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agrikk
Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2002
- Messages
- 933
I'm having a troubleshooting issue that I need some help with.
The other day, one of my PCs started acting flaky, then died. Specifically, it spontaneoulsy rebooted then came back up. Thinking nothing of it, I turned it off for the night and then the next morning when I powered it up, it ran through a checkdisk routine (a Windows XP Pro machine) and then booted, but then flat out died and refused to boot.
I pulled it apart to see what happened, and found the heat sink to be all messed up. Its a generic AMD heatsink, the kind what comes with a boxed 3500+ processor. The copper base was fine, but the top part, the silvery fins had started to flake apart like the silver coating over the metal fins was peeling off and metallic bits had flaked off and scattered over the CPU area of the motherboard.
So now I think Im truly screwed, thinking that metallic flakes had shorted out my motherboard or something. I went on eBay and bought me another motherboard for cheap and plugged it but still nothing. The motherboard LED comes on indicating that it has power, but it doesnt boot, nor do any fans connected to the motherboard power on.
This is puzzling, because even if a motherboard doesnt have RAM or CPU at least the fans will spin.
I plugged in the power supply to an older motherboard that didnt require the additional 12v rails and it came right up. So now Im thinking it isnt the power supply (its an Antec 500w Neo).
So I grab an older power supply (an Enermax 365w) and plug it in and power it up and fans begin to spin (for all of two seconds) then stop spinning. What the hell? Is it because the Enermax doesnt have enough juice to power up the board?
At this point there are too many variables in the mix to keep track of, so Im looking for some outside opinions. Ive already bought a motherboard that I probably didnt need and now Im thinking it might be the Antec power supply, but dont want to go get another power supply if it isnt.
I dont think Ive covered all the points, here, but I cant think of what Ive missed.
The other day, one of my PCs started acting flaky, then died. Specifically, it spontaneoulsy rebooted then came back up. Thinking nothing of it, I turned it off for the night and then the next morning when I powered it up, it ran through a checkdisk routine (a Windows XP Pro machine) and then booted, but then flat out died and refused to boot.
I pulled it apart to see what happened, and found the heat sink to be all messed up. Its a generic AMD heatsink, the kind what comes with a boxed 3500+ processor. The copper base was fine, but the top part, the silvery fins had started to flake apart like the silver coating over the metal fins was peeling off and metallic bits had flaked off and scattered over the CPU area of the motherboard.
So now I think Im truly screwed, thinking that metallic flakes had shorted out my motherboard or something. I went on eBay and bought me another motherboard for cheap and plugged it but still nothing. The motherboard LED comes on indicating that it has power, but it doesnt boot, nor do any fans connected to the motherboard power on.
This is puzzling, because even if a motherboard doesnt have RAM or CPU at least the fans will spin.
I plugged in the power supply to an older motherboard that didnt require the additional 12v rails and it came right up. So now Im thinking it isnt the power supply (its an Antec 500w Neo).
So I grab an older power supply (an Enermax 365w) and plug it in and power it up and fans begin to spin (for all of two seconds) then stop spinning. What the hell? Is it because the Enermax doesnt have enough juice to power up the board?
At this point there are too many variables in the mix to keep track of, so Im looking for some outside opinions. Ive already bought a motherboard that I probably didnt need and now Im thinking it might be the Antec power supply, but dont want to go get another power supply if it isnt.
I dont think Ive covered all the points, here, but I cant think of what Ive missed.