Bet you've never seen a cracked Athlon XP like this!

[PliotronX]

Oh, the horror!!!!

 

[jonnyGURU]

<< That is ridiculous that they even installed it wrong in the first place... sure it is "tested" ... bam CPU, Mobo, and RAM- it lights up the monitor and I can configure it in the BIOS - TESTED. You paid 9$ for that. >>



I agree. Actual "DOA" rate is only 3% on an entire order. You'd have to be pretty paranoid to ask for a pre-tested ensemble. Besides, even when the stuff is pretested the RMA rate on most orders is as high as 10%. What this means is 3% was dead when it left and 7% died at the hands of the user. Just yesterday, I pretested a motherboard and CPU for a guy that had killed a CPU "somehow" (never did figure out how as he did have the heatsink on correctly), boot into Windows, shut it down, shipped it out and when he got it it ran for all of 5 minutes before another CPU died. A lot of good that pre-testing did! 🙁

 

[Athlon4all]

Well, I must say that is the first time I have ever seen a cracked core and it's sad to see a Athlon dead🙁 JK!!!!!!!! It does look weird though.

 

[CAMS]

Thats pretty funny.

Someone used a bucket load of thermal grease and a TIM.

I bet they thought, better to be save than sorry.

 

[drees]

<< With the ceramic CPUs this isn't usually a problem because ceramic doesn't flex so there's good support, but the new organic package has enough give that the shock from the heatsink's weight being pushed up against it from a PC being dropped, and then bounced back up again, will smash the silicon die in a heartbeat. >>



I did notice that the organic package is a lot more flexible than the old ceramics. If you take an XP in your fingers, you can flex it with your bare hands! With a ceramic package, you can't. If you were able to, you'd probably break it!

Anyway, the moral of the story seems to be: Don't ship AMDs with the heatsink installed!

Hmm, then how do OEMs ship assembled computers? Do heatsinks which attach to the MB provide enough support? Will a shim be enough added protection?

 

[sharkeeper]

Through bolted HSF is *the* way to go with the socket 462 platform. I wouldn't even think of shipping a system via courier without one installed. Swiftech tested theirs by throwing the system from a two story window and the cpu survived! Can't say so for the case! Looks like it would even survive typical UPS soccer player style handling with aplomb!

Regarding the picture of the holy pga cpu: I was told the chip was shot with a air pellet rifle. I'm sure if one is in a package with anti static foam holding the pins it will stay together quite well. Ablating one with a YAG laser would be interesting! All my cpu's work though. 🙂

Cheers!