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Burned out CPU?

A

allenwr1505

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 16, 2003
Messages
106
My friend recently came to me for help with his computer. He had been running it for a little over a month when it started to show errors. It began with small things such as freezing when he tried to enter the BIOS, and blue screens when he tried to enter Windows, and it culminated with his computer not turning on at all when he turned on the power. I tried it myself, and when I turned on the power, the drives and fans would turn on, but nothing would appear on screen. I tried resetting his CMOS, and I tried swapping the memory. His graphics card and memory work perfectly fine, because they worked in my system. It's possible that it could be the power supply, but I think that it is most likely the CPU.

Before I go on about why I think that it may be a problem with the CPU, let me give you his specs.

Shuttle AN35N motherboard (Nforce2 Ultra chipset)
Barton 2500+ (I don't think that it was overclocked)
Aerocool 7
512mb of value Mushkin PC3200
Radeon 9600 SE
SoundBlaster Live! (not that the soundcard matters for this problem)
Orion 420watt power supply (sounds like a cheap generic to me)

When he built this system, he built it himself and then brought it to me because it was crashing. I took off his heatsink to look at his CPU, and was amazed to see no thermal paste! No pad either. I was surprised that his system had ever worked at all (well, at least past five minutes). I noticed that a corner of the CPU was chipped off, probably from the expansion of the CPU caused by the excess heat since the heat wasn't being transferred to the heatsink properly. I put on some AS5, and I wasn't sure that it would work. However, fortunately it did.

So that was about a month ago. When I got his system again, I was worried about the CPU, but I didn't really want to take the time to take off the heatsink. But since his components checked out ok (perhaps except for the power supply), I had to take off the CPU. The CPU looked the same as when I had put the AS5 on. Ok. Fine. No problem there. Then I turned it over, and I found a dark discoloration on the bottom of the CPU packaging. I wonder if that was there before. Does this mean that the CPU is burnt out? I don't have a card reader right now, so I can't upload pictures yet. The spot is about a centimeter in diameter. It is slightly darker than the packaging, but not excessively so. However, it is clearly visible.

I suppose that the only way to know for sure is to try his CPU in my setup. However, does anyone else have any ideas of what could be wrong? Is the CPU burnt out? Would the problem be his motherboard or (generic?) powersupply?
 
No thermal interface material+crappy aluminum HSF+black spot on CPU = 99.99% sure its dead
 
Let's hjope the guy learns something from killing his CPU...

And before yopu throw it away, install it w/o an HS and just turn on the PC.
 
Dont turn it on without a fan, it will fry the mobo instantly and might even melt thru it.
and im suprised it works after he chipped it!
the chipping isint from heat but from installing the heatsink without much care. even more of a risk if you dont use themal paste.
 
If you suspect the PSU as the likely culprit, test it by connecting the pins 4 and 6 with a paperclip and turning the power on. Of course, you should have, for example, a 80mm fan connected to the PSU first. If it rotates, then the PSU is still alive.

Check the mobo also for capacitors that looks bursted or leaky with brown residue.
 
i think i may be having similar problems...

both my cpu's i've tried in this current setup have a similar discolorationg but along the right edge of the cpu core.

i'm not sure... but i think this could be caused by the power supply... anyone know for sure if something like this could happen because of a faulty PSU?

also... one of the cpu's is a retail amd xp2400+... if this is the case and the cpu is completely dead... would there be any chance of rma'ing it? it's brand new and still under warranty... just don't know if they'll take one look at it and just send it back to me or what.
 
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