My PC wouldn't stay on for more than 30 seconds. Fans spun up, lights glowed, and then: dead. At first I suspected something simple, like a cable out of place. But it quickly became clear: the CPU was overheating fast, and the cooler wasn't doing its job.
The culprit was my be quiet! Pure Loop 240 mm AIO. After nearly four years of faithful service, it had finally given out. I tried everything I could: topping off the reservoir with distilled water, tilting and rocking the radiator to bleed trapped air, and even testing different motherboard headers in case it was a simple power issue. But the truth revealed itself in the quiet. The pump was lifeless: no vibration, no RPMs, no circulation.
And of course, this happened just as I was about to dive into Act II of Hollow Knight: Silksong. I had been waiting years for this game, enjoying every careful beat of exploration and challenge. The game had its rhythm, its flow, its atmosphere, all drawing me in, and then suddenly I was forced to step away, mid-adventure, because of a failing pump. The timing felt like a cruel joke. It was an unexpected boss fight, not in-game, but within the very machine I was playing on.
From First Open-Frame Experiment to Closing a Chapter
Looking back at the photos and videos of this build over the years, I'm struck by how much the PC itself became a canvas. My first open-frame experiment wasn't just about airflow or thermals. It was about showing off the components, highlighting the radiator and glowing fans, and leaning into the aesthetics of exposed hardware. Each revision added personality, featuring new angles, cleaner cable runs, and custom RGB accents. I even replaced the be quiet! logo with a custom backlit cover to mirror the logo on the GPU.
The AIO cooler sat at the center of all that. It gave the build a certain balance; the sleek radiator, the soft glow of the fans, the idea that water was quietly moving heat away while the rest of the system hummed along. It felt like the heart of the machine and leaned into the Matrix aesthetic I love so dearly.
But the story of this cooler, and why its failure carries weight, goes back much further. I've been building PCs since I was a kid. What started as a love of video games became a fascination with the machines that ran them. Learning how to plan out a build, diagnose problems, and execute on technical details came naturally because I wanted to make those games run better. Over time, that tinkering turned into a set of skills: troubleshooting, patience, an eye for design, and the confidence to dive deeper when something broke.
Those early years of building for my gaming hobby put me in an environment where software was never far away. At first it was drivers, patches, or config files, but soon I wanted to understand what was going on under the hood. That curiosity is what pushed me from hardware into software, and ultimately onto the career path I'm on today as a software engineer.
This particular system, with its Pure Loop AIO at the forefront, represented another milestone. I built it as a reward to myself after a significant promotion at WeaveUp, the startup I helped create. That shift was a big one: moving from DevOps into a Product Owner role. It was more than just a title change; it was recognition of the growth in my skills and the trust the team put in me. Building this PC was my way of marking the moment.
That's why its death hit harder than I expected. A pump failing after four years is ordinary, but the meaning I had attached to it wasn't. In a way, this cooler's end feels like closing a chapter; one that began decades ago, when I first learned to crack open a case for the sake of better frame rates, and has carried me all the way into a career of building software.
Trading Looks for Silence
So what comes next, when the centerpiece of the build is gone? I'm replacing the AIO with a low-profile air cooler, which fundamentally changes the build. The open-frame rig had always been about looks: the long radiator, the subtle glow of the RGBs under the custom log, the green accents balanced against the rest of the components. With the cooler gone, that centerpiece is missing. The visual aesthetic that defined the build for years has shifted into something quieter, almost skeletal.
But silence has its own beauty. For all the Pure Loop's strengths, its weakness was the pump whine. The fans were inaudible at idle, but the pump was always there, a constant, high-pitched reminder that liquid was being pushed through narrow tubes. It didn't matter how well the PC ran; that sound cut through the silence of the room.
Air cooling changes the equation. The low-profile cooler I've chosen is anything but flashy. When the fans are off, the system will be actually quiet: no whine, no hum, no reminder that something mechanical is running just out of sight. I may lose the visual flair of a glowing radiator suspended in open air, but I gain a different kind of aesthetic: the calm of silence.
It feels like a shift in priorities. Where once the build was about showing off, now it's about being present. Function redefining form.
Resilience in Building
A pump failing after four years isn't surprising. Components wear out, designs shift, and technology moves on. But each build I've done has taught me the same lesson: what matters isn't how perfect the system is on day one, it's how you adapt when things inevitably change.
This AIO's death came at the wrong time, right in the middle of a game I'd been waiting years to play. But that interruption is temporary. The bigger picture is what it represents: the end of one chapter of building, and the start of another.
I've been putting PCs together since I was a kid. My first build was completely solo with mail-order parts using a guide from the print edition of PC Gamer. I was driven at first by the desire to play games better, later by the curiosity to understand the machines themselves. That path led me from swapping GPUs and perfecting cable management to writing software and designing systems. Each broken part, each unexpected shutdown, each fix along the way has been another step in learning resilience, both in the hardware and in myself.
Now that this build moves forward, it's a little quieter and less flashy, but still mine. The AIO cooler may be gone, but the machine, and the lessons it carried, remain. Another real-life boss fight completed! Now onto the next act, both in Silksong and in my build journey.
Addendum: How This Post Came Together with AI
A quick note on how this piece came to life. Writing has never been my favorite part of the creative process — I can do it when I need to, but it often feels like a chore. If I hadn't leaned on AI tools to help me process my thoughts and get words on the page, this post likely wouldn't exist. So in the spirit of transparency, and as someone who believes in sharing methods that might help others, here's how I worked with AI to create it:
Diagnosing the Problem
When my PC started shutting down within 30 seconds of boot, I turned to OpenAI's ChatGPT 5. It helped me reason through the symptoms, guided me in refilling and bleeding the cooler, and ultimately confirmed that the pump had failed after nearly four years.
Writing the Story
Once I decided this was worth writing about, I used ChatGPT 5 to brainstorm the structure, draft the narrative, and refine the voice so it blended technical details with personal reflection. The result is what you just read.
Creating the Hero Image
For the artwork at the top of the post, I turned to Google's Gemini 2.5 + Nano Banana. I iterated on Matrix-inspired colors and a "boss fight" aesthetic, then requested a pass that blended some of Hollow Knight's atmosphere. That's how the feature image you see here was born. It's something I never could have made myself.
Documenting the Process
And finally, this addendum itself was written with ChatGPT 5's help, as I reflected on the process and what I wanted to share about it.
Why mention all this? Because I think it matters:
Transparency is essential — if AI played a role, readers should know.
As an educator at heart, I aim to demonstrate that AI can be a tool to amplify creativity, rather than replace it.
For anyone inclined to say "you could have written this yourself": yes, maybe. But I wouldn't have. Writing doesn't bring me joy. AI unlocked this story by giving me a partner in shaping it, while the image generation replaced a skill I don't have and wouldn't hire out. No human artist lost a commission here.
For me, AI was the difference between this post existing and not. And if sharing my approach helps someone else use these tools to tell their own stories, then that's a win worth noting.