As the CPU fan turns...

I got a new heatsink/fan today for my CPU.

A ThermalTake Volcano 9.

It seems like a very good fan, and indeed it was quite silent when I turned it on.

That of course is the good news.

The fan turned on, the harddrive spun up, and the CD Rom drive initialised, but the start up sequence never happened.

No beeping, no "you stupid idiot, you did this wrong" messages, nothing. Just the never ending flash of the light on my monitor telling me there's no signal.

Why did I decide to put the fan in myself? I knew, KNEW, I would **** it up... But, I did it anyway.

Now I have a very quiet fan, on a very dead processor.

Kill me.

[Chris B]

err...what exactly can you do wrong when exchanging a fan?

i mean, you put it on the cpu and plug it in the powersocket...that's all...nothing else...you don't touch anything else...


you did not forget the coolingpaste did you?

He added a heatsink as well, so that has to go quite cloes to the processor. Could have static fried it if he touched it by accident.

I'd say either the fan is sucking too much power (or power away from the processor or bios chip), it's putting power through somewhere or some way that power should be going, or you scratched, dislodged or mamed something while installing it.

Just take it out and power-up yer computer. If it doesn't work, you've knocked something out or fried something. If it does work, then just try installing the fan again and again, making slight changes to what you're doing until it works.

I killed my computer installing some front-mounted speakers and two front USB's, turned out all I'd done wrong was connect the power cable to the wrong 4-pin power-cable spliter thingy running to/from/past the floppy-drive. Switched the connector over and it works fine.

Chances are I broke the processor.

I don't know.

Regardless, I'm not touching it again lest I do more damage. I've asked my brother to look at it for me. He built it in the first place.

just a stupid question..
you remembered the thermal paste, right ?

Valiant.

Guys, not having thermal paste on the heatsink WILL NOT kill his processor. It'll run a little hot, yeah....but it won't die. He would've had to do PHYSICAL damage to the processor for it to not work properly.

Kakaze, take the CPU out of the socket and see if the symtoms persist. If the motherboard is doing what its supposed to, then you will get a POST error code for no processor present. Check the pins on the bottom of the processor to make sure they're good and straight, then plug it back into the socket. It can only go in one way so you couldn't really screw that up. It'll just drop right in so no force is needed (hense, ZIF or Zero Insertion Force). Then just flip the lever back into position and power it up.

I ain't touching it. Gonna let my brother do it.

I don't wanna risk screwing something else up.

I can put in cards and new drives, but I'm not going to touch the processor again.

[Chris B]

well, let us know what he might find out.

Whatever man.

You really gotta get over this fear and just dig in. There isn't a whole lot you can do to screw it up...unless you did it on purpose.

The fear is more for how much money I have to spend than anything.

If I could break stuff and have no qualms about replacing it, maybe I would figure it out myself, but I'm poor right now.

[General Phoenix]

Hey, a little reluctance is understandable. I've been building computer systems for over 10 years, and I still manage to screw things up. Case in point - I just bought a new HD - 120 GB. I backed up the files I needed from the old disk, swapped it out, and hit the power switch to turn the comp back on - and it just sat there. I thought I'd fried the power supply, so I got pissed off, cussed for 10 minutes, and stomped off to watch a movie. I come back a few hours later, unplug all the power cables to my drives, plug them back in, and then it works. I don't know what the problem was - I probably couldn't do it again if I tried. shazbot happens with computers. And if Kakaze is anything like me, he'd just get more frustrated if he went digging in without some certainty that he could fix it.

Let us know what your brother finds - it could come in handy next time I screw up...

I had problems with my heat sink. The heat sink came in a box with the processor. But the attaching clip wasn't the right shape. It didn't match the diagram.

I was able to bend and tweak it so it could hold the sink to the chip, but that was really unnerving for my first time.

cpu works fine...unfortunately this fan on another chip keeps making noise. The first didn't spin all the time. This new one makes noise some of the time. LOUD noise. But it spins...go figur....

Originally posted by General Phoenix
I come back a few hours later, unplug all the power cables to my drives, plug them back in, and then it works. I don't know what the problem was - I probably couldn't do it again if I tried.

I've had similar problems at times. The problem has been with the ATA data cables rather than the power, however. ATA is very finicky about its connections; if the cables aren't fully connected or happen to be on backwards the system won't start. On ATX-based systems the MB won't even send the turn-on signal to the power supply.

I've had a few things seem to break on me before, then I come back and just turn the computer on and it works...it's like, WTF?

I remember when I first got windows 95...I couldn't for the life of me get it to work on my old pentium 60... Well, after 80+ dollars in calls to Microsoft, it finally started working out of the blue. I'd just reset all the config options back to the defaults, if I remember, and started it back up and boom...windows 95. Windows 95 working under the same options it was refusing to work under before And I didn't have any problems after that installing it again after formats and whatnot.


Anywho, I'm surprised, my brother came today. I didn't figure he'd come so soon. He futzed with it here for a bit, but couldn't figure out if it was the processor or the motherboard, so he took it with him. Hopefully he'll be able to figure it out.

[Chris B]

imo, the worst thing about putting a computer together is that i keep ripping pieces of flesh of my hands, when putting in the mainboard...why do those pins on the back have to be so sharp and pointy? :O

X: Thats exactly why you sit it gently on an open palm and use your other hand to grip the corner to live it off your hand when mounting it. That or just use both hands on the corners. Both ways work fine.

Tom: Does it make a 'whirring' noise or does it sound like a jet taking off? If the latter, then your fan is working fine. If its the 'whirring' noise, then you've got a dying fan on your hands. (bad bearings will do that to ya)

Oh, update...I'm getting my computer back today.

Turns out I did break the processor, so I got a new one...slightly faster, 1.3 from 1.2.

I'm just happy it's working again.

When you get it back, just go watercooling.

Hell, if I had enough hose I could probably hang my radiator outside and watch my CPU temps drop to sub 20C. (its 22F outside right now...and we're expected to get nailed with 4" of snow tomorrow!)

And you're going to buy me the watercooling equipment right?


As it is I'm tempted...the new fan is loud, it seems louder than the other one, but I don't know. I think it seems that way because the noise is at a higher frequency and higher frequency noises like that kind of stick out to me.

Also, it's only dropped the processor from 64 degrees to 54...I was hoping I'd get a little more than 10 degrees from it.

And, this processor is suppoed to be 1.3, but it's only running at 1.2. I futzed around with some of the settings and corrupted windows. I had to repair it...I think my ram is only pc100 (I thought it was supposed to be pc133, but I remember when I first got the computer I changed the setting to 133 and, this was when I was running 98, I was getting corrupted files everywhere. Now with XP it just wouldn't start at all). Tomorrow I'm going to see if bus speed of 100 and a multiplier of 13 will work. I tried that tonight, but after I tried the 133 by 10, but I wouldn't know if it worked or not since the 133 by 10 frelled windows.

Am I making sense? I'm not feeling well right now, and thoughts aren't coming very well.

Sounds like you've got some el-cheapo RAM to boot. Next time, only buy name brand hardware. (Go for Infineon if you possibly can. Their stuff performs well above the rating its given. I can run my PC133 sticks at 149MHz w/o any problems.)

That being said, you've earned this. Did you check to see if your motherboard even supports a 1.3GHz processor? (if your motherboard's manual doesn't specify it, then download SiSoft Sandra and have it check.

I didn't buy it, my brother did, I just gave him the money.


And My motherboard can use up to the latest XP processor, though without the faster ram it'll be slower than it should be.