Anyone have thoeries on how I burned my xp1600 with my cpu turned OFF

[AnMig]

Hi fellow members you may remember me from my old post a couple of months ago " burned two tbirds in 1 hour" I thought I learned my lesson then but apparently not.
I have had this 1600 xp unlocked for the past 34 days (mentioned date to signify end of 30 day warranty). I was getting board and decided to change my fan to a 80mm.
Everything was giong well that I decided to again remove the 80mm fan and flip it to see which was better blowing or sucking. So I shut down but did not take the cpu out of the socket, took out the fan out (wasnt spinng as I did this) then started working on the fan for about 10 min. I was working 2 feet from my cpu and I swear did not hear it power up or beep. I suddenly smeel that distinct faint smell of burned electrical material. I take a look at my computer and noticed the smell was comming from it.
I did not notice the fans spinning as I was in a state of panic and unplugged the computer as fast as I could. Placed the fan back in poweredup more smoke. Dead 1600xp

Theories:

1. I have a LAN at home and one of my computers may have poweredup my cpu. Can anyone confirm this?

2. I accidentally shorted something and powered up my cpu as i was remong the fan. Unlikely. I also have one of those ANTEC cases with a door so its impossible for me to accidentalyy press the power button.

I am short on theories as you can see.

I am upset that the soyo dragon plus has a feature FOC (fan off control) that is supposed to prevent your cpu from powereing up if no fan is attached to the fan 1 slot.
I have this feature enabled by the way.

My board seemed to unscathed but I get stuck in the bios "cpu health" if I enter it and have to ctrl-alt-del to get out of the bios. Otherwise she is runnig fine with my emergency 750 duron.

My wife is not going to beleive my story.

Plus side I called AMEX blue they extend the warranty to double so they may replace it. I wilkl find out in 2 weeks.
Is it hard to ask soyo to change this board? will they send me one before i return mine I hate waiting 3 weeks to get my board.

Peace and Learn from this

 

[Coolone]

dude, you're getting a dell! j/k

I've never heard of that happening before

 

[scorpiots]

if your mobo supports remote lan power up, then it could turn on the pc that way.. even if power plug is disconnected there are still some power left.

what I usually do is disconnect the power plug and press the power button..you would hear some power left trying to turn on.. that way you know it doesnt have any more power left.

 

[Vegito]

When you pull the plug there is still power left..

I work with so many plugged pc before and 30% of the time, it turn on when something makes contact, ie screw driver with expansion slot.. which is weird and always unplug and wait a few secs... things are expensive to replace..

 

[Amused]

Yep, unplug and wait about 30 seconds. My mobo LED and NIC LED both stay on and active for about 20 seconds after I unplug my system, AND turn off the PSU switch.

But the main lesson here is to UNPLUG YOUR SYSTEM WHEN WORKING ON IT!

 

[John]

Looks like this kind of activity is contagious.

 

[samgau]

I have another theory....

nm... as I though about it I saw the flaws in it... why don't AMD have an auto shut off like intel has with its chips... my heatsink clip broke the other day... after a day of operations or so.. and the machine just froze after about 15 seconds as the cpu overheated then shut itself down... repowerd the cpu after a week when I got the replacement.. and all was fine..

AMD definetly need to implement something like that... they have an excellent CPU... so why don't they also have an excellent system to protect them... ????

 

[Adul]

Best thing to do is work with the pc unpluged. Sometime a contact somewhere will power up the pc. I fried a lan card like that. The pc powered on when I plug the linksys card into its slot.

 

[MoleX]

I can't help feeling that if you weren't Bored your CPU might be alive today

Moral of the story, If Ain't broke DO NOT MESS WITH IT!!!

MoleX

 

[sharkeeper]

There is nothing wrong with working on your box with the power cord plugging PROVIDING the power supply has a rocker switch! If not, you are only safe if you unplug the power cord! The rules are changing folks! Any industrial mechanic/electrician will tell you that they NEVER touch a piece of machinery without shutting off the power and LOCKING THE DISCONNECT OUT! While you won't loose a limb in a pc, (I'm beginning to think twice about this seeing some of the fans Delta is coming out with though!) it's a good rule to follow. If the power is completely disconnected and OFF, there is no way in hell you will burn your CPU!

A naked CPU in the socket with the mobo powered up (but still off) is very similar to working on an airhandler blower and only stopping the motor by turning the fan off with the thermostat! It's a disaster waiting to happen!

NEVER, EVER remove a heatsink from the CPU without making sure the power is disconnected from the mobo FIRST. I always pull the ATX plug from the mobo BEFORE I even THINK about pulling the HS off! It's a good habit to get into.

The shutdown feature will NOT protect your CPU if the heatsink is not there! The die area is so small that (without no heatsink at all) it will be ruined in a second or less! The "shutdown for no cpu fan" feature in the system bios shuts down the system if no fan RPM is sensed at POST after FIVE SECONDS! You will get smoke in less than FIVE SECONDS people! This feature is designed to alert you that the fan is either locked or unplugged! That is fairly common. A cpu will not be damaged if turned on an run without a fan running on a heatsink. Yes it will overheat, but very gracefully. I've actually run a 1333 at 1533 once with a swiftech MC 462 without a fan! (forgot to plug it in--pabst fans are silent and that is why I didn't know!) I actually got through restoring a Ghost image and then the system hung at rebooting. I rebooted again and got into BIOS and the CPU temp was 89°C! That swifty was hot as a steam press (I could smell the dust like when you fire a heater in the fall!) but the chip didn't fry!

If you remember the cardinal rule of disconnecting the power BEFORE you remove the HS, you will always be ok. If you're paranoid about ESD, you can leave the PS plugged in, just remove the ATX plug from the mobo.

Cheers!