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AHHHHHH! Help? ahhh! :[

T

themorningbells

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2004
Messages
136
I ,just got a shuttle an35n, along with a mobile athlon 2400 and 2x256 kingston hyperx. i am using an antec 430 true power PSU. here is my little story:

i assemble everything.. struggle a little with the heatsink... finally get it on. put it in my case. hide wires. get everything ready. POWER ON! fans spin up, the led on the mobo lights up... no beeps though, and no signal to monitor. wtf?

i power off, check connections, and power back on. same thing. everything spins up (fans, hd, cdrom, etc.), but no beeps and no signal sent to the monitor. ok, this is weird and depressing (as i haven't had a computer in a while, since my old one suicided itself).

so, i try powering up again, and this time i feel the heatsink while it's on. AHH! i can feel electricity coming through the heatsink. it is a steady current releasing into my finger. as i reach for the switch on the power supply, i can even feel the current coming from the metal around the psu/backofthecase.

what the hell is going on?

i wasn't sure, but my best guess was that somewhere, the mobo was touching the tray and shorting out, but instead of shorting it was releasing electricity through whatever metal was available. this isn't so good, so i removed the motherboard from the tray (it's a slideout), and rest it on an antistatic bag.

It's not touching anything metal, so i figure this should work. i plug the power leads in, as well as the pc speaker and power switch hookup. i power on. no signal. no beep. and again i feel the heatsink to make sure it wasn't shorting out or anything this time.

IT'S STILL RELEASING ELECTRICITY! WTF!!~~!!?

this is out of the case resting on an anti static bag so it's definately not touching anything to make it short out. so at this point i know something is terribly wrong. so i take off the heatsink and the cpu out of the socket. it's still out of the case at this point, so i power on without anything in the socket. things spin up, etc. no beep from the pc speaker. so while it's powered on with no cpu in, i feel around the socket and surrounding components to feel if anything is still releasing current. i get nothing.

all metal pieces on the mobo, the psu - everything feels fine. so my question is, what the hell? what is going on? how can i fix this? can these symptoms happen if the heatsink is touching parts of the cpu (not the core, but the other little rectangles, you know)? do you think anything fried out? wtf do i do????

any comment,suggestion,etc would be appreciated, as i have never heard of something like this happening, and am really bummed out at this point, as i was so excited to have my replacement computer up and running today.



edit: minimal paragraph form added for those you don't cope well with things
 
Firstly, learn some grammer and punctuation. Makes it eaier to read...
Secondly what vid card are you using? It sounds like a video problem. Mine sometimes does it.
To test, take everything out except processor, RAM and vid card. If you have onboard video, just use proc and RAM. Turn it on and see what happens. Take out the RAM and boot it, if it beeps then its the RAM. It could also be a defective motherboard.
Try removing everything metal fr components, see if that fixes the discharge problem. Try to isolate the problem and go from there.
 
i thought about typing everything out properly, and using correct grammAr, but not tonight. i'm too angry tonight. also, i don't think a videocard problem is going to make my heatsink conduct electricity. thanks for the suggestion though.

::continues to be crushed::
 
well as i said in my original post, when i took out the cpu and heatsink and powered it on, nothing gave off electricity. so i assume it has something to do with one or both of those. but i have no idea how a heatsink could conduct electricity as the only thing it touches (besides where it clips onto the bracket) is the cpu core (which obviously shouldn't be outputting straight up electricity).
 
What heatsink are you using? Have you checked to see if its grounding out somewhere on the board near the socket? Maybe you damaged some of the retention pins when mounting it.
 
4keatimj said:
Firstly, learn some grammer and punctuation. Makes it eaier to read...
Secondly what vid card are you using? It sounds like a video problem. Mine sometimes does it.
To test, take everything out except processor, RAM and vid card. If you have onboard video, just use proc and RAM. Turn it on and see what happens. Take out the RAM and boot it, if it beeps then its the RAM. It could also be a defective motherboard.
Try removing everything metal fr components, see if that fixes the discharge problem. Try to isolate the problem and go from there.
Click to expand...

God I can't even begin to elucidate on the level of irony in your post...practice what you preach.

However, he is right in that, it's really tough to read a paragraph like that.

Anyway, it sounds like you're definately grounding out somewhere. Did you accidently cut into any wires during the install? Could a wire you tried to hide be grounding out? Check the HSF fan and make sure it isn't the culprit (could be a bad wire underneath the shroud).
 
diablo111 said:
God I can't even begin to elucidate on the level of irony in your post...practice what you preach.

However, he is right in that, it's really tough to read a paragraph like that.

Anyway, it sounds like you're definately grounding out somewhere. Did you accidently cut into any wires during the install? Could a wire you tried to hide be grounding out? Check the HSF fan and make sure it isn't the culprit (could be a bad wire underneath the shroud).
Click to expand...

Thanks, I meant to at least space it out, make it easier to read so we could all see his problem, as you pointed out. In that case, I do practice what I preach. It's netiquette.

Back on topic, you really need to be careful when you install the heatsink, you can damage wires, capacitors and stuff, so check the area around the heatsink out to make sure nothing is damaged etc. If there isn't, there could be a serious problem with the processor, explaining the lack of beeping. In that case, an RMA of the chip may be necessary.
 
Also, if you are using Arctic Silver or another kind of potentially electrically conductive thermal paste, make sure some of it has not gotten on other parts of the cpu. The only place it should be is on the core. If it is touching anything else on the cpu package, it needs to be cleaned off.
 
I put the CPU and heatsink back on, and plugged everything in. This time, I left the fan of the heatsink unplugged. Surprise surprise, no crazy electricity passing through the heatsink now.

I am going to try plugging the heatsink into my fanbus to see if it's the heatsink's fan that is doing this, or if the mobo's 3pin connectors are to blame. Either way, I think things died in this mixup - as it continued to not post or give any beep warnings, even with the fan disconnected.

Since this electricity was obviously transmitted to the CPU, would one assume that it died? And from the CPU to the socket? I don't have any other athlon motherboards or cpu's to test components, so I don't know for sure if anything died. So currently I don't know what needs to be RMA'ed.

I got all these components from newegg (cpu, heatsink, mobo), so I think I may give up entirely, call them, explain to them the situation, and try to send everything back to get credit towards an A64 setup or PCI-E P4 setup (as if things DID died, it wasn't my fault. I did everything by the book). So, does anyone know if they charge a restocking fee if you exchange something and want credit back?

Beyond that, if anyone has any definate suggestions for how to salvage this system before I give up, I'd be open to trying them. But as is, thanks for the replies, and I guess I'll end up calling newegg tomorrow and trying to sort this out. Just sucks I have to wait even longer to get a computer up and running (this P2 doesn't count). Godspeed everyone.
 
themorningbells said:
i thought about typing everything out properly, and using correct grammAr, but not tonight. i'm too angry tonight. also, i don't think a videocard problem is going to make my heatsink conduct electricity. thanks for the suggestion though.

::continues to be crushed::
Click to expand...
Paragraphs would fuckin' rock, too.
 
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