Mint wont boot after installing NIC

[haughty wasp]

Hey all,

Yesterday evening i've installed a 10Gb SFP+ NIC into my pc.
Tested it for a few minutes, it worked great and i went to bed.

This morning after about 15 minutes of using my pc i start experiencing issues best described as the whole pc "locking up" and having to restart.
After a bit of troubleshooting i've removed the NIC which was quite hot. So i assumed this to be te problem.

Now. When i boot up my pc without the NIC installed it loads into the GRUB boot menu and when trying to select Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon it gives me the following error message:

Error: you need to load the kernel first.

I've tried some other boot options under the "advanced" tab in GRUB, like recovery mode but cant get past this screen

A google search tells me to do some commands in the terminal from a live session.
However i cant get to my mint environment to begin with....

(There is no Windows or other OS installed on the same disk or any other disk in the system)

Any help would be appreciated.

[wild sequoia]

Fresh reinstall. It seems you somehow uninstalled the kernel.

[south wraith]

The live session is what you start if you are booting the install medium. You can do a boot repair from there, and let's hope Marius is wrong and it did not murder your kernel for some reason.

[haughty wasp]

It didnt want to boot from a 2 different live USB's either.
Something about corrupt ZF.. files (forgot the last 2 letters)

But i am now in....
I decided to stick the NIC back but didnt plug in my SFP module, just to see what happens. Now it boots up no problem....

So it seems my system has become dependant of this NIC, can that be? 😅

And... To be able to tinker a bit more with this NIC im thinking of installing a small 40mm fan on it.

[south wraith]

Sounds like a firmware bug with the mainboard. If that card runs hot, creating airflow sounds like a good idea. But a well-directed case fan will probably be superior to a whiny 40mm one.

[haughty wasp]

Its got a big heatsink but had little to no airflow going over it because its underneath the GPU (typical ATX case)

Of course the GPU pulls air in from underneath but the heatsink is located underneath the NIC so it wont pull much air away...

I dont see an easy option to mount a case fan near it...

Putting a case fan underneath the NIC pushing air upwards will place the fan directly on op of the power supply.

[south wraith]

Older cases had side intakes, which are beneficial for this. The best you can do here is probably top exhausts, so the heat can rise as unrestricted as the GPU will allow.