It legitimately took me a second for my brain to un-break itself when I looked at the photo. First thinking...something's not right here....and not for even a moment thinking it would be something as stupid as putting the heat-sink on the case fan... Then the realisation that yes...it really is something that stupid.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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In the old days, before laptops, we used to call the case and everything in it the CPU. You had your monitor, keyboard, mouse, maybe printer, maybe modem, and they would all plug into the "CPU." Yes, we knew there was also a chip inside called that but we didn't get all pedantic about it.
With that in mind: Place the CPU fan on the heat sink... That's exactly what they did.
That "we" isn't global. Some called it "the CPU", some called it "the hard drive", some made fun of those two groups for not knowing what they were talking about.
Oh, yes, I forgot it was also the hard drive! Now that I think about it, I'm not sure the proper name. Today I'd just call it the tower, but I'm not sure what the square ones that sat with the monitor on top would be called.
I think those are where the name "desktop" comes from, though that term now refers to other computer things.
I refer to them as "tower", "case" (which is technically just the shell and frame, but can include the contents), "computer", or "machine".
I must be stupid then because I've legitimately had that idea to put a fan on the radiator looking thing to maximize the precision of the cooling. Cooling the thing that gets hot
As in, the CPU fan right on the heat sink? Yeah, that's a pretty standard setup. I've got it on mine. The CPU came with that cooler combo.
The key is to actually put that cooler on the CPU, not the chassis.
Ah I see. That IS a DUH moment
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I once inherited a PC from my older brother, he had built it himself and i decided it needed a sping clean. I opened it up and airdusted with the help of an old toothbrush, but couldnt get some fluff/dust out of the CPU cooler so i took it off to get behind it properly.
The little plastic cover over the thermal paste was still on the heatsink sandwiched between the heatstink and the CPU.
He hasnt heard the end of it.
Wow. I'm surprised it worked for so long. I assume there were issues, such as high temp, that your brother didn't diagnoze or didn't know how to. Impressive that CPU is working all those years. Any damage to its function?
I didnt have the analitical skills at the time to test its performance as i was ~12years old, but i remember it always ran full speed CPU fan and only very occasionally shutdown on overtemp, once i removed the plastic it went back to normal/expected fan speeds. It was probably the AMD Athlon generation CPU from memory, so it probably wasnt being pushed too hard to perform, mostly running Snes emulators and sim city 2000 probably.
Back in the 00s, a story about CPUs getting so hot they'd start on fire went viral. In it was a video of someone removing the cooler while it was running and then a few seconds later a flame appears.
On the one hand, obviously you shouldn't remove your CPU cooler while it was running.
But on the other hand, fans and mounts can fail, so this was still a risk even for people who were smarter than removing the cooler entirely.
It prompted CPU makers to add thermal protections that started out as "if CPU hits threshold, cut power", but over time more sophisticated heat management was integrated with more sophisticated performance and power management.
So these days, if you aren't sufficiently cooling your CPU, it won't die much quicker, instead it will throttle performance to keep heat at safe levels. OP would have gotten better performance out of it after removing that plastic. Assuming it was CPU bottlenecked in the first place. Things like RAM choice and settings can make it a moot point because the RAM can't keep up with the CPU at 100% power anyways.
It is surprising and Im sure it reduced the performance, but plastic still conducts heat and sounds like it was a thermoplastic and it didn't melt.
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It was long ago but I was this dumbass. I kept reading online people said a fan was optional and didn't understand they meant a case fan not a CPU fan so I built everything and couldnt figure out why it wouldn't turn on. Realized fairly quickly and bought one and everything worked after that
Honestly, I am envious of you, as well as the person OP posted above. You did something - learning from whatever source you could find best; having the determination and will to go ahead and sought help perhaps knowing too well you might be ridiculed. Because for the people that know this stuff, it is trivial and not worth of botheration. So the help is not enthusiastic - but for the new doer it is so challenging.
I wish I had the energy, time and courage of you all... Maybe someday I will but until then I can only love and admire your passion.
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Most programmers I know wouldn't understand what they're looking at here.
This is sysadmin humor maybe?
Yep. This is hardware related. To be fair, many programmers I know are also into self-building and more hardware-related stuff, but that's something I personally just don't know my way around well (instead I like more theoretical computer science more). So I genuinely don't know the problem here, and I think that's fine.
You get no shade from me. My only beef is with programmers who act like they are experts in all things computer when they aren't.
BTW, the issue in the picture is that the CPU cooler is attached to the wall of the case instead of the CPU. It shuts down because modern hardware will usually turn itself off when it overheats to mitigate the risk of permanent damage.
Some old cpus would actually go up in smoke if you ran them without cooler: https://youtu.be/Xf0VuRG7MN4
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Wisdom is knowing what you don't know.
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The CPU is the silver squarish shape towards the right. It generates a lot of heat when in use, so having good cooling for it is important. So important that CPUs come with a fan in the box. This involves a heat sink to help draw heat away from the CPU. This screws on mounting points around the CPU, but thermal paste is also used to help heat transfer up. Then there's a fan that attaches to that heat sink, so that the hot air from the CPU can be blown away from the CPU.
People spend a heckton of money on cooling for their CPU and GPU, because when things overheat, they throttle themselves and performance becomes super slow. Longevity of components can also be harmed by higher temperatures. If it gets too bad, then it will crash entirely.
This PC has put the CPU heatsink on the case fan on the left. I don't think this is especially harmful in and of itself — the big problem is that the CPU is entirely "naked" and has no cooling whatsoever. This means the CPU begins overheating basically as soon as the PC is turned on.
Edit: you can actually see where the heat sink should match up to the CPU here
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Wireless cooler
At least the thermal paste isn't too thick..
I love that they had the heatsink and fan, they just didnt know where it went and actually mounted it to the case. It wasnt just that they didnt have one.
I'm sort of surprised it fit on the 120mm fan slot. Maybe they just forced screws through the grill though.
Oh shit I noticed the exposed CPU but totally missed that part.
I used to work as an intern in a PC repair shop and we had a guy come in saying his new self build computer doesn’t work. Turns out he cut a huge part off the mainboard so it fits into the case.
That's significantly worse. Assembling a PC without knowing what a cooler is for is bad enough, but to actually cut pieces off complex electronic components, I don't know what kind of state of mind you have to be in for that.
The kind of state that would have me refund his money and tell him I'm baffled and can't figure it out.
what kind of state of mind you have to be in for that
Probably crazy enough to demand that the PC repair shop has to bear all the costs he caused by his genius idea.
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Must keep the fan cool!
Must’ve gotten a faulty CPU that produces heat when it runs.
... as opposed to those ones that consume heat from the environment when they run.
I asked chatgpt to put my CPU into heat consuming mode and it then suggested I mine BTC to equal out the thermodynamics. I'm still trying to figure out where the BTC is, but it's nice to go green
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When you use ChatGPT for building instructions...
Stop trolling. No one knows why without a full diagnostic.
They're just too advanced for us, they already have "wireless" cooling technology.
As someone who has worked in an IT repair facility, this image hurts my soul.
When I was in IT, had someone who couldn't get their USB printer to be detected by their laptop. They turned everything on/off and it never would show up. Even I was a little confused, so I unplugged it from the laptop, and then went to go plug it back in, but couldn't feel the port. I go to take a look, and find there's no USB ports on that entire side of the laptop. somehow they plugged the USB cable into the Ethernet port.
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Just needs to drop the voltage and the clock down to 500Mhz and then no heatsink required.
Those damned unreliable AMD CPUs, he should have gone with Intel!
Did they pull the cooler and fan assembly off and decide to use it as a case fan? Or was it already assembled? I have so many questions
No, they pulled the cooler off thr CPU and decided to use it to block airflow entirely to the CPU case fan. Best guess is that they are trying to build an expensive smart oven.
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