A rebuild story for your Entertainment

Silenti

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Nov 18, 2011
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Mods: As this is my first post, and it began as a power supply problem, feel free to move it as you see fit. I botched a repair in epic fashion (no explosions though), with humor, and am now up the proverbial creek. Thought it would provide good fodder for the General Hrdware thread.

I provide this story for your entertainment (laugh, cry or rage with me as it suits your feelings upon reading this.) The final gut wrenching/ belly laugh piece of idiocy is provided at the end.


A couple of years ago I built a new PC. This is something I have been doing about once every 18 months since 1990 or so. So I have experience, but definitely a hobbyist (with some formal training) and not a newb. Around a month ago I was watching football on my PC one afternoon when it simply shutdown. Power off, no smoke or dramatic sounds, it simply shutdown. Tried to reboot it and no POST. Nothing, completely dead. Needless to say I feared the worst and was not happy. Borrowed a family laptop (which I am typing on now). After tearing it down and looking around the internet at forums like this on, I was at a bit of a loss. It seemed my nice Corsair power supply had failed me. I had no good known compatible parts to test with so after a bit of skull scratching I went ahead and took it to a local who fixes pc's. He tested the components and told me the PS was shot and took the MB with it. This was my fault. Why? Because I bought a 550 watt PS and put components in it which drew 632 watts. It worked, though with some quirks, for a couple of years like this. So I decide to get a replacement MB and a new PS to fix it. (And tried not to forget the thermal paste).

While this made me feel rather stupid, I did not feel as bad as when I previously had problems with these wonderful(note the sarcasm in that word) heat sink and fan combos that "pop" onto the board. Previously the 2.66 Quad (65nm) had been running hot so I reseated the fan in hopes this would help. I did this without thermal paste, which was always an "option" that last time I had built a box. Never a requirement. Yeah, that didn't work well, but it caused no damage so I lucked out and used Artic Silver thermal paste. That ended the overheating problems. Now back to the more currenct idiocy.

I finally saved up the money (after around a month or so) to correct the problem. It took me nearly that long to find a place which still sold the Asus P5Q Pro MB. I finally found some refurbished models at a place called Compuserve. Their prices were considerably better than those I had seen on Ebay. About 70 as opposed to 100+. Sounds good so far. A little thermal paste, a new 750 watt PS from MicroCenter and the board came in the mail a few days ago. Now here comes the funny part for you.

Hooked it all up and no POST. Good MB light. No fans, no POST, nothing. Check everything 3 times. Made sure the case panel connections are correct. Checked the PS connections, etc, etc. All good. I was once again left scratching my head. At this point the only thing I can think of is 1: bad power supply - very unlikely with a from the box PS and a good light. 2: A bad case switch - also very unlikely. 3: maybe I somehow mis seated the CPU. So I go to remove the fan. Are you ready for the punchline?

The fan unlocks from the MB but wont come off the CPU. Go check online. Something about twisting it or trying to break the paste seal with a knife or screwdriver or even a paperclip. Nope, and i can see the board flexing when I try and apply a little muscle. Hmm. What the hell right? Come across a Q&A snippet.... " should come off with a little twisting. Unless someone used THERMAL ADHESIVE."

A moments panic. Sure enough, Artic Silver now apparently makes a Thermal Adhesive. Something I had never heard of in connection with computer parts before and certainly did not expect to find looking exactly like paste and occupying the same pegs with "Arctic Silver" written across the top, and the word adhesive in small print beneath. So now I have no money for repairs again, cannot return the MB since the CPU fan is epoxied to the MB, and cannot even see if the CPU seating is the problem since the lever is well underneath the fan and wouldnt move far enough to unclamp the CPU even if I could reach it.

While being angry at myself, Arctic Silver, whomever is responsible for these pop-on fans and MB and case manufacturers who still cannot seem to create a design where there is no pin confusion for the panel connections, I decided people would take a good lesson from this and get a good, if hopefully rueful, chuckle at my expense.

Laugh or Cry as befits your taste.
 
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oh man...

damn

soak the whole shebang in a tub of isoprophyl and pray?
 
Kinda doubt that would work. My understanding is that only extreme heat or a very serious solvent could take that epoxy apart. Nothing to lose from trying certainly!
 
introduce "very serious solvent" with a syringe right at the crack?
 
Oh, SHIT...

If I ever run across that thermal ADHESIVE, I will only use that to apply a loosened Northbridge or Southbridge heatsink onto the bridge chip itself. Thermal adhesives are meant to be used only on such chips.
 
You can still remove it, just remove the fan from the heat sink, get a pair of large pliers so you don't burn yourself and use a heat gun. Just be careful where you point that thing. When you get the sink pretty warm, close in on it a bit and start applying gentle pressure with the pliers to turn it left and right. Keep doing that until you can do it 90 degree's then start trying to pull up.

The key words here are gentle and control.

Good luck man.
 
That really sucks man. Hope you have some luck getting that taken apart. Thats a horrible waste of money if not.

We all do shit like that though, live an learn I say!
 
A heat gun, as in a paint removal heat gun from a hardware store, is hot enough to break that? That would shock me. And it can do it without frying the cpu? Not like I have a lot to lose but....
 
well if you have a local store like airgas that sells ln2 you can freeze it and then break of the heatsink
 
I'm going to calm down for awhile, then I shall try the alcohol, then maybe compressed air upside down, then move on to heat applications and report back. Seems alcohol is a realistic possibility.
 
Dude, that sucks ass. :( Thank you for sharing your nightmare with us. I almost did the same thing a while back. Caught it in time, though.
 
I haven't used adheasive in years. Last time was to glue ram sinks onto a video card. I cut up a stock intel CPU heatsink into tall ram sinks.
 
I can report that the alcohol did not work. Pretty well saturated the entire area, got underneath with a bendy straws and saturated from the sides and the top down through the heatsink with a small squeeze bottle. No joy. Guess heat from a hairdyer is next.
 
damn that really sucks man. good luck to ya. does it say anything on the back of the adhesive tube about how to get it off? usually adhesives tell you the best way to unadhese them.
 
Here's someone who's done the freezer method and describes in good detail what to do - when removing heatsinks from secondary chips on the motherboard. It will probably not work nearly as well in your situation but it looks like your best and only shot.

http://discuss.extremetech.com/forums/1004344035/ShowPost.aspx

"Actually, I recommend completely the opposite approach. Heat might work, but cold is more reliable. I have pinged many glued-on HSFs in the past for modding purposes.

Remove the motherboard from the box. Place some padded tape around the offending heat sink, in locations where you can lever the heatsink against the board, but where you won;t damage any components. Place it back in it's static-free bag and seal it shut completely with waterproof tape like Duct Tape.

Put it in your deep freeze. Not an ice box. The temperature must be at most, -15 degrees C, but best is -18 or even -20 if you can get down that far.

Leave the motherboard in there for at least an hour to cold-soak the thing.

This is where you have to work FAST: remember a heat sink works in reverse too - so when you yank it out of the freezer, you only have about a minute in total before the heatsink literally heats up the underlying chip.

Get the thing on a nice flat surface, pull it out of the bag and put it on top o fthe bag. Quickly get a screwdriver, or other lever under the side of the heatsink but instead of levering the thing, twist the handle to apply pressure to the uynderside o fthe heatsink. This is where, if you are a rock-ape and a numb-skull, you will ruin your motherboard. BUT, if you are skillful, quick and can feel where the point is that you shouldn't provide any more torque without damage, the heatsink should just go PING, and shoot right off the NB - leaving a clean NB chip behind.

OR - if you were too slow, or applied too much torque, then the heatsink STILL PINGs off, but it take the NB chip with it. Sayonara Motherboard."
 
ekuest: The tubes only state "go to Arctic Silver.com for insturctions." Inside the packaging on a foldout piece it only states operating range. -40-150 degrees C. Below 0C it can weaken from crystalization. I assume that is what evilsofa's post relies on. No deep freeze for me, just an ice box. May try that or may just try canned air upside down. Really leery of using heat.

The worst thing would be to go through all, have none of it work, replace everything afresh and have it not work because all along it was the panel power switch..:(
 
you can test that by shorting the power switch pins with a paperclip
 
Yes, short the power pins on the front panel header on the motherboard with a paperclip or anything metal that conducts.. If it powers on with no post, re-seat the video card. If it still powers on with no post, the CPU may need to be re-seated as well.
 
Sethmo, and if there is no sign of power at all? (ie no fans, nothing, just the MB light)
 
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