CPU's and Fans

[Lokan]

Curious question, but I recently got a call from a friend who just purchased a new CPU and fan (OEM cpu that is), but claimed it was DOA. He bought an Epox board with it and the LED display came up "FF", which in my boards book says a card is seated wrong, or other problems. I advised him to do the normal stuff, reseat, change dimm slots, boot outside of case for shorts, etc, nothing. I then asked him to bring it over and tried it on mine, same response, FF. The one thing I noticed was the thermal paste he put on for the fan kind of "fell off" the cpu die. He put so much on that it spilled into the L bridges.

I was wondering, could that be a reason the CPU was bad? Also, we tried my working cpu on his board and his board still wouldn't boot. Is it possible that the CPU shorted out the board somehow too?

Just some curious questions because I've never run into this before. Thanks.

 

[Bovinicus]

It is possible that if the thermal paste is conductive the spilling into the bridges could cause problems. However, if it didn't work in your system either, I would guess it's DOA. OEM CPUs usually have a pretty limited warranty. Get a replacement as soon as you can.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

very possible it was shorted as he said. you could try getting it off bridges and boot, but i assume you have done that.

pic how in the world did it get that far off the die?

 

[Lokan]

Pic doesn't work, but he put ALOT on the thing, my guess is he pressed the heat sink down quickly on the paste and it "Splurted" out? Dunno, I did see there was a bit of the stuff on one of the pins underneath, apparently some got on the socket on the mainboard too. Dunno what he did, but I told him to RMA it quick because it's OEM. Thanks for the answers.