TIFU by working on my wife's laptop while sleep deprived

Submitted by SyCoREAPER t3_yq4nsa in tifu

Last night I was extremely sleep deprived. I had already rebuilt my desktop along with the tedious wire management. After I was done it was still relatively early so I thought while I was at would work on my wife's laptop. Previously I had used some scrap thermal pads on the NVMEs and had some brand new ones so thought I'd put them on.

Laptop was acting very erratically but figured it was because it was on battery (and I never really used her laptop) so I thought it was an aggressive eco mode.

Today I wanted to realign them and opened it back up. Luckily I did. Low and behold I was in such a hurry last night that I forgot to take the plastic off the top of the pads before putting the heatsinks on.

A boring tale and probably doesn't mean much for non-techy folks but those in the tech world will know how dumb that was and luckily caught my own mistake before frying the NVMEs.

TLDR: I worked on my wife's laptop while sleep deprived and nearly fried both NVMe drives because I didn't take the plastic off.

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thenatar007 t1_ivmt1d6 wrote

You wouldn't have fried the NVMes, they will just throttle down their speeds to hit a safe temperature, also the thermal pads would actually help even with the plastic. Lots of Pcs are running NVMe drives without cooling so you are fine.

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wcsmik t1_ivmtpck wrote

This is my first tifu that wasn’t.

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immibis t1_ivn617s wrote

You can't rely on everything having automatic thermal throttling, but it is pretty normal nowadays. It used to be that CPUs would go pop if you forgot the heatsink.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivnjb2g wrote

Windows was so erratic that I wouldn't trust the drive to throttle itself. Had th processor been boosting and the 3070 active, the drives would have been heatsoaked to oblivion. If they didn't act write in Windows, gaming certainly wouldn't have done it any favors

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Buruutsuki t1_ivs6nib wrote

The good news is that the thermal throttling is controlled by the firmware of the NVMe drive and not by Windows. It is likely because of this that Windows behaved erratically, as the OS relies on quick reads and writes to be responsive. Once those IOPS drop sharply due to the thermal throttle, user experience goes from smooth to choppy real quick.

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Fun-Pea-880 t1_ivnm2v6 wrote

Desktops are one thing; laptops can be pretty toasty, depending on their workload. So it could push it out of the thermal limits of the drive and be throttled.

It depends on the laptop, though so 🤷

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivq2clq wrote

In general the laptop does a good job at cooling, I ALWAYS log HWInfo after each session (except NVMe which I guess I'll start doing) on all my computers and they all stay pretty cool, well below the respective thermal maxes

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gathermewool t1_ivn0hzd wrote

I don’t understand how this made the laptop misbehave. Did the behavior resolve itself after you fixed the mistake?

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivnjk65 wrote

Because presumably the drive was overheating and throttled itself so far down it was like using a mechanical drive on Windows 3.1

Removing the plastic as I should have allowed thermal transfer between the pad and copper Heatsink. With the plastic on, the pad had nothing to transfer the heat to and all that heat was trapped under the plastic.

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throwthegarbageaway t1_ivraywn wrote

I also don't understand, I'm using a sandwich style layout on my PC and my M2 drive is behind the mobo. This means it's sandwiched between all my hottest PC components. No thermal pad. It's been doing fine for the past 5 or so years.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivu4jqo wrote

For what you said, there is still airflow though and you aren't trapping heat directly on the component.

See below, Step 2. Failure to remove the plastic from the thermal pad inhibits thermal conductivity between the drive/pad to the Heatsink almost entirely. All heat is trapped on the drive with no place to go. It's basically if you wrapped the drive in electrical tape. No heat dissipation

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71zPLe954AL.jpg

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edked t1_ivnhhko wrote

Probably the first "I used my wife's laptop" post I've ever read on TIFU that didn't involve discovering evidence of cheating.

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[deleted] t1_ivnjske wrote

[deleted]

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edked t1_ivnlxlg wrote

I wasn't suggesting she was, just that most every TIFU post I've seen with a title like that has gone in that direction. I was more poking mild fun at the sub itself than anything.

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Q5U4EX7-YY2E9N t1_ivo4trv wrote

what language is this

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Jasonxhx t1_ivpkdsd wrote

I'm a computer nerd and I cannot follow this tale.

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Gaodesu t1_ivqvtq4 wrote

Using a computer everyday is different than actually being familiar with its hardware

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Jasonxhx t1_ivr1p6y wrote

Brilliant! I had not considered this.

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BergaGaming t1_ivr4r19 wrote

NVME is a type of storage drive (interface). Basically OP hadn’t given them enough cooling due to the plastic and the drives were throttling back read/write speeds/latency

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Jasonxhx t1_ivr7t6j wrote

Yeah after he fixed a lot of the wording to this post I got it. Thank you though.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivpykek wrote

Working at Geeksquad doesn't make you a computer nerd.

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MadDogMax t1_ivvs52j wrote

OP doing wonders for the obnoxious nerd stereotype. What a weird fucking thing to gatekeep.

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mandelmanden t1_ivo45mo wrote

Sounds like something else was wrong than just a nvme being a little warm. Those can run very hot without any issue and chances are anything you're doing on them will be very unlikely to make them get very warm for any extended period of time. There's a reason why they're sold without heatsinks on generally.

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xX_penguins_Xx t1_ivpphs1 wrote

Hi just because NVME drives nowadays don't require as much cooling that doesn't mean they are meant to run with zero airflow.

Generally like cpus they will try to keep themselves under a certain temperature and clock themselves down to work less when approaching said thermal loads. Also high thermals kill the life of the drive in terms of read / writes it will perform.

Here's a good link I found testing these concepts! Hope this helps!

NVNE Heat Tests

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivpyse7 wrote

I took the film off yesterday and it ran normal and in a fashion one would expect. No micro-stutters or slowness

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ppetree t1_ivpr14l wrote

OUCH!!!

I learned a long time ago that I don't touch someone else's work computer. They have their own IT departments for that. Let them take the hit.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivpxbib wrote

? This is her personal/my laptop. I bought it for her

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ppetree t1_ivpy5c1 wrote

Sorry. My bad. Some how "working on wife's" stuck in my brain as "wife's work."

Still... OUCH!!!

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivpz3ij wrote

Haha no worries. Yeah luckily neither of us did anything intensive. I booted it up and did a small Windowa update and an undervolt but was getting annoyed by the slowness and stopped undervolting.

Had she played a game, they probably would have either died or shaved some life off of them

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ppetree t1_ivq0npa wrote

Nearly 40 years in IT and coding, I've seen some real boners... most happen when people are tired.

I've done some incredibly stupid stuff while tired... a few years ago I wiped out an entire server and 5 months of my work. Turns out my backups were all bad.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivq1zeg wrote

That's painful

I did something similar (except it wasn't my fault)I discovered/executed a task that was bugged and took down the entire network at my old job. Woops

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EntertainmentUsual87 t1_ivx2djk wrote

"Had she played a game, they probably would have either died or shaved some life off of them"

No, it would have throttled. End of story.

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SyCoREAPER OP t1_ivz41ea wrote

>u/EntertainmentUsual87 "Had she played a game, they probably would have either died or shaved some life off of them" No, it would have throttled. End of story.

OK. No electronic apparently according to you no electronic has ever died to heat. You live your life risking your stuff, see if I care.

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