Help Please! (Think I may have killed someones computer)

[Zurtex]

Hi

To help out a house mate who had a dying PSU, I replaced it with one of my spare generic ones. Recently, I helped her select her own cheap PSU, a new CPU heatsink and a new fan (all kinda needed replacing).

Anyway, it's a socket A, Asus Mobo, with some AMD Athlon CPU. I took off the really old crappy heatsink, wiped the CPU a little (didn't need much) and then applied some new thermal paste and put the new heatsink one on (pretty good for its price, a Xilence one).

I also took the Graphics card out (a 6600GT) and tried to remove the front of the heatsink so I could get the dust out (the bit of plastic with the Sparkle logo on it), I failed to do so because I couldn't find an appropriate screw driver, so I blew down the heatsink and covered my face with dust, but certainly left it a lot cleaner.

I plugged the new PSU in to the mobo, hard drive etc.., hooked everything up, screwed the side back on (with the new fan attached to it) and turned the computer on. Everything seemed o.k (the monitor gave a green light and all the fans started whirring) but the monitor just says "no signal found". I turned a little bit white because I don't understand what I did that could make this problem, I've done all of this stuff dozens of times.

Thinking I might of killed the graphics card, I put in a spare AGP graphics card I had knocking about the place, no such luck, get the same problem. I then tried the spare PSU it had been running on less than an hour ago, again the same problem. I tried hooking it up to my monitor, again the same problem.

Could anyone please suggest the likely cause for this problem?

 

[robisbell]

hope you not only cleaned all the old thermal paste from the heatsink, but also from the processor.

as for the video issue. shut down the machine, unscrew the chassis mount screw for the card, pull it out, blow out the slot the card goes into, and reaseat it, and re attach the screw so the card is securely contacting the case. connect the video cable from the monitor, and power it up. check to make sure the graphics card fan is runnning.

let me know the results.

 

[Zurtex]

Originally posted by: robisbell
hope you not only cleaned all the old thermal paste from the heatsink, but also from the processor.

as for the video issue. shut down the machine, unscrew the chassis mount screw for the card, pull it out, blow out the slot the card goes into, and reaseat it, and re attach the screw so the card is securely contacting the case. connect the video cable from the monitor, and power it up. check to make sure the graphics card fan is runnning.

let me know the results.

Yes, sorry, I'm badly explaining myself because I'm feeling a little panicky. I cleaned the thermal paste of the CPU, there wasn't much on it though because it mainly stuck to the old heatsink.

I did as you suggested (with much skills from the days of having to do with with video cartridges), however to no avail. The GPU fan is certainly on, it's the loudest fan in there by far now.

I'm a little worried I've somehow broken the CPU, I might try and take off the heatsink and look, but there's not much I can do tonight as I don't have any spare socket A CPUs to hand, I do have some at a friends though I can grab tomorrow. Any other suggestions please?

 

[robisbell]

one last thing you can try, take the heatsink off, lift the lever to release the processor, lift it up and check for dust or anything, replace it properly, lock it into the socket and reattach the heatsink and fan. a last resort option you can try is to clear the cmos.
did you verify the monitor is hooked up to the card, just checking.

 

[Zurtex]

I've tried all that, I re-applied some even higher quality thermal paste I had knocking around. And I cleared the cmos.

And yes I checked the monitor was hooked up in to the card every time I tried it XD.

Oh well, I need sleep now, going to try the same CPU on a different mobo first thing in the morning. Thanks for your help.

 

[Soundmanred]

Let us know how that goes Z. Get some sleep!

 

[Zurtex]

Hey, looks like I'd somehow accidentally broken the mobo (no idea how, maybe something was already a little loose). I tested it today on a mainly working socket A mobo I had lying around, fortunately I have a couple of properly working socket A mobos at my parents house, so I can build her computer back together again tomorrow without it costing me anything.

Odd, experience, thanks for the suggestions though .

 

[robisbell]

how did you break the motherboard exactly? are you talking baout physically?

 

[Zurtex]

Originally posted by: robisbell
how did you break the motherboard exactly? are you talking baout physically?

I assume so, it's an old motherboard and not fantastically designed for reaching in and modifying stuff. But I certainly never noticed snapping anything or twisting anything and I was very careful about things.

But honestly, all I know is when I put her CPU, RAM and Graphics card in to my spare socket A mobo, and hook up the same PSU, it happily loads the BIOS and outputs fine to the monitor.

 

[robisbell]

can you boot tho? it may have been some dust in a slot on the old board or something not securely plugged in, like memory, or power.

 

[Zurtex]

Originally posted by: robisbell
can you boot tho? it may have been some dust in a slot on the old board or something not securely plugged in, like memory, or power.

I can boot, there's no chance that it's dust, I've blowed fully in to all the slots of things which I removed. The power didn't fit perfectly (it required a bit of a push), I'll give it another try tonight, but I'm not hopeful.

 

[Zurtex]

Well tried that, only connected the PSU, RAM, Graphics Card and CPU, to make sure that no cable was interfering with securely plugging everything in, after double checking every socket and connection I tried it again and still got the same problem. The mobo is clearly a goner.

 

[lardbeetle]

Sounds like the mobo. You might want to try manually clearing the CMOS, see if it's a problem with the motherboard's settings.

 

[Zurtex]

Originally posted by: lardbeetle
Sounds like the mobo. You might want to try manually clearing the CMOS, see if it's a problem with the motherboard's settings.

Thanks , but already tried that .

 

[robisbell]

you may have plugged in the power backwards, or damaged the connectors. I noticed you said "The power didn't fit perfectly (it required a bit of a push)."

 

[Zurtex]

Originally posted by: robisbell
you may have plugged in the power backwards, or damaged the connectors. I noticed you said "The power didn't fit perfectly (it required a bit of a push)."

:/

Maybe, I don't think so, I certainly didn't plug it in backwards.

Just the way the motherboard was designed and the fact all the wires were getting in the way (it was a 24 pin connector with 4 pins detachable that I had to detach) and the motherboard being fairly poorly designed and scrunching all the components you need to plug in together and leaving the middle a wide open space, the clip wasn't quite getting on right.

It would be nice to have something which I could go "I'll watch for that next time", but I've done this probably over a dozen times and it seemed to go far more smoothly than it normally does (really got the hang of detaching and attaching socket A heatsinks)