Is this Pentium 4 toast?

Factual Questions
1

So I was helping my roomate build a new computer. Well it didn’t fire right up and it dawned on me, I didn’t check wether or not I put the CPU in properly (ya know, the dotted corner has to go near the lever arm hinge).

Is the CPU toast? Wouldn’t Intel design safegaurds in the thing. Lord forbid they make the damn thing keyed so it only goes in one way!:rolleyes:

2

Why don’t you try it the proper way?

3

By the time we fired it up it was almost 11pm. I catch my bus to work at 5:30am. I told him we’d take a look at it tonight.

4

It only goes in one way. It’s probably possible to force it in the wrong way, breaking a few of the pins in the process, but not very likely. In any case it should be a simple matter to remove the CPU and check.

5

As you can’t physically fit it in the slot without benfding pins, it’s more likely that you just didn’t seat it fully. the chances are that if you re-seat it correctly you’ll have a working machine that is now obsolete.

6

I had the same problem with my brand-new dual Xeon.

The newer Intels require a LOT of force to get the heatsink clips in place. In my case, my CPUs’ temperature immediately shot up to 60c and overheated and died.

It required 2 MEN leaning on a screwdriver to install the clips, and I’m a 107-lb female. You’d think that they’d build heatsink that would at least allow only one man to install it.

So take off the clips & heatsink, solict the help of a couple of friends, and puuuuuush puuuuuush.

7

Note: I’m referring to pushing on the heatsink retention clips, not on the CPU itself…

8

Installing a heatsink on a p4 should not be excessively difficult- I wouldn’t worry about that.

I wouldn’t assume that your CPU is the problem if your computer is not starting up. There are only four components that matter in terms of booting up and getting a picture on your monitor: CPU, motherboard, memory, and video card (or onboard video). Of these, the CPU is least likely to have problems.

Chances are, your memory or video card is not seated correctly. Mess with these and see if you get a picture.

If your computer is not powering up at all (fans and drives don’t start whirring) your power supply should be the problem.