Heat sink spring was not placed right.

buildingacomputer

Senior member
Oct 24, 2000
281
0
76
I was setting up XP-Mobile 2600 w/ MSI nForce 2 ultra mobo. I could not get the system to run stable no matter what I did. Only when it shut itself down I guessed it was a temp problem. After scratching my head a while, I found I placed the 3-tab spring backward so that it did not press the center of hs. When I lifted hs, hs compound on cpu was mostly undisturbed.

I can't believe I didn't know that yet. What is scary is I built all home computerts for wife and children. I must go back and check all hs's. I hope I am not the dumbest person in the world. Maybe 2nd dumbest.
 

jagec

Lifer
Apr 30, 2004
24,442
6
81
If you even bothered to put a heatsink ON you are already ahead of the bottom 10%.