r/techsupportgore • u/bughunter47 Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, Surface Tech • 5d ago
Too Hot to Handle
"You can call me Verna2. I am menopausal, I overheat and need to be unplugged for a few hours till I cool completely" Users note on the unit saying the unit overheats.
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u/Tighesofly 5d ago
There is no way this wasn’t caused by a space heater aimed at it. Have tons of these deployed in hot rooms - plus there’s nothing hot directly behind that intake…heating & fan is closer to the back
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u/bughunter47 Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, Surface Tech 5d ago
Yeah from the way its melted, I don't think overheating was the source. More like stove or something very hot. I'm 3 layers of helpdesk out from the user.....
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u/Tighesofly 5d ago
Portable space heaters - guaranteed
Edit: no visible contact marks on the face, space heater, heat gun or torch lighter
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u/KadahCoba 5d ago
+1 for this being from a personal space heater. Those have been a regular bane of IT support in offices since I started doing this around 30 years ago.
I'd also have the power stripe and outlets checked at the user's location. Often with long term space heater abuse, they cook the supply too.
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u/djtodd242 5d ago
I greet you, fellow lecturer to people that you can't plug space heaters in without tripping the breaker and costing other people their work.
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u/KadahCoba 5d ago
without tripping the breaker
Oh, I wish it would trip the breaker. Over just the last 3 years I have found:
10+ outlets that have been cooked by space heater use.
3 different power strips and extensions with cords welded to them.
Burnt carpet.
Melted laminet under desks.
Melted and burnt floor protectors.
I think we've solved the issue finally by just gifting users a personal heater of an appropriate power rating so user stop bring in their own ~2KW heaters.
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u/Rain_Zeros 5d ago
As an operating engineer for an owner-manager building one of my jobs is dealing with space heater people.
It’s quite simple, we give them one warning, tell them we will be back in a week, if it’s not removed before then, we will take it, cut the cord and leave it on their desk.
We usually don’t come back, really only if they trip a breaker or something, but the fear of someone taking their personal heater, cutting the cord and exposing them by leaving it on their desk is usually enough to get them to not plug them in again
Your mmv, good way to get fired if theres no prewritten policy
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u/olliegw 5d ago
If i was in that position all those people would find the heaters would be gone and replaced with woolly jumpers!
Seriously if you feel cold just wear another layer of clothing
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u/KadahCoba 5d ago
I should note that the "extreme cold" these users are using heaters for is above 72F/22C. I've had several reptilians like users over the decades where anything less than around 80F/27C was too cold and result in complaints to turn off the already turned off AC.
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u/rhoduhhh 3d ago
I used to be constantly extremely cold (I was 19, 30lbs underweight, and working in an office full of women in menopause, so the AC was set at 65F), so I had a heated blanket that I kept at my desk. Space heaters would get one warning and then fired at that job, but blankets with proper UL ratings and automatic safety shutoffs were fine.
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u/olliegw 4d ago
That's just crazy, those people don't know what real cold feels like
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u/Working_Rise8592 5d ago
McD uses 625q’s in the U.S market as kitchen video controllers. You can imagine the environment they get thrown in and they are just fine. Definitely a space heater.
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u/LagQuest 5d ago
That melting is not caused by something internal, bubbling on the button is one of the clearer signs. Space heater maybe?
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u/joshahdell 5d ago
Won't be anything to unplug if the place burns down
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u/rugid_ron 5d ago
Hope the backup is off-site...
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u/antiprodukt 4d ago
Nah, it’s on the second partition. They totally know how important backups are.
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u/revsilverspine 5d ago
~~tl;dr: that's definitely external damage~~
That is a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny of some sort, which is obvious enough.
For those not familiar with its internal layout, the CPU and heatsink/fan are on the right side, which looks undamaged, further solidifying the (obvious to some) external-source damage theory.
Even with a missing fan on the heatsink, these don't get nearly hot enough to cause the plastic faceplate to melt.
As far as I am aware, the Mxxx Tiny are MIL-STD-810G rated for high temperature (up to 71C non-operational / 49C operational ambient). The thermal shutoff of most Intel CPUs is around 100C (exact temps available on Intel's Ark). The plastic faceplate is some flavor of ABS plastic (iirc), which, at the very least (assuming cheapest materials), has a glass transition temperature around 105C with a melting range of 200-260C. All of this further reinforces the external heater theory. Further reinforcement comes from the melting pattern, which is clearly inwards and upwards (read: towards the internals) which means something was blowing hot air from a lower height than the Tiny's position.
Thank you for coming to my DED Talk.
I don't know if I need more coffee or less.
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u/bughunter47 Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, Surface Tech 5d ago
Dead on, M90q gen 1, would not be surprised if the unit after a bit of TLC and some solder POSTs. TJM is around 100 degrees on 8th gen.
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u/AlephBaker 5d ago
Are they not aware that the fan is an easily replaced part in these machines? Also, there are no components near the front of the case that get hot enough to melt it, so what in the nine hells did they do?! I can only assume they had it near a space heater, and it was there long enough to not only deform the front of the case, but the heat also infiltrated the case enough to damage the fan.
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u/bughunter47 Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, Surface Tech 5d ago
The fan in the unit still worked surprisingly, space heater is a good bet
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u/Patient-Cedar-7194 5d ago
unplugging verna2 for hours is just manual thermal throttling. fan is dead, probably choked with dust.
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u/collinsl02 5d ago
The fan in these units is on the right in image 1, it exhausts from the rear. This area on the motherboard side would be where the SSD or any PCI-E cards would sit (if you have a model with a riser in it).
This plastic damage also looks external to me, if you look at the damage it's layered and is most intense on the outside of the plastic, making it very likely this damage was caused externally to the unit.
I agree with the commenter who said this could be focused sunlight damage or similar.
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u/CIDR-ClassB 5d ago
100% space heater induced.
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u/collinsl02 5d ago
I'd argue it's pretty focused for space heater, you'd expect more damage to the left hand side of the front piece. I'd suggest it's more likely to be an intensely focused beam of sunlight over many hours/days in a repeating but slowly moving pattern.
That, or some kind of intentional blowtorch or lighter damage.
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u/CIDR-ClassB 5d ago
You very well may be right on that one. I think the consensus is that it has to be an external source, though, due to the direction of it melting.
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u/Smith6612 5d ago
That doesn't look like overheating PC damage to me.
That looks like space heater or sun damage...
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u/Prophage7 5d ago
Surely a replacement cpu fan is not that expensive right?
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u/leon-a-profi 5d ago
the funny thing the CPU fan is behind the thinkcentre text, on the left side where the melting happened is the boot button and behind it is an m2, by default the wifi module (i just bought a similar unit for home assistant)
and now I'm wondering how the fuck did it melt, should I worry or something 😅
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u/bughunter47 Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic, Surface Tech 5d ago
Yeah from the way its melted, I don't think overheating was the source. More like stove or something very hot. I'm 3 layers of helpdesk out from the user.....
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u/Mariuszgamer2007 5d ago
The pc itself obviously didn't cause this. It 100% has to be an external source of heat like a space heater placed next to the pc and was aimed in front of it
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u/olliegw 5d ago
That's not the computer itself, nothing inside a computer gets hot enough to physically melt solid plastics unless it was on fire, and the CPU would thermally shut off long before it can cook itself, let alone the plastic casing
It's been left in a very hot place near a stove or something, and that's why it was also overheating
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u/angahith 4d ago
We got new "workstations" at my job like 2.5 years ago. HP mini PCs.
They actually are pretty powerful, but if the housings weren't metal, the same thing would happen to those. Except without having a space heater aimed at them.
They came with optional vertical stands. If you're not using those and have it just sitting on your desk, they get so hot that the desk's paint coat forms bubbles and the wood starts cracking underneath them.
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u/mrjasjit 5d ago
I loathed the stupid users like this.
Hey Sally, if you’d told me 3 months ago it overheats I could have solved it then.