Computer Melt Down

It is a phrase meaning a massive failure to work properly or in the manner intended. Nothing got physically melted.

contrex-

Thank you.

Data lost? Data stolen?

Sounds like virus.

There is no precise meaning of a "computer melt down". In newspaper headlines etc such expressions are used to convey to a general readership that something drastic and unwanted happened. In 2014 a hacker group infiltrated the computer systems of Sony Pictures and stole data relating to company employees. Some of this data was then leaked. It has been alleged that North Korea was behind the "cyber attack", although nothing has been publicly proved.

I dunno.... when my son says that he's fried his hard drive, it's definitely fried.

Literally? In oil, or lard?

In pure unabated heat. The cooling system failed dismally.

New cooling system (glycol) sits on the floor, apart from the puter tower, and visibly flows, cooling both the CPU and the graphics card.

... and what does it do for the hard drive, which is very difficult to destroy by overheating in normal use?

I had to check with the son on this one.

Traditional hard drives (not SD drives) can handle 60 degrees C, but anything over that can "fry" them. The solution is to run an oversized through fan, meaning one each side of the tower. The incoming glycol passes through the inlet side, and visa versa on the outlet fan.

And when they say it's "fried", it's generally a bearing failure. The lube is literally cooked out of the bearings.

The power supply unit can also be a major cause of heat in the tower, so serious gamers use oversized power supplies, and mount them outside the tower.

I remember seeing those computer fans on sale at Fry's Electronic stores. We now have a Mac and Dell; Mac for the wife and Dell all-in-one for me. I'm ok with the Dell.

Yes, my partner uses the iMac 27 for web page building and graphic design work. No moving parts, and it uses very little power, so that's a plus.

I'm just on a HP laptop. It's set up for video editing, but otherwise unimpressive.

Pretty sure the son has a 1600 watt power supply for his gaming machine. Might be more now. He calls his tower "the Beast", and it does look very impressive.

Pretty sure he likes to push things to the very limit, and he sounds kind of chuffed when he's the first among his friends to destroy a new graphics card.

He's now finished his Bachelor of Gaming (can you believe that?) and has released several free games for the android platform.

Working on crowd-funding his latest concept game for the PC.

No designing of any kind for us. I use it for the internet like a2k, facebook and other social media. I have also kept a log since our marriage and all the major family events and travel logs, and some financial records including annual gross income, taxes paid, and social security benefits received. I also recorded our net assets balance for every year.

You got me worried - I have a piece of software called Open Hardware Monitor (it's free). I checked and it shows the 3 disks in my PC as

Disk 1 (Samsung SSD 120 GB) 37 degrees C
Disk 2 (Seagate 500 GB spinning disk) 39 degrees C
Disk 3 (Western Digital 1 TB spinning disk) 38 degrees C

In the house it's around 20 C, outside temp at the moment is around 9 C during the day. Does your son live somewhere hotter? Perhaps I am lucky living in a temperate place.

Summer temperatures here in southeast QLD often top 36 degrees C. We had consecutive days of 40 degrees here in the last couple of weeks.

The issue with computer towers is that several components have their own cooling systems, but they all vent that air into the tower itself, and cumulative effect can lead to the temperature rising above the safe levels.

My son has an app that shows the temperatures of several components in a car-style dashboard on the menu bar.

When hard drives are stacked closely in an array, that can be an issue. Separating them helps, but it sounds like you're not in any danger of overheating.

The hottest it ever gets here is around 30 on a few days each year. Summer temps of 20 to 25 are as good as it gets usually. It was 40 in Barcelona once when I was there and I found it hard to cope.

When I was in the west Kimberley, 48 wasn't uncommon.

It is rather hard to cope. Particularly when the bugs are bad, because you need to cover up completely.

Seriously considering a move to Tasmania for the Summer months. Not so much to avoid the heat, but the wild storms that the heat can generate.

This our average climate in our area. We live in Sunnyvale.
San Jose weather averages
Annual high temperature: 72.6°F
Annual low temperature: 50.5°F
Average temperature: 61.55°F
Average annual precipitation - rainfall: 15.09 inch

That's very moderate. Nice, comfortable conditions.

I'm willing to put up with extreme heat, because the best fishing is in the tropical regions here in OZ.

We're setting up to live off-grid, in a Tiny House, but the plan is to build an earthen roof over a narrow valley, and set up a living area under that earthen roof. I've visited a few similar designs, and the temperature is stable at about 24 degrees C, which is very comfortable.

Sounds ideal. Make sure you get your geological survey before you build.
We didn't know it when we bought our home, but our home sits higher than other homes on our street. When it rains, the water always runs downhill, and the first cross street can get a little flooded. Good drainage is important.