After 2 Weeks Of Troubleshooting...my Pc Is Now De

[erics1one]

BIOS shows..."AMIBIOS NEW SETUP UTILITY - VERSION 3.31a"

 

Temps were normal >54d C.

 

Getting 15-25 fps in heavy application (SWG).

 

I set the BIOS to defaults, turned off all settings on my video card, ran my application at the lowest settings, NO OVERCLOCK...FSB to 200.

 

AND IT CRASHED FOR ITS FINAL TIME...NO BOOT...BLACK SCREEN.

 

One thing that I noticed was that with CoreCenter (which I only used for reading temps) and ClockGen have inital BOOT settings of the FSB to be 203...when in my BIOS I only set it to 200. I dont know if this is my core problem, but obviously something is wrong.

 

A repair place said that the power supply is good. And that it would cost $100 to look at everything else for faults...I'm not going to do that since I know I can get information off of the web and from helpful people here.

 

What can I look for to see why my comp isnt booting? Motherboard? Processor?

 

I wasnt running hot temps when it shutsdown so I couldnt have fried my processor...or MB.

 

here is a link to some pics that I took.

 

cpu pics

 

I'm going to be looking at it in the next few hours...and hopefully not days. Any help that someone could give would be great.

Edited December 28, 2003 by bishop245

[Xtreme21]

First of all where the hell is your Thermal Compound, you have a nice 2.6c P4 with no thermal grease and you wanna OC it, Thats your first problem.. Another thing that i can see is that 9800 pro is too crowded with other cards.. Might want to fix that, could probablly get more FPS if you make it cooler. Also how are you getting 15 FPS in Star Wars Galaxies with a 9800 pro, do you have dial up instead of broadband or what.. Also you need to get some name brand RAM not saying that even 1GB of RAM isnt enough... P4's should be running in the 30's not 50's.... Anyone else have any suggestions why i continue analyzing his problem..

 

2nd i think you fried the CPU, buy a Celeron for socket 478 for like $60 buck and check everything out... Or do whatever you wanna do..

[bishop245]

for once i kinda agree with Xtreme21 when he said where is the thermal paste

 

and that heat spreader on top of the cpu looked to me like it got a lil hotter than it should

 

i mite have nissed it in your post but have you tried resetting the bios

[Xtreme21]

for once i kinda agree with Xtreme21

Thats a lil harsh Bishop, LOL..

[Eva_Unit_0]

Yeah, the IHS on that cpu looks like it was rather toasty at one point in time. There souldn't be blacked stuff on the heatsink, either. I'd put money on a fried cpu...see if you can't try a friends cpu or something to verify.

[General]

I dont know much about computers. but im preaty sure that CPU is fried. in case its not grab your motherboard manual and check what jumper you need to short in order to reset it. <- (I may be wrong here but thats what i did when mine wouldnt turn on). Although it seems kind of odd for it to fry at 55 C.

 

Did you upgrade your system and forgot the thermal compound?

[robbie]

BIOS shows..."AMIBIOS NEW SETUP UTILITY - VERSION 3.31a"

 

1) Temps were normal >54d C.

 

 

 

2) I set the BIOS to defaults, turned off all settings on my video card, ran my application at the lowest settings, NO OVERCLOCK...FSB to 200.

 

 

3) I wasnt running hot temps when it shutsdown so I couldnt have fried my processor...or MB.

1) 54c is quite high!!!

 

2) you said that you weren't overclocking but you have the FSB set at 200?!?!

 

3) Ummm... yes you were running hot. And with a 200 fsb without active cooling you probably did fry the NB.

 

Hope that helps,

Rob

[The J]

The blackened area around on the heatsink is a big question. If it did fry, it might have been a factory mistake? Maybe?

Maybe the black area is fried compound?(nasty) Fried so badly it all got stuck to the heatsink, leaving no trace on the P4.

[Special_K]

The blackened area around on the heatsink is a big question. If it did fry, it might have been a factory mistake? Maybe?

Maybe the black area is fried compound?(nasty) Fried so badly it all got stuck to the heatsink, leaving no trace on the P4.

omg thats some savage heat. he would be gettin higher temps then right? im puttin money on a fried cpu as well though, ive fried my share to know what happens. its definetly the mobo or the cpu. (oh, the last thing i fried was a MSI board, ironic?)

[Nuclear]

I'd check the CPU in another comp if at all possible. It looks pretty bad, but it shouldn't have fried at those temps. I'm thinking it could the mobo that's gobe bad. If the chip had blown, he should get a "Urecongnizable CPU" or "CPU Change" message, not the one he's getting. It almost sounds like the ASUS sudden BIOS death.

 

That chip has definitely been thru hell, but 54C wouldn't fry a P4 unless he was running 1.7+v thru it, and I doubt he was. Def check the mobo out see what it does, my money is on the board and not the chip.

 

And ahhh....

you said that you weren't overclocking but you have the FSB set at 200?!?!

 

Ummm... yes you were running hot. And with a 200 fsb without active cooling you probably did fry the NB.

 

The 2.6 runs a 200FSB stock like all the other "c" P4s. He wasn't OC'ing it at all, those are stock speeds. You have to be in the 305+FSB range before you even start thinking about frying the NB. He was fine.

[erics1one]

To start:

 

Thermal compound/grease is something that I just learned that I needed. So THAT WOULD matter if I installed the CPU and Motherboard...but I did not. ElitePC (small PC dealer) obviously didnt know what they were doing because I havent touched my CPU. Thanks for that input and anything else you might be able to add so I have a better argument with them.

 

Video card spaceing...I agree...done. SWG I have IDSL so Ping is a little high, but 15-29fps is a large range. 22-29 when solo...and 15-22 under load.

 

When my comp crashed the temps were normal. Below 60C for CPU and under 45C for MB. I had it sideways with cover off so that I could troubleshoot my issue without it overheating.

 

The thing is...my friend and I had our systems setup the same place...ElitePC. We have stock cases and cooling systems. Without any mods...both our systems ran at a steady 60C and above on some loads. That is obviously higher than normal, so do you think its from them not applying any Thermal Compound?

 

I'm bringing it back down to ElitePC since I got both the CPU and Mobo from them and it should be easiest with returns and warrenty...so place your bets on what fried. But any words of knowledge that I could preach to them about my CPU and Mobo would be nice...they obviously cannot handle a initial setup and Im not crazy about them handling it again.

 

Thanks for the input everyone. Any additional help is greatly appricated.

 

update: I reset the CMOS jumper and it boots. But only when I flip the breaker switch on the power supply, reset CMOS, then flip the breaker back does it boot. It will not boot from the power button on my case. DOES THIS MEAN THAT I HAVE A BAD POWER BUTTON!!!

Edited December 29, 2003 by erics1one

[GTSticky]

Almost not worth typing, but I'll just briefly reiterate what I've read here.

 

It doesn't appear that you have Thermal Compound on the CPU. If you did have it, and it's that black crap in the pictures, well..

 

Clean your CPU and Heat Sink with alcohol and a coffee filter till both are as clean as they are going to get. Then go to www.arcticsilver.com and follow their instructions for re-attaching your heat sink properly with AS3, AS5 or AS Ceramique.

 

 

If your local shop tries to put anything but Arctic Silver 3, AS5 or AS Ceramique on your CPU Heat Sink, then you should start to doubt their skill level and consider another vendor.

 

They probably had some sort of thermal crap on there or the CPU probably would have smoked, but 60 is too hot even under load unless you live in the desert

 

Vendors (like me) get AS3 for 3 bucks a tube, there's no excuse for using substandard (black?) CPU Thermal stuff to save a few cents or whatever.

 

Good luck.

Edited December 29, 2003 by GTSticky