Did I "break" my processor?

[Jezreel]

I was trying to fix a problem on an Athlon xp 2000+. The thing is the goddamed computer just kept on rebooting itself.I had already ruled out the RAM and THE HDDS, but when I was looking at temperature readings on the BIOS i was getting 45C, while On my other computer (also an Xp 2000+) I was getting 3 7-38. so I thought maybe Ill try the other fan on the faulty computer. Then I proceeded to do probably the stupidest thing Ive done in my life. The other computers fan clip seemed to take a lot more pushing than the old one, but since I was frustrated I just pushed it very hard until it latched on. Then I turned on the pc and everything powered up.. except the screen. The led just stayed yellow. Then I switched everything back and still no dice. So I guess what Im asking is what did I break, and Why Am I such an Idiot?

 

[Albis]

you may have damaged your motherboard if you slammed a screwdriver into the motherboard while trying to remove the fan clip. I've had this happen to me in the past. When your computer starts up, listen for any beeps. Look in your manual for what the beeps mean and that might be you get started on figuring out what happened.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've done that too, as a matter of fact, and it's slightly frightening. I've damaged Socket 5 boards in the past when the screwdriver slipped and sliced a few of the pins on a densely-wired QPFP on the board; thankfully it was a junker board anyways.

I also did that on my KT400 board, but the impact was completely vertical to the board, and the force wasn't so bad, so nothing got sliced, but there is a small scrape mark directly over a trace. I can see some copper, but it doesn't look broken. I didn't try to test it with my DVM, there's not a good place to find the other ends of the conductor, unless I scrape the PCB in a couple of other areas just to test.

I *hate* those single fan clips that most Socket-A/370 heatsinks use. I wish that more systems would use those spring-loaded screw-down heatsink mounts like I think that the A64 systems now use.