling apart from getting wet or over filling.
Mount your gpu vertical and this all becomes a non issue. In myccase the motherboard lays horizontal so so any leaking would only be on the motherboard. Unless of course the leak is a pin hole causing a spray, in which case all bets are off no matter what you do.
I did a windows update once before I went to bed. Woke up in the middle of the night and the computer was still on. It froze during the update and I had the push the power button to shut it down. Had fun the next day restoring Window, it got corrupt. :)
Honestly, as a former tech myself these were great pieces of information. I've always been against water cooling personally. Hearing Jay say not to run your water cooled system unattended is majorly great advice. It's something that really never occurred to me. I just never gave it thought. Same for the modular PSU cables and not mixing other branded cables. Good stuff Jay. Cheers.
why are you against it if you don't mind me asking? I know it's not for everyone but water cooling gives the best temps nothing air cooled can match it especially once the room heats up or during the hot months if you live somewhere without AC like i do.
@@tiernanbriggs8463 Like Jay said, there is a potential for a leak. It's not very likely, but it is still possible. And not being there if it were to leak could lead to a fire in a worst case scenario.
@@Lt.Shineysides89 I don't care for the risk involved, the difficulty of removing components should something go wrong or for an upgrade or the cost associated with water cooling. AIOs I suppose take care of that disassembly problem. But water cooling isn't really much better than a decent air cooling setup. Certainly not enough to justify all the issues that come with water cooling. Just my personal opinion. There are lots of folks out there that use water.
but they will run a non watercooled unatended, but what if the fan fails or the cooler just falls off ? It's just as likely as a watercooling system springing a leak. Fearmongering to keep it exclusive...look at me, i have watercooling, but you shouldn't do it because it could leak.... the elitism is just way beyond.
With the vaping and smoking, I've been doing it for years and I've never had any issues so I imagine it's only if your PC is on your desk, head height and you're blowing it actually in close proximity. Mines under my desk so I guess the fans aren't receiving any of the smoke or vapor
I've had a laptop short a cable from the fog. When the technician opened up the back panel,, drops of juice came out. If it sits in thick fog like mine did, it makes puddles that are conductive.
Yeah, that whole unattended thing is why I never want to go water cooling, I just don't want to pay attention to it. Because there is huge chance that it would be leaking for quite some time before I noticed it anyway, since I am not really about looking much into my PC. But with air cooler, no liquid, no issue, no worries,... :-D
Number 1 😅got me on my last build. Needed a slightly longer cable and thought I had grabbed the right one. Luckily it just killed the power supply and nothing else. Lessoned learned, always verify you have the correct manufacturers cable and version for your power supply.
"Subie stick" lmao. He's absolutely right about the smoking, the components get coated in nicotine, vapor leaves a similar residue as well. Can it be cleaned? Yes, but it's a nightmare and takes lots of Q-Tips and 91% alcohol.
Or just lots of alcohol and a bowl. As I use a lot of it for cleaning (99.7% IPA) it's no big deal to pour a bowl full. Then use a cloth or paper towel dipped in there to clean the case while the components are soaking. Annual maintenance includes a check to see if this is necessary since I saved my life 5 years ago by making the switch to vaping, even though I filter the air going into my PC (and yeah, those filters do get a bit yucky, as the vape residue is sticky so any tiny bit of dust sticks to it once it is on the filter - but they are washable). The filter was added in a fit of paranoia after a new PC, and it hasn't ever actually needed a deep clean - but some parts that have been left around the room have. An extractor fan is also an option, but one I haven't needed - vapour is fairly light (I rarely fog the room out) and as the PC is on the floor and air mostly goes through the air conditioning evaporator (condensing out the vapour and any moisture, which then exits the room as liquid through the drain hose) before arriving at floor level.
For the smoking tip: I would heavily suggest leaving your side panel open if possible. Decreases chances of overheating and the smoke lingering long enough to really stick to parts. I've had a Enthoo 719 and I just took the glass off and i've only had to seriously clean my fans once in the past year and it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier than that video of Phil's PC
The problem with leaving your side panels off is that it drastically decreases cooling efficacy. When your fans are blowing air into and out of an enclosed space, heat is very effectively radiated from hot components, as cold air quickly moves in to replace the hot air. With the side panels off, the case fans are just blowing some cold air near your CPU/GPU fans, but most of it just gets blown out the side and back into your room, instead of over the hot components - meanwhile the air around your components gets hotter over time.
@@michaelmonstar4276 Right, the obvious solution is to just... not smoke. It's that easy /s On a more serious note; if you are a smoker, and feel the need to smoke while gaming, I'd suggest designating an area away from your computer to break at. Preferably out in open air. It's better for your computer, your room and slightly better for you, as well. As it separates you from the source of anxiety, stress or whatever is making you want to smoke at your desk for a few minutes in the first place, and also breaks up the sedentary lifestyle of just sitting at your desk for hours.
I'm about to make my first gaming PC here soon... THANK YOU FOR WARNING ME NOT TO VAPE NEAR IT! Didn't even think about that, and I chain smoke vapes. Just gonna have to get used to leaving the office for when I want a puff lol
As long as you aren’t blowing your vape into the case, chances are you’ll be just fine. Obviously if you have a cloud chucking box mod, maybe hold that shit in for a second so the smoke is less thick and blow it in the other direction, but in the age of disposables that produce almost no vapor, you’ll be fine.
I noticed the 'dust' in the computer was a different color on top vs the front as I tried not to blow smoke directly at the front fans but over the top and that's where it settled out in the dust filter. My mother didn't smoke but she has one of those little wooden men so when you light incense it'd flow out its mouth and the front grill of her computer is just filled with orange-yellow gunk from that. I really need to clean hers up since I did mine.
Great video however the “not leaving a water cooled system unattended” is a bit too conservative. This will just scare people off from water cooling. If doing initial leak testing of a loop, sure don’t walk away or at least do frequent periodic checks with paper towels etc in place. But again it comes down to some common sense and a risk profile only the person can consider for their situation. A Daly out “don’t do this” is not the right message. If you have a low probability, random and catastrophic fault with significant leakage you’ll notice your PC switch off well before you will notice a leak . If not for the fact that the majority of people are not looking at their computers anyway when they are at their desks. Either because they are distracted by what’s on the screen or the PC is not in their field of view. Upon a tried and tested system, well constructed and leak tested, the risks are fairly minimal if proper maintenance and regular checks are preformed.
I've been using my system for probably nearly 6 years now I never had a leak. Thinking about it I never even heard of any other computer having a leak. Not saying it isn't possible, but I think this fear of leaking is a bit overboard. Now I do turn off my system when I'm not using it though.
@@kulled Yeah, I'm not saying it wont happen ever, but if anyone wants to get a liquid cooled system it's fine. It's not going to burst spilling water all over the place. Just be a sensible computer user, clean your comp every now and again and notice if anything's broken and you're good.
I get not leaving a water cooled system unattended. Makes perfect sense. What does not make sense to me is, if something starts leaking while I am gaming or any other task, how exactly would I detect the leak before a catastrophic failure?
Most situations it would result in you being able to save your other components. Sure there will most likely be the initial victim but if you're there you can hopefully stop it from having a chain reaction of multiple components getting fried.
Jay I will add that although it IS good advice to unplug the psu from the wall, one use case prefers that you keep the psu plugged in to the wall. It's an edge case but valid nonetheless. On any system you are building when installing the psu (after running cables and plugging them in to the motherboard first). It is a good idea on a completely never been powered system to validate that the psu manual switch is in the out/off position then plugging the psu into a grounded outlet before attaching the 24 pin cable to the psu. This way if there IS a transient load on the motherboard it will have the electrical potential flow through the psu to ground rather than feed back to the mobo. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO A SYSTEM THAT HAS NEVER HAD POWER APPLIED TO IT outside manufacturing environments. Better to blow a cb or fuse on a psu than to feedback on to the mobo cpu or gpu
Note on the 2nd thing not to do: After turning off the power supply or unplugging it, it can also be a good idea to press the power button on the case/motherboard to discharge any residual power that may still be present.
Some computers retain a lot of power, some....not so much. I've had one computer I was working on retain enough power to actually turn on for about half a second.
@@gamechaser002 that's some hefty capacitors. wow.
@@gamechaser002 Mine does that :D
Powers the fans for almost a second while holding the button - kinda like watching it get starved for breath... :(
(Super Flower Leadex II Gold 1200W)
You are not wrong. When I turn off my psu, and then hit the main power, I see LED’s light up as well as all fans spin for a brief second until all power is discharged. I do that anytime I work on my PC. Better safe then sorry, especially when the GPU itself costs a ton of cash!!
I do that, especially if I want to completely power cycle and come back to the computer with a cold boot.
1. Don't interchange PSU modular cables
2. Don't plug/unplug components with the PSU powered on. Switch it off at the back or unplug from the wall.
3. Don't vape or smoke near a computer.
4. Don't put your PC or other heat generating electronics in a cabinet. It will overheat.
5. Don't run a water-cooled PC unattended.
For the first point I was a little confused, because a lot of people are rocking these very popular Lian Li Strimer cables. I wonder if that could be an issue.
@king those are extensions. that's not the same
@@KingALLO69 well those cables are simply extensions that go on the original psu cables. They don’t directly plug into the psu
@@Dreyden12274 @Arun got it, thanks! That makes sense.
My house and my PC, I will smoke my joints while at the PC if I want too
There is literally nothing that is obvious to a new builder. Every bit of tips/knowledge helps. Cheers.
I'm building my first complete new system since 2010 soon, so this is a great refresher for me lol. I've built every PC I ever owned since '95 and used to work in a local PC store. This is great advice about the PSU and it's also good to point out that leaving the IEC power lead in is a great way to keep the system grounded as well.
Always press the power button a couple of times after you unplug it to drain out the capacitors. Also, you can tell if you have juice flowing by checking the network light if it's plugged in both ends. (Thanks Joe!)
*press and hold the power button
The network light won't come on unless both ends are plugged in, and the device on the other end is powered so don't go by that.
@@joer8854 That is a point. I shall make a small edit.
@@jimbass1664 np
Especially since we are all running bigger wattage PSUs cause of today's power-hungry components. 15 years ago a 550watt was considered overkill for 2 sli gpus . Gtx 4090 sounds like 1200watts will be recommended. Mise well just future proof yourself and get a evga t2 1600 watt for your 6090 in 2026
Here's a fun one. Don't overtighten your cpu blocks. Don't have blind faith in the springs to moderate the pressure. You can still bow your motherboard, and crack traces
aka 'just get a Noctua'
It looks like my ekwb classic CPU block did me dirty on my msi z590i unify board. It'll randomly start throwing cpu errors via bios diagnostic lights, and not even show bios.
Only 'fix' is to reseat CPU, and that's temporary
Happened to me with a stock Ryzen cooler, just had to loosen a bit if not mobo wasn't posting
@@G0nZ4Low glad it worked out for you, backing off the screws on my waterblock isn't fixing it though. Damage may be permanent
and crack faces
Another good tip is to power cycle after unplugging, before removing or installing components. Even if you unplug the power, there's still power for a brief time and if you just start pulling stuff out or install something... same thing can happen. And I've worked on smoker's/vaper's computers... yes, they both get a thick coating over time that insulates the crap out of everything and slows fans and eventually will stop them up. One of the worst things you can do around any electronic or mechanical device, especially if it's sucking in air for active cooling.
Yup, allow capacitors to discharge, they are like little temporary batteries
I'm a smoker ( for my sins) I clean and wipe down my pc with ipa once a fortnight give it a good blow out with an air duster ,and deep clean it once every three months. so far I've avoided any nasty tarry residue. ( with a predominately white build it needs to be done :)
Good shout.
@@grumpyratt2163 that's impressive if you managed to keep it clean
@@grumpyratt2163 I used to smoke, now i vape. I used to smoke a pack a day, but it never really affected my pcs. A couple of years ago a bought a used computer, and OMG this guy must have smoked 3-4 packs a day. Everything was COVERED in nicotine and smelled horrible. I litteraly pullede everything apart and washed every components multiple times. It took about 4 days, but finally the smell went away
Thanks for another great video Jay. I love the advice about vaping. An old engineer told me that back in the 80's, computer pros were accustomed to the "no smoking in the computer room" rule. This was from the previous experience of smoke tar actually slowing down connections and causing irreversible bugs. Not really an issue today, but defintely telling.
As both a journeyman electrician, and an electrical engineer, I can confidently suggest disconnecting all voltage sources when making or breaking any form of electrical connections, regardless of system. Changing the resistance of a connection while current flows is a good way to see the "arc'y sparkies" and let the magic smoke out.
I heard somewhere that leaving a PC plugged into a properly grounded outlet is safer than me being the only ground... no?
@@burtpanzer That's why you ground yourself before doing anything to a PC internally?
What if I am trying to harvest magic smoke to put in something else?
@@TorpeAlex If it's grounded, and you're touching the metal with one hand you don't have to wear a ground.
@Brian Rogers I went to trade school about 10 years before I went to university.
A tip which cost me 6 months to find. When installing the video card make sure all power supply pins into the card made a klik. I was afraid to break the socket but didn't realize the smallest part wasn't totally in the socket. So i had 4 crashes last week and just by accident I found the problem. Even my neigbour who works a lot with computers overlooked this tiny problem.
By crashes u mean the pc turned on and randomly crashed?
@bruh meme bruh, it rly hard to tell if its COMPLETLY INSERTED or just slightly.. they dont have a click..
@@cj7073 turned off, lost screen first and sometimes also the whole computer. Prob a minor short circuit.
U mean click
They normally have some sort of edge that makes them stick together or be unable to move once plugged in.
But when your new to it pretty much everything can be overlooked. Especially since most youtuber builds focus on making sure the XMP profile is loaded up...
Thank you for finally covering the PSU modular cable issues.
Now why do they NOT have a standard.
Probably because there's no need (from the PSU manufacturer's perspective) for a standard. Sure, it would be nice from a customer side, but no one is going to buy one PSU over the other because the cables are standardized. It would take someone like Intel to step in to force the standardization but there's no reason for them to care what happens on the PSU side of the cables.
@@nanoflower1 on the contrary. Modular PSUs are generally more expensive, they are touted as the top of the line.
With that expectation, we, the customers, should expect some sort of standards
After all, the wrong cable then becomes a major Safety issue.
Why did they make random bullshit in the first place instead of just using the same connectors as motherboards
@@Jules_Diplopia Not really a major safety issue when you hardly ever hear about it.
It's like evolution; if there's no evolutionary pressure, nothing happens. No adaptation
Because while every PSU manufacturer does want there to be a standard, they also want to be the one to MAKE that standard. Big money in that but because everyone's trying to do the same, it's just a mess.
Don’t let your cats lie on top of your tower case. I had a cat that used to love the warm air coming out of the top three fan holes. I ran the fans slow to reduce noise and they still kept the temps down… until one point where my computer alarm went off from overheating and I looked down and my long haired cat had splatted himself on the top of my case, blocking the airflow out of the case entirely.
Lol
gross
Is this serious? Is the cat fine?
So confused rn.
In short: don't get pets, especially cats
*yeeted*
getting a cheap multimeter is crucial when doing cable modding so you can check that the pinouts are correct. Yes for some plugs you can also just follow the cable too
Caveat, do not use said cheap meter on anything with serious current or voltage. The very cheap meters can have poor input protection and can be hazardous. I wouldn't trust an Amazon 10$ meter. That said, 30$ will get you something capable of handling more juice.
Of course if all you're going to do is check pinout, etc. even the cheapest meter will be safe.
@@ptitjo42 probably best to get a reputable brand of multimeter (e.g. Uni-T, Fluke, Tenma, Sealey, Voltcraft)
@@Tomd8002 yeah we definitely need A 300 dollar fluke to measure a max of 12v and check continuity
Somebody missed the assignment, 😂
Led plus a battery also dies the trick.
Better with buzzeers.
What you said about putting a pc in a cubby or cabinet is so true, I used to put mine in a cabinet that was attached to my desk because it didn’t fit on the desk and I didn’t want to put it on the carpet. I always complained about my room getting hot and my pc feeling laggy. After getting a new desk and putting my pc on top of it the temps have been way better and pc feels way smoother.
Reverse the fans when in a cubby.
He has a good point except that hot air by default is higher pressure than cold air lol. That just isn't how physics works.
@@cbrunnem6102 hmm internet physics; where people believe pressure from temperature is more influential than pressure generated by a fan.
@@mostlypeacefulrowan8747 not sure what you mean but Jay misspoke but is still kind of right. As the air heats up in a sealed container the pressure will go up. In a cabinet this air will push out till the pressure equalizes which will be pretty quickly then you just have an oven. Pressures we are talking about are super low. Like less than an inch of water low.
@@cbrunnem6102 a cubby hole heats up coz the only place hot air can go is to the front where the intake is. If you turn the computer around or swap direction of fans the hot air gets blasted out into the room.
I work as external IT support for many local companies and private customers and have seen quite some cases over the years. I have seen the dirt from car workshops getting sucked in by the fans and sitting there for years, but I have never seen something as disgusting as a PC from a chain smoker. The smell when I first opened a smoker PC was so disgusting I still vividly remember it.
Yea, Jay really understated how bad that crap is, all the nicotine and tar basically. - It's probably worse than vaping. Actually, I'm quite sure.
My neighbor still smokes indoors, as he lives on his own, and everything including the glass of the windows is yellow. - I can see it from outside.
And to think that people suck on that crap. -_-
@@michaelmonstar4276 I vape and build pcs , never have any of my builds have crap in them , some are years old and clean as a whistle .
Smoking on the other hand creates tar so they are going too suck crap in , not so vapes .
@@gazzertrn Back when I worked in a PC repair shop and vaping was much newer, we did see a handful of people who would cloud chase near a PC, and it did get kinda sticky in there. Those were guys with huge mods and subohm coils, though. Not likely to be a problem if you use a Juul or some other modern system that produces less vapor, so long as you aren't blowing it directly into the intake fans.
Edit: Even the worst ejuice filled PC wasn't as bad as when we got machines in from chain smokers, though. Shop manager ended up telling us to just refuse to work on those and refund the customer, it was just too disgusting and probably a hazard to the technicians.
@@samuraiBSD yeah i used to smoke and and the the tar mixed with dust is such a pain to clean. i deep cleaned my system every 6 month or so and sometimes it took 2h just to clean the heatsink of the cpu cooler. it's really bad
Yeah cigarette smoke isn't just particulates, it has various vapours including tar and nicotine. Buy a house from a smoker and you will have to strip the paint, throw out anything permeable (window coverings, carpets, underlays, etc.), and scrub all surfaces. That includes all the ducts and air handling equipment. And wear PPE while doing this - good mask, gloves, disposable coveralls - because what you are dealing with is concentrated carcinogens.
Taken my eye off the ball over the years. Built MANY systems (and NOT blown or damaged a single component in the process) but was NOT aware that PSU cables are now potentially non-interchangeable !!! I really thought the PSU pinouts were an industry standard. Luckily I've never swapped cables, always using the ones that come with the PSU, but forewarned is forearmed, and I thank you for that snippet alone, and stopping the possible financial loss that would ensue if I'd continued to be ignorant of it.
I think I just learned this lesson 1 week too late, coworker gave me his old 970 to SLI with mine, I was short a cable from my power supply so I grab an old one, no "smoke pressure" was released but....more testing to be done. This is good to know going forward with the trial/error
Wow, I never knew the power cables could be different. I assumed if they're all ATX power supplies they would be the same. I guess I got lucky because I did mix some cables in my current PC.
I work in a company's computer lab and we mix AC power cables all the time. Never once have had a problem.
Don't know if Jay means something like those PCU's with the removable cables for inside the case tho.
@Jason Fitch only someone without electrical knowledge would just say hot and ground. PSUs have 12V, 5V and 3.3V pins. If you put 12V on 5V SATA pins, your SSD or HDD will blow up.
Is he talking about the cable that plugs in to the outlet? Or the other cables inside? That you don’t want to use on other ps
@@crossbowhunter9118 inside. The modular PSU cables
They are the same, I don't know why this guy says that an MSI standard PCIe 8x is different from Seasonic PCIe8x cable, because it is not. It is the same. Never had any problems for over 32 years now!
I always find it really weird that PSU pin outs aren’t standardized.
The PSU to motherboard side is standardized, but not the modular cables themselves.
@@triadwarfare why don't they just use the same plugs as the mobo side???
@@virtualtools_3021 Good question, space may be it.
Still, it's possible to make a standard.
there is no standards body to govern it. PSUs were never designed to have removable cables in the beginning. One of the manufacturers just decided on it as a cool gimmick and everyone followed but nobody ever agreed in a standard.
It's only weird until you realise why they do it - money.
If you change the pin-outs from time to time, customers need to buy YOUR specific cables rather than your competitors' cables.
As a person who was console gamer most of my life and moved into PCs, I love the upgrading and modifying of my PC, but man o man so much could go wrong. I guess that's part of the game. I'm way more knowledgeable than ever before on computers since getting into it at least and that's thanks to channels like Jay's, GN, Hardware unboxed etc.
As long as the PC is not powered on or plugged in while you work and you're not mismatching architectures or using a very staticky sweater in winter, you'll be fine
@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 i used to wash my mb in the sink let it dry and pop it back in, they are pretty resilient
@@Galgamoth Yup. Water can't kill electronics by itself. The device also needs to be powered on. If you remove one of the factors, the shorting will not occur, and the hardware won't die.
You do have to make sure it is completely, 100% dry by the time it's plugged in, though.
Building a pc and upgrading it is so easy. Even updating the bios is not even stressful. I'm not even that knowedgable on computers and I've built and upgraded the pc I'm using right now over the years. I even just updated the bios on my b350 board so it can run the r7 5700x3d I'm getting tomorrow in the mail.
Note on the potential leaks on water cooler system. (I'm a plumber ) put a water detector that sends a message to your phone if water is detected. The more expensive the device the better chance of it telling you earlier rather than later. Not full proof but that might let you turn off your computer (even remotely don't know if possible) before damage can take place and assess where your leak is coming from. All products can have problems just be prepared when they fail never hope that they wont.
There should be a standard for #1. It's a safety hazard currently when companies use whatever connectors they feel like using and the cables have no labels to indicate what pinout or what unit it works with.
I agree 100000%.
tell that to apple
but then people can't burn there houses down if that were a standard
I accidentally got the wrong PSU box when replacing a PSU. So now I have a big box or accidentally mixed cables. So I need to measure them.
@@rednarok Dell even went further with moderboards and PSU that switched the orders of the cables on the *motherboard* side. Just to block use of arbitrary PSU. But resulting in fire for some motherboards and PSU.
Well, I like to use my 3080 as a room heater. It works quite well too, especially considering how with the snow storm this works as well as any other heating source for me
Lmao same here, haven't turned on a heater in my bedroom this winter yet, and it's gotten down as low as 25 degrees Fahrenheit
@nomasporfavor That actually kinda means more heat is being pulled from the chip
U guys have winter?
@nomasporfavor that means its working better as a heater
yep, winter so i shut the vents in the office. play some zombies/forza/eu4/dbd and that room becomes a heater.
(I have an Asus hybrid 3080ti)
I would add "Don't use incense in the same room as the computer." I've had to clean plenty of PCs from my past clients where the motherboard and other components had a film buildup of resin coming from the incense, causing the parts to fail. Component failure was even more likely when the air became humid (during or after it rains, etc.). The humidity and resin buildup from the incense will actually corrode the circuits and boards and eventually cause a short circuit. Also, the resin cannot be cleaned with any kind of chemical or product. I would still recommend using an air purifier in the room where the computer is even when the incense is burnt in the room on the opposite side of the house.
Vapes too. Not quite as gross as tar from cigarettes but sticky and unpleasant
I assume it wasn't mentioned due to RUclips being RUclips, but the same goes for weed. I have a friend that practically breathes more weed than he does air, and he gifted me a video card once...astoundingly, the fans turned, but not only did it stink my room up almost immediately, but after a couple gaming sessions it left syrupy puddles at the bottom of the case.
@@OOZ662 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮
@Casual Scum Unless you're reaching condensing levels of humidity where your computer is literally dripping wet, then nothing. In OP's case, the resin is trapping moisture to where it can't get away from the components and thus corroding them. Outside the realm of computers, though, I'd recommend getting a dehumidifier if you don't want your entire life to be mold (I was there before I got mine), and even though they're hundreds of dollars, get a real one that's comparable to the size of a mid-to-large desktop computer case and pulls gallons of water per day. The
No matter what you do, if you surf the net you're going to get nonsense into your computer.
Note on the 1st: BeQuiet has a compatibility site on their site. They tell you which cables you can interchange between your old BeQuiet PSU and the new one.
Also, when making sure the power supply is powered down, you can also discharge remnant by holding down the power button to clear any power to make certain there's no hiding juice.
How does that work electrically?
I would really love if companies actually agreed on a standard for modular PSUs. And for the case front panel connectors. I freaking hate those tiny single cable plugs.
I agree. The ATx standard is already there for slot locations, lengths, and SATA connectors among other things, so why not apply that to other things like pinouts for the internal side of modular power supplies. The case manufacturers have gotten pretty good with their connectors more recently. Instead of plugging in all those tiny connections on the headers we can't see, they're now using a single-piece header that plugs in across all the pins at one. This isn't true of all brands, but the bigger names have gotten smart that way.
But you must live the knowledge gained in gauging, tracking, maybe using a multi-meter.
I agree, but there's something about the plug and play nature of things seems ....... idk, further from the metal. Like a built a PC, but I don't feel like I built a PC, It was easier than Ikea lol; Legos for adults.
I can't imagine someone not absolutely loving those tiny single pin cables /s
@@Clavichordist correction: *You* can't see the little cable headers.
@@thehotdogman9317 That's right we can't, but what's stopping the manufacturers of these modular power supplies from following a standard pin layout?
It doesn't matter what their power supplies do on the inside or outside. The only difference is how they lay things out for their wire connections. If they adhered to a standard just like there is now for pinouts for the ATX power supplies, then if someone had older cables leftover, they could use those instead. This is the same as standard network CAT5 or CAT6, serial ports, RS422 ports, and so on.
To sum it up, they all need to use a set standard for pinouts to the connectors. Simple, Pin 1 = +5, Pin 2 = -12, Pin 3 = Ground, etc.
The "unplug the PSU" one, it's been a reflexe since day 1: turn off the computer, switch the PSU off, press the on/off button on the front I/O panel (with my Antec NX210 the rgb fans would turn on for like a sec before turning off) just to "remove" the juice left, then finally unplug the PSU.
You don't actually want to unplug the cable since you will lose ground then. Just turn it off and do a power cycle.
I prefer to switch off the power at the wall socket (an advantage of UK sockets is that most have their own switch) but leave them plugged in, to provide a known good earth (ground) connection for the whole system.
But I've only been working on them since CP/M powered anything smaller than a room-sized computer, so what do I know.
Holding in the power button after everything is switched off will usually discharge the huge capacitors in the PSU as well, which is a jolly good idea.
Why do you press the case's button after switching off the PSU? It doesn't get power, anyway.
@@galgrunfeld9954 There is still considerable power in the huge smoothing capacitors in the PSU even after it has been unplugged - enough to briefly start a PC for up to a second, or enough to present a serious health hazard, so do NOT test this by poking around inside.
@@Kreubs what is a power cycle drain?
On the Vape note get a small standalone hepa air filter blow it right at in the intake. It can take hours with ipa and cleaning tools to get the condescending juices off compents. The hepa filter cuts the build up down by 99%
And then you have the same work or issues with the air cleaner 😂
I vape and smoke for years next to my pc and aside from more work with cleaning, there is no issue.
At least if you have air intake filter that keeps most of the dust outside
Just finished my first pc build and u help ALOT! i knew absolutely nothing about computers and was very overwhelmed by all of this stuff and u made it alot easier so i want to thank you for all of your content!
Welcome to a wonderful hobby. Whether it's building from the ground up to modding. We were all noobs in the beginning too. Enjoy!
I was a total noob too, when I started over a year ago. It’s nerve racking stuff at first, but building PC’s is easy and fun to do now. It just requires patience. PC’s are sooo advanced now a days.
I have been building mine for months, I'm nervous and am researching and proceeding at a snails pace.
@@Thesyndicate11111 Not how fast or slow it takes you, but the joy in the journey and the final outcome. Your very first PC. I know mine was truly awesome that I actually built a computer from scratch.
@@bretttanton328 Couldn't have said it better. Cheers
Good point on the water cooling. That's exactly why my server is air cooled. Dropping the temp a few degrees is great but it's not worth the risk in my opinion. Especially since my server typically doesn't have the cpu pegged at 100%. Uses cases may vary of course
To me, the point of liquid cooling is never that it cools better, but that a radiator-configuration spits the hot air right out of the case, rather than keeping it inside first, with a hot GPU, while it's waiting to be transferred outside with some kind of airflow. - Of course, for a server that won't be as much of a problem, as it usually doesn't have a raging GPU inside that needs all the cooling it can get. - But generally high-performance PCs do and need to get rid of that hot air as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But a server needs to be left alone and be reliable, so it makes sense to keep it away from any liquids and potential failures.
@@michaelmonstar4276 You can simply make internal ductwork for your case to isolate it into 2 or more airflow zones. This improves thermals by 3-5C for me.
I must admit I needed to stream Ultra Music Festival Miami high res in 2014 after my old tower died. So I put my laptop on ice packs. Rotated them out. Monitored the moisture and it kept going. Not advised but it worked.
Me to my PC after I did all 5 of these things: I'm sorry, little one.
I have a 16 year old gaming rig build with closed liquid cooling by Falcon Northwest that I had on for most of the years and never had any issues. Still gaming on it.
Thanks Jay! I bought a 1000w Seasonic to upgrade my 850w Seasonic and was getting ready to do this without switching cables.
to be fair, its very likely they'll just work, specially going from seasonic to 150extra w seasonic
@@greenumbrellacorp5744 true, but I'm risk adverse.
Modular PSUs come with bags to store parts in. I keep the PSU cables and documentation of a specific brand together in each bag. Also, no water-cooling for me. Air-cooled is the closest to maintenance-free PCs. The rest are time-honored practices I've done since my first DIY. Also, an additional practice I do is skip overclocking. The last time I had a real NEED to OC was with the original software-based Quake. I stopped after 3D cards and GLQuake came out and the game was very playable. If people want to strain their PC further, that's their business. Me? I tend to keep my PCs reliably doing it's job, sitting at a corner forgotten.
Instead of simply calling it overclocking, I like to think of it as tuning your components. Because it's possible to lower the voltage of your CPU or GPU (referred to as undervolting) and end up with lower temperatures. And for those components, you can sometimes increase performance while lowering the temps, compared to stock. Though for RAM, when you tune that or enable XMP, the voltage goes up and so does the temp, but I wouldn't consider that anything to worry about and it's generally always worth doing in order to hit the listed specs for it (but going much above the XMP voltage can be risky).
I had a aio cooling for my cpu that lasted 7 years with no issues or maintenance.
AIOs are pretty bulletproof. They might need some maintenance after 5-10 years.
Water Cooled or Closed Loop AIO?
Two different things.
I always test my modular cables with a multimeter before I use them, for the most part, most of the PCI-e and CPU power modular cables have been pretty much the same across multiple power supplies, but the molex/sata cables have been always different
Just double check them before you jam them in, dont just assume that its fine because it fits.
Hey Jay!
Just a headsup!
There's a shutdown command you can use for systems when they're unattended. It doesn't eliminate risk, but it reduces it!
Simply pop the following into your CMD prompt! Dead simple!
"Shutdown /s /t 3600"
- Tells the computer to shutdown, and set a timer for 3600 seconds. Tinker with the arguments for different times and results! :)
Add "/f" (force) if you want it to happen unattended. Otherwise, some programs can prevent shutdown until a user intervenes.
I always say take the plug out of the wall and press the power on button a few times to clear the PSU capacitors before doing anything.
In the case of a leakage with a watercooled system - my guess is, that it makes no difference if you are there or not in most incidents.
I mean - how should you being present prevent the fluid from dripping onto the GPU and shorting it out?
I'd rather say: Build the system with as few weakpoints as possible.
If you are concerned about leaks - build with soft tubing ...
Yeah, I mean even the example he gives doesn't support that. He only realized cause he went to clean it not cause he was there when it started happening.
A much better advice would be to do regular checks to the inside of your PC, easier nowaways since so many cases have tempered glass. Just take a peek inside your pc
Thing is IF you are there, and you DO notice it (which, unless you're looking for it, I'd say it'd be easy to miss) you can mitigate the damage. But, in most cases, people aren't going to notice or be looking for a leak.
@@Belkak021 It's so you can pour a bag of kitty litter on the leak. ;)
Aren't many of the fluids non conductive anyways
Best thing is to not have liquid cooling.
As an enthusiast who has only built a couple of aircooled systems in his time, usually preferring even basic watercooling to air, I will say that there is a great deal of salience to the last point. My father is an engineer who designs power quality management and cooling systems for datacenters. His work can be found in datacenters operated by Microsoft, Samsung, MSI, and others. As an engineer who is used to continuous uptime low maintenance environments, my preference for watercooling seemed insane to him. He went as far as to say he would never mix liquid and computing. As enthusiasts, we have the luxury to be present during uptime; but we should draw the line between uptime and offline time at the extent of our presence.
I literally have not shut down my PC one single time in the 6 years it's been built (outside of Windows Updates of course) and I have not ever once had an issue. I've also done this with every computer I've had since I built my first gaming PC with an AIO 17 years ago.
I have an AIO in my PC and I leave it unattended all the time. Honestly, even if a leak did happen while I was using it, I probably wouldn't notice. I'm not staring at my tower when I use my PC, I'm staring at the monitor. And even then, chances are pretty good that any leak would either be immediately catastrophic (in which case it wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not) or it would drip in such a way that it just exits out the bottom of the case without hitting anything important (in which case it also wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not, the liquid might ruin something on my desk but the PC itself would be fine until the loop ran dry, and then it would probably shut down from overheating).
Granted, I also don't keep my PC in an office where I might not see it for days at a time either. It's in my bedroom, and even if I don't use it I have to walk right past it multiple times a day, so there would be plenty of opportunity to catch a non-catastrophic leak.
Honestly, I've been running an AIO for almost 10 years and always leave my PC on, I run games servers and other things I don't want to turn off... Also, even with PC off, the power is still live just like Jay said, so a leak even when off while you're away will also immediately be catastrophic and short out the boards etc.
Agree... I run my computer 24x7 except when I'm clearning it or something. Current system with AIO running for 2 years now, I just don't worry about it... If the unlikely event happens that it leaks fluid I'll deal with it then, but won't change how I keep things on all day / night.
I posted about this but i had a drip that i couldn't even tell was there until the computer died. You really have no idea until it kills everything. Still sticking with liquid cooling though.
Hey, Jay!;
Thank you for all you do.
My wife heard you talking about power supply cables.
She said; "With great power comes great responsibility".
I say LABEL the modular cables w/ the brand & model.
Even if its just a piece of tape w/ the brand name & model number.
I've got a Seasonic w/ modular cables; I keep them in the bag they came in.
If possible, organize modular cables WITH the power supply they came w/.
Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!
Great video thank you Jay. While I can never dispute with how well liquid cooling works I will never go near it - precisely because of the risks you mentioned. Noise from a PC does not concern me and gimme all the big slow RPM fans in the world but nope to liquid cooling!
It's not that bad. I have been using AIO coolers for the past year. Most likely thing to happen is the pump failing.
As Gabriel also replied it typically isn't bad. You do run significantly higher risk on custom loops than with AIOs. I've run water cooled AIOs from Corsair going on about 4 years straight without issue in both my system and my wife's system. I do run air cooling on my server that runs 24/7, but I need the water cooling for the massive overclocks we run on our gaming rigs. We do sometimes leave them unattended, however we try to shut them down at night and when we aren't on them. I've never had an issue, but you can have issues and you should be mindful to mitigate risks. Don't be afraid to move to water cooling if you want it quieter or need it for overclocking, but don't feel like you have to switch if your air cooler is getting the job done well.
I've been running CPU AiOs exclusively since 2013. I've never had one fail or leak. Realistically, if an AiO is going to leak onto expensive components, you probably aren't going to catch it in time even if you're there. And even if you turn it off, it will still leak and the next day you fire it up and... well, you might really fire things up. If you're really worried about it, non-conductive cooling fluid can be purchased, though with an AiO you might have to get crafty.
For the cubby/cabinet bit, that's actually not a terrible idea if you don't have room on your actual desk. I don't, and I do have that little open door area for my pc. The manufacturer actually included a back end for the desk, so air can get out. I basically took that, covered only the necessary parts with it, and cut out the rest. I also have no shelving in there. Air can get in easily, when door is open and pc is on. Air can get out easily, because nothing but the desk is above it (quite a bit of space in between too), and a huge opening in the back. You also have to make sure your case is thin enough, because airflow does have to go through the sides a bit too.
run prime95 and see if it thermal throttles
I am a mechanic by trade. I have a suggestion for the installation of O-rings with the custom water cooling. Obviously make sure your hard pipes have a smooth edge after cutting to size. I use a product called Sil-Glyd. it is silicone lubricant that I use to lube O-rings in my trade work. it helps protect the O-ring during installation.
It sounds like good advise, but it feels a little overkill too. It's a very specific extra purchase. A bowl full of water with a drop of dish soap is standard practice for getting the inserts into hardline tubing for bending them. A dab of that mix with a finger also works well as o-ring lube.
@@tassadarforaiur but dish soap is also a de greaser so when removing it is possible to split the o ring. I understand though if you wont be removing it. I also use nautical lubricant for o rings in cooling systems
Or the grease that comes with calipers for the slide bolts
@@Alucard-gt1zf No. Certain types of o-ring materials will absolutely perish if any oil is used. You can't know the material, unless it's specifically stated. There's like epdm, viton, nbr and ie. silicon options available in pretty much all systems. Some withstand ie. grease, some don't.
Weirdly enough I once, years ago, had extremely convenient, one might say considerate, failure.
I had three hard drives, basically every drive in the system, fail within two months. But they failed in such a way and order that I lost zero data and ended up with just moving my data to a mix of SSDs and larger hard drives. Of course I still lost money but given how big an upgrade moving to SSDs is and how lucky having multiple hard drives fail without data loss is I am not complaining.
In case anyone is wondering one of the SSD advantages is that they do not cause a large transient load when they start up since they do not need to spin up anything. This matters when you repeatedly have multiple hard drives connected to the same power circuit spinning up at the same time. This is the original reason people advocated leaving PCs on. Not really relevant with SSDs and modern power supplies I think? Just do not connect a bunch of hard drives to the same thin wire. IIRC servers started using staggered spin up years ago. It is a SATA feature but not sure if all consumer systems implement it.
this video is so much needed for ppl just getting into pc building , learning from pros like Jay who already have made all kinds of silly mistakes
Also handy reminder for those of us who haven't built a system in years, thinking about a new flight sim
I've been vaping near my setup for 7+ years but I've never experienced any of that.
not all heroes wear vape capes
Your PC should have its own dedicated outlet if possible, or at least its own surge protector. A single US home outlet can support up to 15 amps or about 1800 watts. But its recommended to stay below 1500 watts. So maybe plug the window AC, printer, space heater, vacuum, and minifridge into a different outlet... And even then, we're assuming the 1500 watt limit doesn't apply to the whole room. When in doubt, you can flip breakers to see which outlets are on the same circuit.
@JayzTwoCents Good tips. On 11:00 - 12:00 something to clarify. Hot air is less dense than cold air and when air expands it creates positive pressure. If a PC case is in a closed space, like a cabinet, even if the door is opened or it does not have doors and the back is open, hot air will heat nearby surfaces, they will radiate heat back to the environment and the case panels. The case(inside and outside) will get hotter and hotter because of the hot air loops back in the system and the heat radiation of surfaces. Then the air will get hotter and hotter and less dence, lowering it's mass per volume results in it's heat exchange capability getting lower with time. The system will overheat sooner or later.
i cant escape physics class 💀
I think a lot of people made these mistakes, myself included, but I appreciate Jay saying that him and his team are guilty of it at one point or another.
Yeah. I too was working on my older PC the other day and was flipping the switch on and off as I tested things, forgetting to do it at one point and shoved a power cable right into my GPU. Had a mini heart attack when I saw it was plugged in. Card died, but fortunately it was an older one. Still feel like shit tho. Glad to hear this happens to Jay as well lol..
Great advice on Power Supplies and Cabling are to be treated with special care. I matched my new EVGA PS with my new EVGA Graphics Card & paid very close attention to the new PS cables and made sure that I matched the cables to the plugs on my Graphics card, Motherboard, etc. I didn't want to fry any components. All worked out well. Your advice is top notch. Thanks.
Yeah the psu off thing is really important. I have a specific use case for needing my system to power on when AC power is restored. Once when doing a cpu swap, I forgot to power off the psu and I saw sparks under the cpu as the system tried to start. That cpu is now dead.
Did that with my 1070TI years ago
Jay: "Do you leave your PC turned on overnight? NO!" also Jay a few months ago: "So, I left this watercooled giant PC alone for dinner and forgot it, returned 1 month later"
i leave my pc turned on every day and night theres no reason not to my fans stay idle when nothing is happening on pc
I'm running a zomboid server on my old gaming pc. Has been on 24/7 for months now
I have garbage internet speeds (thankfully no data caps) because there's only 1 provider for my area. To fully download something like doom eternal 80+ gigs it takes me nearly a week of uptime.
My main rig is on 24/7, and it does have a custom loop in it. Not too worried about it failing since a) I built the whole thing from scratch and took some precautions and b) I built it for the cooling benefit, not at all for looks, which is why it's set up with 16x10mm EPDM rubber tubing (the same black stuff you'd find on cars) and running G11 (blue) car coolant premix, because I've had bad experiences with boutique pc-specific coolant not even lasting a year before deposits started blocking the fins in the blocks. The car coolant has been going for 2 years now with no discoloration or deposits. Only maintenance I had to do so far was clean the rad and fans
I do switch my pc off when I am not using it, as I do have consideration for the environment unless it is a server, switch it off!
Instead of using different pinouts on the MB side they should have just used "passthrough cables". Use the same MF connector on both sides. Like extension cables but for MB's
Really glad to see comments contradicting Jay on leaving systems unattended.
I guess if you're only using your system for gaming you're less likely to *need* to leave it unattended, but there are many of us who have legitimate reasons to want to run a system for weeks/months/years: should water-cooling just be an out-and-out no-no for those builds?
Agreed, that point was a bit ridiculous. Maybe it might be good practice to use air cooling if you're going to leave your system unattended often, but realistically speaking I doubt the probability of a leak killing your system is higher than the large variety of other factors that could cause your system to fail.
I’ve had the same liquid cooler for 5 years with no leaks so I’d say it’s fine
The thing with water cooling is regular maintenance. You inspect it (are there wet spots around fittings or radiators, are there indications of degradation on the tubes etc). You perform regular maintenance (renewing tubes & liquid every few months) and of course you thoroughly test it after each risky activity (maintenance, moving the case...). Lastly, some external monitoring with emergency shutdown may be sensible.
Relevant anecdote: ran a system without any maintenance for 10 years. So yeah, it might work if you're lucky.
@@HupfderFloh Meh. There are no moving parts in a water-cooled rig, so there is nothing to maintain beyond any other PC. Renewing tubes & liquid every few months? Are you nuts? You clearly don't have a water-cooled rig. It's a sealed loop, there is zero water loss. And then you say you ran one into the ground for ten years? You're just typing to hear yourself click. You simply use quality parts, & build the rig properly, & you have little to worry about.
@@JeighNeither "no moving parts", suure...
Basically you retain all the failure modes from an air cooled system and then you add many more (pump failure, clogging, corrosion, dissipation, thermic pressure changes etc).
With careful setup and proper initial testing, sure, the failure probability is low and you could very well get away with it for a long time without issues - see my anecdotal evidence. Also if you know what you're doing™ you can certainly engineer a very reliable system (looking at IBM z15, for example). However as an amateur, I wouldn't trust my rig running unattended in my parent's basement while I'm out on vacation.
The renewing of tubes and liquid parts is mostly for aesthetic reasons, but inspections are necessary e.g. to reveal bent tubes after moving/modifying something or check for sediments, improper water levels etc.
Learned #1 the hard way.
In my defense, every other cable in a PC is interchangeable. I can use any Sata Cable with any peripheral. Never imagined those cables would be the exception....
I mixed up monitor cables with my pc cable so idk which is truly which. No problems yet lol
@@MrKfloz We swap AC cables at my job in an IT Lab all the time. Never once had a problem.
@@scaryhobbit211 It wasn't the AC cables. It was the modular cables going from the Power Supply to the various bits inside.. Specifically, the ones that caused problems were the ones going from the Power Supply to the Hard Drive and Disk Drive. .
Well, unfortunately - *unlike virtually everything else* - there's no standard on the modular side of power supply cables. Some manufacturer just innovated (and might have pantented the pin-out?) and others copied it their own way, with different pin-outs, so now we got this mess.
That's why I just got extension cables from cablemod. Replacement cables for your specific PSU are more expensive and possibly need to be replaced when you change your PSU for any reason. Who's gonna see the difference anyway?
@@thomasbedient9191 I see where I got mixed up.
I couldn't tell from his phrasing that he was talking about *Modular* PSUs only and not *all* PSUs.
I mainly work with just normal PSUs with cables that are attached permanently to the PSU. So when I hear "power supply modular cables", the only "modular" cable I'm familiar with is the AC.
Tho admittedly I've just recently swapped out a dying PSU in my main PC for a fresh one (both are just regular, not modular), so there was a bit of paranoia at play.
One tip to make sure your system is fully drained from power - When the PSU is unplugged or turned off, try pressing the start button to have the system attempt to start. This will drain all power from the system.
congratulations on repeating Jay like a parrot. You are a real smart one, it's obvious.
I'm working in a computer (repair) shop and can only confirm that with the vaping. We've had various defective laptops because of it. Unfortunately, there were also laptops with warranty, which of course does not apply to liquid damage.
Can confirm, warrenty will be voided if the thing is choked with tar
That or a cigarettes' smokers where you keep wiping it down and nasty brown residue keeps coming off.
What if what is being vaped is mostly CBD with a fraction of THC in it but no nicotine involved? And what if it's a desktop PC rather than a laptop?
@@damienholland8103 It doesn't matter what you vape. The basic substance that produces the smoke is deposited on the components. On desktop PCs there is more space and most of the smoke "only" touches the coolers and not directly the PCB. In other words. Desktop PCs are not as susceptible, but depending on how much you smoke, a desktop PC can of course break.
@@bradclapp4022 Yes, it's disgusting too, but since it's not a liquid, the likelihood of it shorting out, for example, is much lower. On the other hand, it makes cleaning much more difficult and clogs smaller coolers much faster.
The problem with modular PSUs is that there is no standardization at the PSU end, only on the end point connectors. As such, each manufacturer can change the pinout at their whim. The PSU connectors are basically standard MOLEX connectors, but the pinouts can be all over the place. I just got a modular PSU for my new build thinking great if the PSU blows I just have to swap out the PSU with the same brand, but that is fraught with danger if the new PSU is a new GEN from same maker with different pinouts and POOF! there goes your system. So if you have an older modular PSU that needs to be replaced and only new GENs are available, the advantage of modular cabling is negated. Hopefully PSU makers can at least stabilize their designs to last at least 5-10 years.
It's just fkn insane... imagine in the future when people have PSU's and cables lieing around and someone ask for spare parts... how the hell was this allowed to happen, blows my mind.
Easy, lack of regulation. But freedom eh
@@markcorrigan3930 not really a question of regulation so much as no standardisation. ISO standards, for instance, move slowly and while they are working the companies have time to invest in their own products. This leads to fierce fights regarding the final version of the standard.
Change of pinout for a companies own products though I really can't get.
@@markcorrigan3930 but what's stopping the companies to gather up and agree on a different plug :S
They do make water sensors that you could put in your case that can be connected to your wifi to alert you if moisture is present in your computer. These are typically used for water heaters.
I have a flow meter and an aquaero programmed to shut it off of the water flow slows. Furthermore, my case is configured in such a way that all of the potential leak points won't drip on components.
@bruh memeWe are talking about less than 2 feet of square space to cover. Two sensors would be adaquate , and $100 is not much compared to the $2000+ for a mid-tier rig. I'm sure a skilled modder could come up with a way to make it work. Bonus, some of the sensors can alert you to temperature target settings (if it's overheating) and if it is moved (like stolen, or your psyco cat knocks it over).
I always watch my system shutdown fully before I walk away. With modern SSDs, it's seconds. Worth the wait. Also I see a lot of people water cool that never overclock. Most people should just air cool with bulky air coolers. If cpu fans die your cpu can still keep at safe temp with passive cooling. My cpu fan died once and I noticed after a few hours as I walked away, I have Aida 64 dashboard always up on 2nd monitor and temp went to 70 and stayed steady, while I was afk in a game. About 30% usage. Never throttled. Case fans were pushing enough to keep it from burning up.
My PC used to turn on randomly (thanks, Windows 10! 🙄) for a year and I couldn't figure out why. Everything in the BIOS was disabled.
So I just bought a switchable socket adapter and cut the power to the power strip that feeds the PC before I leave or go to bed.
It also cuts down on standby power draw from monitors and such.
Modern CPU's and GPU's will thermal throttle before they burn up. Had a CPU fan die and before I noticed the CPU had throttled down to 500mhz, changed the fan and 6 years later that same CPU is still fine.
@@LRM12o8 yeah had the same issue with my PC waking itself back up no more than ten minutes after I put it to sleep. The fix for me was disabling automatic updates in group policy and disallowing most ports in the device manager from waking the computer.
@@Sir_Tachyon I'm not sure, if I tried group policies, but I defo did the thing in devmgr too.
If I recall correctly, I found the culprit was my ten year old mechanical keyboard, which for some reason (n-key rollover, I guess) has four devices in devmgr, but the checkbox would randomly be reactivated again, so for me it was just a temporary fix. Must've been a bug. It has no flashy "smart"/connected mombojumbo that could cause such behavior (I love this keyboard).
I also had a problem with my AsRock Mainboard that could kill the display output or cause the computer to reboot when plugging in devices and when I got zapped when touching the PC. Guess the board's grounding/shielding didn't work properly. Maybe this issue could also have made it that random voltage spikes in the grid or smth similar could act as a power on signal in the Mainboard. I swapped it out after years of struggling and suspecting other components like the case and PSU.
Since I moved into my own place and finally have my PC in a separate room, I don't always cut the power overnight anymore. Whatever caused the problem seems to have been fixed by an update sometime in the last two years. I only came home to my computer running once or twice and that was within the first months after moving.
Still good practice to cut the power, especially when you're not home.
I'm about to used water cool to a non OC unit. But my reason would because I will do 3d renders and video edits. Especially I'll use 5800x which they say run hot. Is it better to use air cool instead of water cool?
Had a buddy push a RAM module in one time and he ended up breaking/cracking is MoBo PCB from it bending with the force. He learned the hard way to give the board some support when popping them in. Some of them require a little bit of force.
sounds more like someone didn't bother putting in all the mobo standoffs...
Holy crap mate, I've never needed to apply force to install a RAM module before. Sounds more like your friend thought "is this tight enough" when it was already in place and just kept going to make sure. (Kinda how people inexperienced with bolts/nuts do, where they keep turning it until their arm almost pops off. Ever seen a car mechanic tightening the bolts on the wheels? They literally jump on the cross thingy [not sure what the name of that is].)
@@hitlord nah some definitely need force I was very afraid when putting in my ram cause it didn't go in until I put on a lot of force 🙁
@@no_mnom The exact same experience here, I even thought I had broke something, but it's all good.
I had a nightmare on first rule mentioned here. I upgraded my psu from Corsair 550 to ROG 850. I used all the correct cables for rog except the drives because i thought surely they are the same, nope!! Luckily it didnt harm my system but it took me about 2hrs to figure out and swap in the build so didnt end up being a short cut 😂
It's common to forget that the 5Vstb voltage is expected to be always on. So even when the computer is turned off, the PSU has a side circuit for 5Vstb so that the computer can have wake-on-lan, wake-on-keyboard etc.
And one side effect here is that inserting an expansion board can result in the computer turning on the PSU fully.
Some motherboards has a LED explicitly showing 5Vstb, so there is a LED still on when the computer is off. It's there to warn that it isn't safe to plug/unplug boards.
The normal 5V/12V/... are off, so no power to disks etc. But the 24-pin connector has this 5V live. And 5Vstb is sent to all card slots.
And that's why it's important to remember to disconnect the cable and then have the juice run out of the PSU.
I know the power supply thing is true. But, before I got my first modular PSU, I thought the whole point of modular PSUs was a universal system so that you could just buy whichever cables you needed. How wrong I was 🤷
no they dont, each cable and psu has their own specs so unless you know what youre doing then just buy same/made specifically cables
although many modders use custom cables just fine so sort of correct as well
I absolutely HATE proprietary plugs, but if they needed to exist ANYWHERE, it's in modular power supply cables.
It would make it a little more difficult for companies that make custom psu cables, but I think it would be worth it.
Wouldn’t a standardized plug between all psu get rid of those problems though?
That would be the case if every power supply was built exactly the same. Although they are similar, they are all different in some way.
@@King_DarkSide ya I get that. And any expense added to the standardized manufacturing process would undoubtedly be passed on to the consumer. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t kinda situation.
@@King_DarkSide That's what standardization means... Although each power supply is different than another in terms of efficiency and total power output, they DO the same thing. they supply the same thing. they are already standardized in terms of dimensions and hole placement (ATX SFX). are already somewhat standardized in terms of output cables too. 20+4 pin, 4+4 pin, sata power, molex power, etc... is it so much to ask that the other end of those cables is standard too? they are just wires in plastic blocks, you can put them anywhere you want. can we just all agree what goes where?
@Desktopia agree 100%
I had my PC in a cabinet. It’s a miracle that this thing didn’t completely die. Whenever I looked at the CPU temps it displayed a constant 100 degrees. That little I3 was suffering but it worked as long as it needed to. Had the nice side effect that I didn’t need to put on the heating during Winter. My I7 doesn’t run that hot so now I have to heat during the winter.
In my Corsair power supply manual:
If this power supply uses modular cables, use only manufacturer supplied cables. Other cables might not be compatible and could cause serious damage to your system and power supply.
Yes, sadly most amateurs never bother to RTFM.
#1 I had personal experience with this. Upgrading from a Corsair semi-mod to a Seasonic full mod. Forgot to replace the sata wire and tried to run the old ones. Luckily just kept tripping some sort of surge protection and didn't affect anything.
Thanks for the last tip, I once upon time was thinking about water cooling. As someone who often leaves PC running over night this is good warning for me. I think I will pass on that water cooling.
I thought the same but I don't think being there would help any. You still have to notice it so it doesn't really matter whether you are there or not.
Regular checkups are enough since leaks are soooooooooo rare.
Although, unless you have a high end cpu and plan to oc, a good air cooler will do the job. Depending on where you live at least, here good air coolers are prohibitively expensive and there's a brand that has AIOs at decent prices
Great tip about not vaping!
The vape juice is also slightly conductive! The PC I had at the time had vape build up, helped me quit vaping!
Wrong. And nonsense. If it would be even slightly conductive, vapes wouldn't work
@@Duke49th not at all. I used to vape inside a lot, noticed a build up on walls, tested both the juice itself as well as a separate test of the vapor build up. Both did carry a current. The reason you don't short out your atomizer when using it, is because of the high resistance that vape juice has.
You can say and think what you'd like and I appreciate that you put forth thought in the situation. Perhaps a little more mature and respectful questioning would allow you to not look like an ass AND be in the wrong.
Cause surely being in the right makes it okay to be an ass.
When I bought my PC, it was from Origin PC. It was during their black friday "sale" a few years ago, so they gave a free "upgrade" to the cooling in the form of some unbranded 120mm AIO with an Asetek pump. Well, less than a year later, that AIO decided it was a piece of crap and should act like one. It leaked all over my GPU and pretty much killed my system. Had to replace the GPU, get a new CPU cooler, and replace the PSU because it decided to die as well. I reached out to Origin for any form of support, but they ignored me for a couple weeks before telling me there was nothing they could do.
Moral of the story: Don't trust Origin, don't trust cheap AIO's, and air cooling is superior.
Exactly! There is no justification for water cooling over air when things like this are a real possibility. Most water cool purely because they think they should, after watching advice from wealthy RUclipsrs who have no problem replacing a $2000 system if things go sideways because of a liquid leak. Most people though can't afford that kind of accident.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter What do you mean by no justification? Water cooling is justified as a better cooling method. No air cooling will ever come close to the response time water cooling has at keeping your temps low. With proper water cooling you will never see your parts passing a certain temperature degree. No matter the environmental conditions and temperature, no matter the stress your PC is under. Don't get me wrong, there are amazing air cooling options that do an amazing job. But water cooling in terms of cooling performance is just superior. AIO's leaking is something that you have to live with. And it's pretty much the same as any other part malfunction that can happen to your system. You can't make sure an AIO won't leak as much as you can't make sure that your power supply won't suddenly decide to spike the voltage briefly for whatever reason for example. Or your GPU start artifacting because of silicon wear.
@John D A leaky aios are very rare, and pretty much restricted to crappy brands if you get a decent brand you will be fine I've had aios for 4 years and haven't had a single problem also aios are superior to air cooling especially at higher level cpus.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter Sorry but you are talking garbage. Water cooling is a lot better and failures are extremely rare. For every one you read about, there are thousands that didn't . I've been water cooling for 20 years in multiple machines, never had a single issue due to water.
i HaD OnE ChEaP SaMpLe Of a WaTeRcOoLiNg PrOdUCt EvErY WaTeRcOoLiNg PrOdUct Is BaD
Dude thats one Hell of a Statement
1 To be fair you should discharge the main capacitor in the power supply before working on your computer, (try to turn it on after you unplug it from the wall).
2 Don't have your computer working in your bed sheets or other blankets, it blocks the air and overheat's the system.
3 Touch the ground wire or discharge your self before working on your system, blue sparks sometimes kill expensive components.
4 Ask your self, If you need fan's to cool the water in a liquid cooled system, why not just have a nice big air cooler with fan's.
5 If your are not sure if it is compatible, make sure, then use what you are working on under power. Mistakes can cost a lot of money.
6 Do not wear clothing that makes a lot of static electricity when working on electronic equipment.
7 Wape and smoking puts tar on your stuff, old tv and vcr's that come from homes where there is smoking are yellow inside or covered in tar and wape has the same effect.
The hell is wape
@@John-86 vape obviously
Vape doesn't have tar, my PC's been in my room for 5 years al all 5 years I've vaped in the room. Just the other day I went to clean my pc tower and it was spotless so do tell me how vaping damages your computer 🙃
@@zacharyjohnson6547 did you wipe the inside with a paper towel? It does leave a wet residue because of the glycol/glycerin
Only problem with 4 is that the big air coolers may not fit due to ram or even their height. I use water coolers instead bc of that. But I've been reading Noctua air coolers can outperform many 360mm while producing less noise, so maybe I should change the case?
I've unplugged and plugged stuff into the PSU while its plugged in and switched on before, nothing happened to me but I will be more cautious about it in the future
The only thing that can really get a pass here would be USB. But even then, there could be a small chance that a short will ruin that plug or worse. I've had it where I plugged something into a usb port and it shorted or had static and the port died :
Dude, I love your videos! I'm no expert on this subject, but I DO build my own and have done so for 18 years now with (thus far) total success. I've learned so much from you and a few others in the last 4 months on building a PC the right way and I thank you for that!! May you have years of success!!
Always properly measure your case to see what will fit in there, basic but saves a lot of hassle.
I bought a 2 fan 6600 the other day, and have been waiting a while for the market to stabilise after using Vega 11 for a while.
It has literally only just fit because of how the ram slots sit on the Asus prime mobo and if I got a bigger GPU I'd have to have returned it.
I brought on intuition rather than by what room I actually had and it could have easily backfired.
Did not expect to actually learn anything from this one but damn I had no idea about power cables being rather brand specific. Might well have saved me as I have been thinking about buying some extra cables the next time I add another HDD to my build.
Just potentially saved me, had a mixed cable in a new build. Might have worked fine, might have blown my new rig 🤣🤯
You should have said that you should always discharge the capacitors inside the PSU after unplugging it. I had a case where the PC even started up for a second just with the power inside the caps.
I'm building a computer for a chain smoker and would like to recommend an AV cabinet, but they don't have much money because they spend it all on cigarettes and pot. To each their own but I worry about that PC. He's pretty handy, though, so maybe he can build something and add a couple exhaust fans.
After Many years of dealing with chain smoking gamers, my advice is to make the recommendation and explain why you made the recommendation and then let them destroy their PC after they ignore your recommendation.
Don't let their stupidity cause you to lose sleep at night, because it's not your fault they are too stupid to give up smoking.
Love the channel and advice. Listen, a video demonstrating the steps someone would take if the just upgraded components for their computer might be helpful. Like for instance, if someone just purchased a brand new CPU and MOBI…..what steps would they take in relation to using their current SSD, drivers etc. lia it as simple as slap it in the case, plug in their existing storage and stuff. Just an idea.
disconnect power then press power button to surge residual energy swap parts reconnect everything and boot
your welcome saved you 45min to an hour long video
@@joshph2716 Yup I do that all the time and have done that for years.
The residual voltage is still in the capacitors and is still enough to spin the fans and light up the LEDs on the motherboard. I showed that to a coworker once because he wasn't taking any precautions after powering off a machine before he was adding in RAM.
Some people think it's funny, but when working around power supplies, I still keep my left hand in my back pocket. It's a habit I got into while working as an electronics technician way back when. I used to repair video terminals with flyback transformers and other high voltage devices including switching power supplies. It wasn't uncommon to encounter 30KV off a flyback -transformer or getting zapped by residual voltage still left in the CRT tube.
I know it's a bit outdated for the PCs, but after getting zapped a few times old habits stick.
Jay nailed the reason why I've always passed on AIO water coolers...every now and again I do have to leave my PC on overnight unattended, especially if I'm out of town and need to remotely connect to it. I've stuck with clunky CPU air coolers as a result. Sure, they take up more space and add weight to your system, but you'll never see an air cooler leak. A good quality high performance air cooler will provide sufficient cooling (nearly as good as an AIO water cooler), especially if you keep your PC out of a cabinet or closet and in an open room that is always cool, such as a basement (if you live in the NE US like I do where it's cold 8 months per year, it's relatively easy to keep your PC running cool without the need for a water cooler).
I leave my computer on almost every night, and my AiO is at least 5 years old now. Now I'm worried about it, LOL!
Next build is getting a fan for sure.
Water cooling is 100% for aesthetics. There's just not a benefit people will see either in cooling or noise. People think they need water cooling when they absolutely don't.
@@Nina-cd2ehThat's just not true.
@@ddog17billybob For 99% of people, it's true.
The benefits of water cooling become relevant when you have an expensive enough water cooling and a computer with greater heat throughput. An _extreme_ example being a custom build with a watercooled overclocked cpu and two gpus, all in the same circuit.
You won't see any real benefits beyond aesthetics if you have a computer with AIO water cooling on some average cpu. At least, compared to similarly priced air cooling. It's just not worth the extra cost, unless you want to pay for the aesthetics.
The problem is people think they _"need"_ watercooling, when it's in fact a luxury product. I'm not saying it s a waste, just that people overestimate the benefits, and underestimate the negatives.
@@Nina-cd2eh that's a fair point and I would agree. But even a single water cooled loop on a high end GPU will keep temps much lower than stock GPU fans. So I disagreed with you 100% for aesthetics point.
Guilty. I was just upgrading my cpu and putting my old parts into my gf's new build and was trying to be efficient and left the Corsair psu cable in the cpu socket with her new Seasonic and I thought the board was shorting on the case. Just watched this video right now, swapped the cables and voila! Everything fn works! Thank you Jay!
I have a rule of thumb, before I do any maintenance I shut down, press the button, unplug (PSU). Never had an issue
I can personally vouch for tip 1. Last year I was switching out the stock cables of my EVGA 650 GT for a set of Cablemods cables. I didn't pay attention to the details on the Cablemods and found out AFTERWARDS that they were designated for Asus Thor PSUs over 1000W. I completely killed a brand new Asus ROG B550 WiFi board, a perfectly good Ryzen 7 2700X chip, and 1 of my 2 Crucial Ballistix RAM sticks.
A pretty expensive lesson for something I could've learned quickly and easily for free if I had just done a tiny bit of due diligence.
It would be nice if there was consistent labelling going on here, I have a bag full of old modular cables and aside from the standard "CPU" or "Motherboard" there isn't anything that really tells you what PSU it came from, will just end up going in the bin once I can be bothered finding a local ewaste centre
@@Rich-qs6kn Yeah I feel like this is solvable, especially since almost everything is modular now.
@@Rich-qs6kn well, *one* end of the cable is standardized (the one that plugs into the component), but the power supply end is not...
@@LRM12o8 Exactly the point
14:39 Don't do this, wet paper towel is still conductive. A thick coated paper plate placed on the back of your graphics card with some cotton balls in it should help to reduce splashing. The failure of this method will be the plate falling apart from getting wet or over filling.
Mount your gpu vertical and this all becomes a non issue. In myccase the motherboard lays horizontal so so any leaking would only be on the motherboard. Unless of course the leak is a pin hole causing a spray, in which case all bets are off no matter what you do.
I did a windows update once before I went to bed. Woke up in the middle of the night and the computer was still on. It froze during the update and I had the push the power button to shut it down. Had fun the next day restoring Window, it got corrupt. :)
Honestly, as a former tech myself these were great pieces of information. I've always been against water cooling personally. Hearing Jay say not to run your water cooled system unattended is majorly great advice. It's something that really never occurred to me. I just never gave it thought. Same for the modular PSU cables and not mixing other branded cables. Good stuff Jay. Cheers.
This could well be a stupid question, but when you say turn off your system, is sleeping it alright or full on shut down?
why are you against it if you don't mind me asking? I know it's not for everyone but water cooling gives the best temps nothing air cooled can match it especially once the room heats up or during the hot months if you live somewhere without AC like i do.
@@tiernanbriggs8463 Like Jay said, there is a potential for a leak. It's not very likely, but it is still possible. And not being there if it were to leak could lead to a fire in a worst case scenario.
@@Lt.Shineysides89 I don't care for the risk involved, the difficulty of removing components should something go wrong or for an upgrade or the cost associated with water cooling. AIOs I suppose take care of that disassembly problem. But water cooling isn't really much better than a decent air cooling setup. Certainly not enough to justify all the issues that come with water cooling. Just my personal opinion. There are lots of folks out there that use water.
but they will run a non watercooled unatended, but what if the fan fails or the cooler just falls off ? It's just as likely as a watercooling system springing a leak. Fearmongering to keep it exclusive...look at me, i have watercooling, but you shouldn't do it because it could leak.... the elitism is just way beyond.
With the vaping and smoking, I've been doing it for years and I've never had any issues so I imagine it's only if your PC is on your desk, head height and you're blowing it actually in close proximity.
Mines under my desk so I guess the fans aren't receiving any of the smoke or vapor
Stop smoking it kills you.
I've had a laptop short a cable from the fog.
When the technician opened up the back panel,, drops of juice came out.
If it sits in thick fog like mine did, it makes puddles that are conductive.
@@salty5835 why would you care if a random internet guy dies slightly faster?
I wont work on pcs of smokers, they are disgusting on the inside
Yeah, that whole unattended thing is why I never want to go water cooling, I just don't want to pay attention to it. Because there is huge chance that it would be leaking for quite some time before I noticed it anyway, since I am not really about looking much into my PC. But with air cooler, no liquid, no issue, no worries,... :-D
Number 1 😅got me on my last build. Needed a slightly longer cable and thought I had grabbed the right one. Luckily it just killed the power supply and nothing else. Lessoned learned, always verify you have the correct manufacturers cable and version for your power supply.
"Subie stick" lmao. He's absolutely right about the smoking, the components get coated in nicotine, vapor leaves a similar residue as well. Can it be cleaned? Yes, but it's a nightmare and takes lots of Q-Tips and 91% alcohol.
Or just lots of alcohol and a bowl.
As I use a lot of it for cleaning (99.7% IPA) it's no big deal to pour a bowl full. Then use a cloth or paper towel dipped in there to clean the case while the components are soaking.
Annual maintenance includes a check to see if this is necessary since I saved my life 5 years ago by making the switch to vaping, even though I filter the air going into my PC (and yeah, those filters do get a bit yucky, as the vape residue is sticky so any tiny bit of dust sticks to it once it is on the filter - but they are washable). The filter was added in a fit of paranoia after a new PC, and it hasn't ever actually needed a deep clean - but some parts that have been left around the room have. An extractor fan is also an option, but one I haven't needed - vapour is fairly light (I rarely fog the room out) and as the PC is on the floor and air mostly goes through the air conditioning evaporator (condensing out the vapour and any moisture, which then exits the room as liquid through the drain hose) before arriving at floor level.
Vaping doesn't in fact leave any such residue. It's a long debunked myth.
For the smoking tip: I would heavily suggest leaving your side panel open if possible. Decreases chances of overheating and the smoke lingering long enough to really stick to parts. I've had a Enthoo 719 and I just took the glass off and i've only had to seriously clean my fans once in the past year and it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier than that video of Phil's PC
The problem with leaving your side panels off is that it drastically decreases cooling efficacy.
When your fans are blowing air into and out of an enclosed space, heat is very effectively radiated from hot components, as cold air quickly moves in to replace the hot air. With the side panels off, the case fans are just blowing some cold air near your CPU/GPU fans, but most of it just gets blown out the side and back into your room, instead of over the hot components - meanwhile the air around your components gets hotter over time.
I would suggest to stop.
@@michaelmonstar4276 Right, the obvious solution is to just... not smoke. It's that easy /s
On a more serious note; if you are a smoker, and feel the need to smoke while gaming, I'd suggest designating an area away from your computer to break at. Preferably out in open air. It's better for your computer, your room and slightly better for you, as well. As it separates you from the source of anxiety, stress or whatever is making you want to smoke at your desk for a few minutes in the first place, and also breaks up the sedentary lifestyle of just sitting at your desk for hours.
I'm about to make my first gaming PC here soon... THANK YOU FOR WARNING ME NOT TO VAPE NEAR IT! Didn't even think about that, and I chain smoke vapes. Just gonna have to get used to leaving the office for when I want a puff lol
Blow the clouds into an air purifier.
Annoying to have to go somewhere in the middle of a game
As long as you aren’t blowing your vape into the case, chances are you’ll be just fine. Obviously if you have a cloud chucking box mod, maybe hold that shit in for a second so the smoke is less thick and blow it in the other direction, but in the age of disposables that produce almost no vapor, you’ll be fine.
You're going to obliterate the pre-filter if you do that. Just open a window and have a fan blowing out, something to pull air away from your PC.
Or just don't vape at all
I've left custom loops unattended for weeks at a time, never had a leak. Still good advice.
I noticed the 'dust' in the computer was a different color on top vs the front as I tried not to blow smoke directly at the front fans but over the top and that's where it settled out in the dust filter. My mother didn't smoke but she has one of those little wooden men so when you light incense it'd flow out its mouth and the front grill of her computer is just filled with orange-yellow gunk from that. I really need to clean hers up since I did mine.
Great video however the “not leaving a water cooled system unattended” is a bit too conservative. This will just scare people off from water cooling. If doing initial leak testing of a loop, sure don’t walk away or at least do frequent periodic checks with paper towels etc in place. But again it comes down to some common sense and a risk profile only the person can consider for their situation. A Daly out “don’t do this” is not the right message. If you have a low probability, random and catastrophic fault with significant leakage you’ll notice your PC switch off well before you will notice a leak . If not for the fact that the majority of people are not looking at their computers anyway when they are at their desks. Either because they are distracted by what’s on the screen or the PC is not in their field of view. Upon a tried and tested system, well constructed and leak tested, the risks are fairly minimal if proper maintenance and regular checks are preformed.
^
I've been using my system for probably nearly 6 years now I never had a leak. Thinking about it I never even heard of any other computer having a leak. Not saying it isn't possible, but I think this fear of leaking is a bit overboard. Now I do turn off my system when I'm not using it though.
@@DukeWooze i've had three different aios and one custom loop and haven't had a single one of them leak
@@kulled Yeah, I'm not saying it wont happen ever, but if anyone wants to get a liquid cooled system it's fine. It's not going to burst spilling water all over the place. Just be a sensible computer user, clean your comp every now and again and notice if anything's broken and you're good.
I get not leaving a water cooled system unattended. Makes perfect sense. What does not make sense to me is, if something starts leaking while I am gaming or any other task, how exactly would I detect the leak before a catastrophic failure?
Most situations it would result in you being able to save your other components. Sure there will most likely be the initial victim but if you're there you can hopefully stop it from having a chain reaction of multiple components getting fried.
I'm about to get liquid cooling, now this makes me worry. Do you get to look at the system every hour...
@@JayJay-ro3px Don’t be scared bud, it’s really rare that stuff like this happens. There won’t be any leaks if you have proper components.
I have another one to add. Always Use separate 8 pin cables for 2x 8 pin gpu connectors. and don't use the daisy chain on a single cable.
Jay I will add that although it IS good advice to unplug the psu from the wall, one use case prefers that you keep the psu plugged in to the wall. It's an edge case but valid nonetheless. On any system you are building when installing the psu (after running cables and plugging them in to the motherboard first). It is a good idea on a completely never been powered system to validate that the psu manual switch is in the out/off position then plugging the psu into a grounded outlet before attaching the 24 pin cable to the psu. This way if there IS a transient load on the motherboard it will have the electrical potential flow through the psu to ground rather than feed back to the mobo. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO A SYSTEM THAT HAS NEVER HAD POWER APPLIED TO IT outside manufacturing environments. Better to blow a cb or fuse on a psu than to feedback on to the mobo cpu or gpu