At Canada Computers in Toronto, circa 2009.
That's not freezing! That's burning up!
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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This computer was old and shit even for 2009 standards. Floppy drive, IDE HDD and CD-ROM, a PCI modem, CPU looks to be a P4 socket 478. I'd say this PC was new somewhere around 2002, so well worn by the time 2009 rolled around.
I like how not only has the heatsink fallen off (which happened often with those early P4 plastic push pins). The little fan on the videocard is also disconnected. Not that a fan and such a tiny crappy heatsink would do much anyways.
The little fan on the videocard is also disconnected.
That's how you turn on the quiet mode of the GPU.
Heatsink glue failed. common problem.
Before I learned about thermal adhesive I used to use thermal paste. Fool me once!
Never lost a cpu cooler. But I had a 6800GT shit itself because the fan died and got all melty. Was able to get a good enough replacement at a comp USA and it still worked.
Reminds of this one from around the same period:
those are just cap vents to let the angry ghosts out
Oof XFX too. 🖖
Good grief, that’s a fun one to see! How did the conversation go with the customer if you remember?
Now I wonder what catastrophic damage my Noctua D15 would do. An unstoppable force cooler would hit my big ass GPU immovable object. That collision would trigger a big bang ray traced singularity localised entirely within my PC case.
I think they were a clueless computer user so I just told them what the problem was and how we fixed it went over their head. But we laughed good with my colleague. Falling coolers were common on Intel boards at the time when the retention brackets used to be hooked with push-pins. Note this is the factory installed bracket on the board that's fallen. 😄 It's not a poorly installed cooler. This is prior to the user-installed push-pin design that came with the Core processors on the LGA sockets.
What were they running, windows 95?
Lol, unlikely. Either XP or 7. Don't recall exactly.
Nah it was 98 or ME. That thing is pre XP. It looks like a socket 423. They were the only boards that had a plastic locking lever that I can remember.
Pretty sure it's a P4 on a 478. 423 is significantly larger and the cooler retenrion clip goes directly on the socket. This socket has no retention protrusions. Instead there's a plastic bracket that the cooler is attached to, but the plastic bracket itself has fallen off the board. You can see it on the cooler itself in the other photo. 😄
So 2001 to 2004 or 5 or so.
Like seeing a classic car in the wild
Is this picture potato quality or is it just my end?
Its a old photo. Really old. This is the second post I've seen like this today. At least the other one was new enough to not have pci slot and a parallel port. Just some slop post.
It's a old photo.
You could even say it's circa 2009.
Really old.
I haven't looked that close but for a computer its too old for anything other than retro gaming and it looks like it may be too cheap for that.
Edit: Now that I've bothered to 'enhance' its older than 2009. It doesn't look like a AM2 or AM3 socket to me. The processor has pins and the computer has a socket. Its a Pentium 4 socket 478 at best. With the plastic locking lever it may be socket 423 which dates it at around 2000. I would keep it just to fuck around with.
It's a 478, some Pentium 4.
And you just fixed it?
Was a long time ago but I think the push pins weren't broken so they did reattach well enough for it to get the customer some more mileage out of it. After clean and repaste of course.
Fair enough. I only kept pictures of roach motels. I'll post one next time I find them.
Pls do.
Here's one that came with "memory issues:"
The chips were visibly desoldered from the DIMM even before taking it out.
Well, they weren't wrong
I don't remember ever seeing that exactly but I've seen all manner of cheap hardware and user error. Had a lady complain about her cup holder one time and yes she was talking about the cd drive. When we pulled the drive apart after replacing it there was a huge amount of dried coffee in it. She must have like it nearly solid with sugar and cream. Some guy came in complaining the windows background looked like sunset. It was overheating. The cpu and video card fan had so much paper dust in it that the fan blades had noticeably worn away and the dust had a mirror finish. I really wish I had taken a picture of that one.
about her cup holder one time and yes she was talking about the cd drive.
This shit used to happen often enough that we joked calling optical drives "cupholders!"
We did to. The one I descibed was just a big coffee stain though.
You know, some of us might feel like 2009 wasn't very long ago... 😳
I'm in my 50's and 2020 seems like a lifetime ago.
Yup. It's a potato. I've taken it with a Nokia E51 in 2009.
!iiiiiiitttttttttttt@programming.dev
It's fine. The cooler just needed to go on a little walkabout.