• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Comp won't boot

R

randomhero58

Gawd
Joined
Nov 14, 2005
Messages
618
Ok, so I'm really at a loss as to what's wrong so figured I'd post.

So all I did was change my CPU cooler and after plugging everything back in my comp won't boot. Nothing at all shows up on my monitor, no POST or anything. All the fans power up and spin though.

Sorry for the lack of details, but that's basically it. It was working fine before, now nothing...

Rig in sig.

Update - So I've been running down the checklists, unplug this that and the other etc and so far I still have no answers. Whenever I turn it on to test it the PSU powers up for a few seconds, then powers down, then back up again. Unfortunately I also don't have any spare parts to help testing too. No spare psu, cpu or memory. =/
 
Last edited:
Did you swap out to a bigger, heavier cooler? Curious if perhaps the mounting could be too tight and is warping/bending the motherboard in the socket area enough to prevent POST. Have had that happen a time or two myself. Beyond that, perhaps re-seat the processor.
 
If you haven't already take the heat sink back off and re-seat the CPU. Put the heat sink back on and try again. if still no joy try putting the old one back on. You cleaned off the old thermal past and put new stuff on right?
 
alphanumeric said:
If you haven't already take the heat sink back off and re-seat the CPU. Put the heat sink back on and try again. if still no joy try putting the old one back on. You cleaned off the old thermal past and put new stuff on right?
Click to expand...

How would thermal paste affect the post? So, what cooler did you have and what cooler did you install?
 
hossdaddy said:
How would thermal paste affect the post? So, what cooler did you have and what cooler did you install?
Click to expand...

If the CPU overheats and fails the PC will not post. It can happen very fast. Probably didn't happen in this case but you don't want to make things worse by frying your CPU if it does decide to boot up. I'm more inclined to think maybe something unplugged or knocked lose, during the heat sink swap. That or the CPU isn't seated correctly know due to uneven pressure on it.
 
alphanumeric said:
If the CPU overheats and fails the PC will not post. It can happen very fast. Probably didn't happen in this case but you don't want to make things worse by frying your CPU if it does decide to boot up. I'm more inclined to think maybe something unplugged or knocked lose, during the heat sink swap. That or the CPU isn't seated correctly know due to uneven pressure on it.
Click to expand...

You questioned if he changed it(cleaned and re-applied), but if he just put the new one on
there would still be enough to cool it.
 
my i7 did that when my cpu wasn't seated properly. Just turned on...then off then just sat there not doing anything. i took off the cooler layed the PC flat, perfectly placed everything back and restarted the pc with it on its side. Wha-la it worked.
 
hossdaddy said:
You questioned if he changed it(cleaned and re-applied), but if he just put the new one on
there would still be enough to cool it.
Click to expand...

OK if you're going to nit pick everything I say I guess I'll have to spell it out for you. I just wanted to make sure the OP cleaned off the old thermal past before he or she put the new heat sink on. Old thermal past can become putty like and if you don't clean it off there is the potential for the heat sink to be uneven or unleveled if you will. If you don't have good contact the CPU can overheat and shut down preventing the PC from posting. Not everybody cleans the old past off like they should or don't realize that they should. On some socket types it's even possible to put the heat sink on reversed and it won't seat properly.
 
Alright I got some things to take care of today and then I'll reseat the CPU.

Yes I did clean the old thermal compound and applied new. Went from a Zalman 9500AT to CNPS10X.
 
If that motherboard doesn't have a PC speaker connected to it you may want to hunt one up and connect it. With no speaker you won't hear any BIOS Beep codes that might help you sort out whats wrong.
 
Got the speaker plugged in that came with the CM690II. No beeps at all during all my troubleshooting thus far.
 
OK, no beep codes, just wanted to make sure we didn't miss something that might help. If you haven't already i think I would re-seat my RAM modules, Video card and any other add in cards just to make sure they are tight in their respective sockets. Then I would double check all the power supply cables going to the motherboard. If you unplugged one of those 4 pin or 6 pin aux/cpu power cables to get at the heat sink, make sure you plugged it back in. Also double check the fan cable for the heat sink. Also check any PCIe video card power cables, SATA data and power cables. basically go over everything just to make sure you didn't bump something so it's half out or unplugged all together. If your motherboard has any jumpers for "front side bus frequency", BIOS reset, etc, check and make sure you didn't accidentally pull one off. I was just about ready to junk pile the motherboard in one of my older PCs when I saw one of the little plastic covered jumpers laying in the bottom of the case. I had replaced an IDE ribbon cable and some how pulled the jumper off. It was for the front side bus frequency and the motherboard wouldn't post without it in place. I had no idea what had happened and after hours of trying to get it to work again I was seconds from junking it. :eek:
 
Ok so I've finally gotten around to taking off the sink and clean everything up, reseat the cpu. Something didn't look right with the socket, looks like one of the pins is either damaged (or like it's missing).

Before I go any further, could that be the culprit? I'll try to update with a pic, first one I took was too blurry :p

bentpin.jpg


Had my friend circle the damaged looking pin. Although in person, I didn't get it good with the camera, the pin to the right of it looks like it's missing.
 
Last edited:
HM, that pin does look different from the rest, I'm not sure if it's damaged or not though. Everything I have is AMD based and the pins are on the CPU. I do know that every CPU socket I have ever seen has pins missing or blocked off. It's done on purpose so only certain CPU's will fit that socket and so they can only go in one way. It KEYS the socket. Sorry, wish I could be of more help. If you know somebody with a PC with the same socket type, you could try to convince them to let you have a look and take a picture for comparison. That or Google that socket type and hope you can get a good picture of one on line. Post the socket type here and maybe another member that has one can help you out. If those pins are spring loaded you could try putting the CPU in and out a couple of times and see if it pops out again. I wouldn't expect swapping the heat sink to actually damage a pin if you didn't take the CPU out of the socket. I have heard that uneven pressure on the CPU with those type of sockets sometimes causes a pin to not make good contact. Usually just re-seating the CPU and carefull re installation of the heat sink fixes it.
 
Yeah they're definitely damaged compared to my Zotac 775 mobo I have. Guess I'll just order a cheap replacement from Newegg.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top