A very, very, very bad thing happened. Now I come to you for help.

[evoic]

That pretty much sums it up.

I installed Everest Ultimate to check temps.
Didn't like what I saw, so I leaned over to gently adjust the NB (Thermalright HR-05-SLI) cooler and it touched the Ultra 120 X that was quite close to begin with.

No pop.
No smoke.
No nothing.....just an instant shut down.

I waited a moment, pondering what I did and what could have been damaged and ran through the checklist of things to immediately check when I tried to power back on.

Hit the power button, quick scan - no smoke, listen - no pops or crackles, check PSU and case fans - all good, listen for HDD's - seem to spin up......hmmm. No BIOS screen is coming up but the system is on and fans are at full tilt.

Not really sure what to do next, I did a hard shut down, and removed the power cable.
I took the battery out and reset the CMOS jumper.

After about 20 minutes went by, I reseated the battery, plugged everything back in and hit the power switch.

Same thing.....evreything comes on, but the screen stays blank and there's no video.

....any idea here folks? Anything at all?

I've shorted a system before by having a wire in the floppy drive exposed and accidentally touching metal. But I realized what was going on, wrapped the cable, and restarted.

This short that happened last night happened WHILE the system was on.

I'm worried I torqued something good. Tell me I'm wrong.

Thanks.

p.s. With all due respect, save the "You're an idiot"......"You should have been more careful"......"Why did you do that ignorant thing you did" type of stuff.
I'm past that and now trying to find answers, please.

 

[TheKub]

??? Both chunks of metal should be isolated from ANY voltage. There is no reason a heatsink should have any charge. Id check the cabling and make sure there isn't any stripped sections.

 

[Cutthroat]

Yeah I think that's highly unlikely you shorted something out that way. I'd check to make sure you didn't knock anything loose.

 

[wwswimming]

http://www.thermalright.com/a_...in_product_hr05sli.htm

i had to look it up. i thought North Bridge's often had anodized aluminum
covers, which would offer some electrical isolation.

it's possible the motherboard vendor would try & help you.

it is "value added" if they modify a design so it can't happen
again.

 

[evoic]

That's so weird though, because it happened the exact split-second that the NB cooler touched the CPU cooler.

 

[Cutthroat]

Can you take a pic of your your coolers? Did you possibly damage the northbridge or something when the HSF moved?

Are the clips for the HSF's made of plastic? I don't see at all how there could be any current flowing through a HSF.

 

[bruceb]

First, aluminum is not an insulator, so if the heat sink has any voltage on it at all and it
touches some other heat sink that is Grounded, something will DIE .. no way around it
Normally a heatsink is connected to the Chassis Ground ... but not always. A good example
of this is the Horizontal Output Transistor in TV sets and monitors where the CASE of that item
has about +400VDC on it .. The heatsink is insulated electrically from the rest of the chassis
but the part must still be cooled. The Northbridge may function in a similar way, but at a much
lower voltage.

Good rule of thumb: Never let two Heatsinks Touch Each Other .. no matter what

 

[evoic]

Here's a pic of the set-up.

Mobo with coolers.....

Another angle.

 

[Cutthroat]

Does either HSF have a backplate? If it's just those plastic pins that are usually used for HSF's with these platforms I really don't see how any current could get into the HSF.

BTW, due to the size of my CPU HSF it always touches the heatpipe on the mobo, hasn't caused me any harm.

PS. Nice job on your wiring

 

[evoic]

Thanks for the compliment.
The CPU cooler has a backplate.
The NB Cooler only has the plastic pins.

I'm starting to wonder if there is any wiring exposed on the fan wire between the 2 coolers and by adjusting the NB cooler, I bumped the wire into one of them.
I'll have to check that when I get home.

 

[Cutthroat]

It`s possible the backplate is touching something and you did have a current flowing through the CPU cooler, checking the fans is also a good idea. Take the hsf`s off and look for any visible damage, if you don`t see any, reassemble and see what happens.

 

[Markbnj]

What about mechanical stress on the NB when you moved the sink? You have some leverage there if you were tugging at the top of it. Might be worth closely examining the connections between the chip and the motherboard.

 

[MrDudeMan]

^ That is what I was going to say. If those heatsinks touched each other, you must have moved them pretty far/hard. You should try reseating the CPU

 

[Edge1]

Just wondering - do you have a same-socket CPU that you could test?

 

[drakore]

Have you tried a new PSU yet?

 

[evoic]

**UPDATE**

As you can see, I never replied again after the last post made from work yesterday.

I went to the local shop and grabbed a Debug and a new motherboard, in case the mobo was dead, I could pop another in.

After taking everything apart, inspecting all of the items, cleaning everything, re-applying TIM on CPU / NB / SB coolers and hooking it all back up - I tried to power up.

Still nothing.

I pop in the PCI DeBug card and the code reads "FF".

"FF" stands for "Function Fine".
The motherboard is properly powering, the BIOS is intact, and the mobo itself is not returning any debug errors.

After a few head-scratching moments and a quick chat with eVGA tech support - it looks like there are no warning / error lights for the board itself and it's been narrowed down to dead RAM or dead Graphics card at this point.

Dead eVGA 7900GTX 512MB.

or

Dead 2x1GB PC2-8500 OCZ Reapers.

......I cannot express how bummed out I am if it's either of them.
They have both treated me extremely well, as far as components go, and I feel like an absolute tool for having possibly done something that might have affected one or the other.

My guess is that if there was a surge in electricity on the board, it found it's way to the weakest component and killed it before it could take out something else.

I'll be grabbing a cheapo set of RAM and a video card after work and get back to troubleshooting.

Thanks for the comments so far.

 

[Old Hippie]

I went to the local shop and grabbed a Debug

I've been looking at these things. What card did you get, and how much was it?

 

[MarcVenice]

Since you got a blank screen and no error beeps that might have ment ram, my first guess was videocard. PC's boot just fine without a videocard. I'm guessing the videocard is the most expensive of the two though, so let's hope I'm wrong.

I looked at the pics btw, I don't really understand how you managed to get the NB fan to touch the CPU fan? Anyways other people did some good suggestions. If any cabling was exposed you have to replace/remove it. But I guess you allready tried all that. Doesn't look like any cabling was hit though.

 

[evoic]

The DeBug card was from a company called StarTech and it's just a little tan-colored PCB with a 2-digit LED readout and 3 x GAL16v8 CMOS Logic chips.
Nothing too fancy, but since it was the only one that the store carried (and they're not known for being the best when it comes to prices anyways) this store had it for $39.99.
Ouch.

I looked online real quick and saw plenty in the $25 or less range.
Some for as little as $10 shipped.

I work in the semiconductor industry and these GAL / PAL chips cost nothing......so 3 of them on a board with a little LED and a bare PCB is probably about $1.00 to make.
They're not the most complicated devices.

I probably would have no problem buying the cheap version, but waiting for shipping time was not an option so I grabbed it from the store instead.

---------------------------------

As for how it touched the CPU cooler, just imagine twisting the NB cooler about 1/2" and voila' contact.

As for the dead video card not being something that would hold up the system from booting - that's good news.
Of all things, I prefer that it's the RAM that's dead because it's so easy to replace these days.

 

[evoic]

It's the motherboard.
I swapped all of the components out after trying every possible replacement part I could come up with and the motherboard was the issue.
Me thinks the NB is kaput.

Warranty time.