Fried My Very First CPU

[jzodda]

Fried my First CPU!
Well after 6 years of being into this hobby I finally fried one

I got my new XP1800 and was all ready to unlock it using the VRZone method with the Silver Grease to paint with and silicone paste to fill in the laser trench

Now I am not sure where I went wrong- guess it could have been in any number of steps. First off when I screwed the painting up I just wiped off the silver grease with a tissue and then restarted. I think I should have cleaned the area with nail polish remover first before restarting.

Next I didn't use tape to mask off the areas that I didnt want stuff to get on and the painting was a real bitch with a pin. The stuff would not stay on the head of the pin very well and maybe I scratched the CPU while trying to paint with it. Now to me looking under a magnifying glass it seemed that I had all 5 bridges covered well and none were crossed. Of course my eyes were hurting by that time and I was not seeing very well

Anyway maybe my next mistake was to use an improper heatsink. I have an alpha 8045 and its a pain to get on and off. Figuring that I would have to take off the cpu anyway and paint again I used an old Alpha Pal30 from an FC-PGA socket that was sitting around. It seemed to fit the socket of my Epox 8kha+ well enough but maybe it did not make good contact and burned up the cpu that way.

So when I turned the system on I would get power to everything but no beeps, no posting, no nothing. So I am figuring its a dead cpu. (everthing worked fine before I tried to unlock) I have another XP on the way so maybe I will try again with some lessons learned

1. Never use a heatsink made for a different socket
2. Unlocking takes patience- especially if your hands shake a little like mine.
3. Use clear tape to mask off the areas you dont want stuff to get on.
4. Watch how you paint with that pin. I could have sratched the cpu and killed it that way. You have to be gentle
5. Use Clear Nail polish to fill in the trench instead of Heatsink Paste which may or may not be conductive. I have read differing views on that.

So now I am waiting on another one and am hoping I didnt kill the MB or sticks of memory as well. I guess I will know in a few days. I was bummed all day but no longer- No risk no reward. I just wished I knew which part I messed up on that killed it.

 

[bomax]

Clear the CMOS, then try booting up again. I thought I'd fried mine but I just needed to clear the CMOS, then all went well (sort of).

later,
bomax

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Sorry brudda, Perhaps you should just use the new 1 for awhile locked and overclock from the FSB.

 

[jzodda]

Thanks but tried all that

cleared cmos, remove battery, etc, etc, etc. Believe me I know the drill

 

[Jerboy]

 

[Kaieye]

I found out the hard way that the heat conductive paste is electrically conductive. A few weeks ago, I sold a Duron cpu to a person that claims did not work. I checked the cpu for burn marks or chipped edges from improper hs mounting. Everything looks fine and the cpu worked fine before I sold it. I was puzzled until I noticed that some of the pins had heat conductive paste shorting some of the pins. I just cleaned it off with some alcohol and remounted the cpu. It's running fine now...

 

[Boonesmi]

did you go back and totally clean off all of the stuff you did?

 

[jzodda]

Yeah cleaned it off real nice

 

[jzodda]

Jerboy

You are correct- it was improper installation of the ALPA PAL30 that killed my XP. When I put the ALPHA on my p3-700 the next day the bios was reporting temps of 100C! When I put a gorb on it was back to 35C. So I must have been putting it on wrong. I dont know how but thats what happened. The XP could not take 100C and over and got fried. I may have the Clips on backwards- I recall that the pal30 had to have to step over the lever. I dont have the instruction sheet anymore.

O well- from now on I use the 8045 in all experiments!

 

[Emo]

This may not make much sense to you, but just try it. Remove the video card you are using and replace it with another one (pci or agp doesn't matter). Then try to reboot. Upon a successful reboot, you can replace back the card you were first using.