CZroe
Lifer
I worked on an old laptop that kept booting at 128MHz, 102MHz, 275MHz, etc when the BIOS/CMOS setup clearly stated that the minimum speed for the 2+GHz CPU was 800MHz. My first thought was "heat-triggered protective speed throttling" by the CPU.
Because it would do this even in the cold and at first boot, I suspected either a completely detached cooler or a damaged thermal diode or something. Instead, I found a clear gel all over the CPU with a rectangular chunk of the original compound missing from the heat sink (same size/shape as the CPU core). Clearly, it had been added. The owner told me that it was "refurbished" whe n she bought it and it still looked like a fresh/clean install, so it came to her this way. When I cleaned it all off there was a score/mark on the CPU die and the cooler, like it had something hard/sharp on there last time it was installed. The core/die did not look cracked but applying proper compound and booting did not fix the problem, so it seems that the damage has been done.
My first thought was "petroleum jelly" but it's not cloudy like that. Is it possible that someone tried to fix the same problem as me and used a different kind of compound I've never heard of? Have you ever heard of a clear gel thermal compound?
Because it would do this even in the cold and at first boot, I suspected either a completely detached cooler or a damaged thermal diode or something. Instead, I found a clear gel all over the CPU with a rectangular chunk of the original compound missing from the heat sink (same size/shape as the CPU core). Clearly, it had been added. The owner told me that it was "refurbished" whe n she bought it and it still looked like a fresh/clean install, so it came to her this way. When I cleaned it all off there was a score/mark on the CPU die and the cooler, like it had something hard/sharp on there last time it was installed. The core/die did not look cracked but applying proper compound and booting did not fix the problem, so it seems that the damage has been done.
My first thought was "petroleum jelly" but it's not cloudy like that. Is it possible that someone tried to fix the same problem as me and used a different kind of compound I've never heard of? Have you ever heard of a clear gel thermal compound?
