Sunday, July 17, 2011

et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum

(That heading is from the creed from the old Catholic Mass, now usually translated as "I await the resurrection of the dead.")

My main computer started shutting down on its own after a few seconds last night. A quick search indicated that this was probably caused by heat problems, and fixes were suggested, but I couldn't get the computer to stay on long enough to impose any of them. I opened up the box, and I saw that the bracket that held the CPU cooling assembly in place was broken.

Oh, dear. I figured I needed a new motherboard, which meant new CPU & memory, and I need three SATA connectors. Getting expensive, this is. Go look at Newegg & Tiger Direct...

I remembered a discussion I had had recently about using a local vendor. There's a PC Warehouse store in Edison where I've gotten some stuff; let's see what they have to say - they may be able to save me some time (although I was sure I'd need to rebuild and reinstall the operating system, at least).

It turns out they had the bracket alone for $15. I also needed some cooling compound. The clerk fellow thought I could re-use the little plastic clips that held the bracket in place; I couldn't, but I had nuts & bolts that could fit. Within twenty minutes of arriving home, the computer was up and running with no loss of data.

And that's why you want to support local vendors. The fix that I thought was going to cost over $200 came in at $21.

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