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Lesson in routine maintenance...

schenks

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 12, 2006
Messages
1,642
So I've been shuffling parts around with the recent addition of my quad, and was taking down my Athlon XP rig. It had been freezing a bit lately, so I figured the thing was finally dying. I mean, heck, it's got almost 7 years of loyal service underneath it as a gaming rig, then fileserver, then pure folder, so I figured it was time for it to enjoy retirement.

So I start taking it apart and wasn't paying much attention. I rip out the power lines and start taking out the motherboard, and all of a sudden my eye catches on some odd black spots in the 20 pin. I look a little closer and realize that the damn thing had started melting down. Check the power supply, and parts of the power cable had started boiling and melting off. Took a couple pics of it for good measure.

P1000746.JPG


P1000747.JPG


No wonder the damn thing was freezing. Although, I suppose this means the rig can go back into service once I find some spare parts! :D

So all you folders, remember to give your rigs routine maintenance checks for their own good.

 
Wow.... I'm really surprised it was running at all....

<runs to tear down main rig>

 
yea no shit....i didn't even get the burning computer parts smell either (unless that happened when i wasn't home, perfectly possible)

 
Is that the heat sink on the left? That looks like it has a TMD fan on it. Is it still running?
 
Thing in the top left is indeed the cpu heatsink. It's an old Thermaltake cooler. The processor seems fine. I dismounted it and put it away for the time being, but the motherboard is pretty much shot :D

 
I have had that happen on a couple different Athlon systems before. If you put a new PSU on that mobo, it will eventually do the same thing. I had a ASUS board running a Tbird 800do that with 2 different PSUs and I also had it happen with a AOPEN board running a XP Tbred 1700+. Three different brand PSUs in those 3 instances. Enermax, Thermaltake and something else.

Just about every google hit for this problem is a socket A system. Many different kinds of motherboards and power supplies. I think socket A was just about as much as 20 pin atx could handle.
 
The K7 duallies where very prone to that.
It was caused by the CPU still pulling the power off the 5v rail.
The power mod on the K7 duallies mobo to stop that happening is to solder an extra 5v connector to the back of the ATX connector.

Luck .................. :D
 
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