CPLB
02-14-2006, 06:24 AM
A friend of mine has been having some trouble with his motherboard/ CPU. He thougth the MB was broken so he had it RMA'd (ECS). ECS said the board was fine and just mailed it back to him. He was still having problems so he asked me to look at it.
First thing I noticed was that the heatsink (stock) was not attached very well at all. Just touching it would make it move/ wobble! He said it was hard to install... Well I knew this was bad so fearing the worst, I then asked my friend if he was replacing the thermal paste every time he remounted the HS. He said no... I then removed the stock Intel paste and put some AS5 on. I attached the HS tightly and tried to boot the PC.
All the fans/leds turned on but no post. I tested the GFX card so it's not that, and the RAM is also good. I'm thinking he just may have killed his CPU. He started telling me crazy stories like trying to put a thermal probe between the CPU and HS (right on top of eachother!). I can't think of what else it could be and I'm not sure whether to tell him to buy a whole new CPU or RMA that one. I honestly don't know why someone like that is building computers but... :stick:
By the way this MB has no LED to indicate problems, but it does have a built in speaker. I'm not sure if it works though, because it would not even beep at me when I removed all the RAM. THanks for any advice.
First thing I noticed was that the heatsink (stock) was not attached very well at all. Just touching it would make it move/ wobble! He said it was hard to install... Well I knew this was bad so fearing the worst, I then asked my friend if he was replacing the thermal paste every time he remounted the HS. He said no... I then removed the stock Intel paste and put some AS5 on. I attached the HS tightly and tried to boot the PC.
All the fans/leds turned on but no post. I tested the GFX card so it's not that, and the RAM is also good. I'm thinking he just may have killed his CPU. He started telling me crazy stories like trying to put a thermal probe between the CPU and HS (right on top of eachother!). I can't think of what else it could be and I'm not sure whether to tell him to buy a whole new CPU or RMA that one. I honestly don't know why someone like that is building computers but... :stick:
By the way this MB has no LED to indicate problems, but it does have a built in speaker. I'm not sure if it works though, because it would not even beep at me when I removed all the RAM. THanks for any advice.