Did i fry my processor already? (long)

Factual Questions
#1

Been setting up a new computer, and all was going well. I finally got it plugged in, turned it on and heard a really loud noise so I turned it off. The PSU I bought was cheap (but good reviews on NewEgg) so I immediately suspected the PSU fan, fiddled around with it, reseated it and turned it back on.

Noise was gone. Cool! So I booted back up and started thumbing through my nifty new Asus BIOS. Checked out the temp and fan speed settings and noticed no speed for the CPU fan. Thought that was odd. Noticed the CPU fan wasn’t spinning at all.

I finally realized that the fan was improperly seated on the heatsink (it was a bugger to get on) and couldn’t turn, and the whole thing was way hot.

I took it off (took some doing) and it was too hot to touch the heatsink. Took me about 10 mins to cool it down in front of my bedroom fan.

Anyway, got that put back on - CORRECTLY - it spun up really nice. Whole system booted up, I hit DEL to go into setup mode…and system shut down.

Booted up again, system shut down. I finally caught a glimpse of an error message “Overclocking Failed”, but it kept shutting down after a second, two seconds, 20 seconds, all over the map. Never at the same place or time.

I started pulling stuff out until I had everything disconnected other than 1 stick of RAM and the AGP video card. Still kept shutting down.

Then I pulled the video card. As I was pulling it out, the power came on by itself (LEDs turned on and fans started). Then I turned off the switch on the PSU and continued removing the card. Flipped the switch back on and nothing. No fans, no power.

Put the vid card back in, still nothing. Cycled power, nothing.

No beeps (haven’t heard a beep yet). Just nothing :frowning:

So…my processor had gotten way above its prescribed temp for about 3 mins, tops. Are these the symptoms of a f*cked processor?

Or maybe could the PSU be f’d instead? How about the mobo?

All of this stuff is new-out-of-the-box as of today, except the vid card which was working when I pulled it out of the original Asus-based system it was in (ATI Radeon 7500).

I’m getting a new PSU tomorrow that I can use to test. I can’t quite swap out the mobo or processor, as I don’t have replacements (or have friends with replacements).

Should I try to return the CPU? Or the Mobo? Do I have to eat the ~$200 I spent on either?

Help…I’m really sad :frowning:

#2

I can’t tell you what’s wrong, but just wanted to say that sucks :frowning: Hope the damage wasn’t too bad.

#3

Try resetting the CMOS with the jumper if you haven’t already. If that doesn’t help, the processor is most likely toast. If you can get into the BIOS long enough to change things, try underclocking it and see if it’ll work better.

#4

What kind of processor are you running? If you’re running an AMD, it’s most likely your CPU is indeed toast. Hell, even with an Intel, it’s still likely. But AMD’s tend to run much hotter than Intel’s, and even a few seconds without adequate cooling can melt the AMD’s.

If you think the CPU Fan was installed incorrectly, it may also be possible that the heatsink was installed incorrectly. This can crack the CPU core, though I’m not sure how a computer would act if that happened, I’ve never encountered the problem.

I’d say chances are your Motherboard and all other components are fine, but you are probably out of a Processor now. I doubt you’ll be able to return it in any case. But hopefully you can find a way to resolve the issue, it could be a faulty PSU, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Let us know how it turns out.

#5

What sort of loud noise? Did it sound like a Yeti? :smiley:

If you’re able to overclock, I’d be willing to bet money that it’s an AMD proc. And sadly, the average lifespan of an AMD proc without a working heatsink and fan is about five seconds.

Intel procs, for comparison, have the ability to say “Whoa! Too hot!” and will self-underclock or simply shut down with no harm done.

#6

It’s an Intel P4, socket 478.

I didn’t tell it to overclock - not really sure why the “overclocking failed” error is coming up. Regardless, I can’t get to the BIOS to change anything.

I will check out resetting the CMOS. We’ll see if the thing boots up today at all.

I don’t think Newegg is gonna be able to do anything for me about returning th CPU. moan

Thanks folks.

#7

You may have fried the motherboard when you removed the video card. On many modern PCs, you haven’t really turned the power off unless you disconnect the line cord or turn off the power supply. The front panel power switch just turns off some of the power, not all of it. You can ruin the motherboard by inserting or removing cards while power is being supplied to the motherboard.