Mad dog
08-15-2002, 04:57 PM
As some of you know I’ve been having a small disaster recently with the death of my computer, I fed little bits of conflicting info into the board as I wrestled with the problem and now I’m going to give a full description of all that happened.
It all started some time ago when I was messing with the idea of sticking a big ass fan to my SK6 to get better cooling for less noise. I was over clocking at the time and was obsessed with low temperatures. I built out of plastic, epoxy and electrical tape an adaptor that would allow me to channel all the air from a 92mm fan through a 60mm x 60mm opening. While I was at it I realised that I could actually make getting at the processor a lot easier by turning the clip on the heat sink around (My case has a support one side of the CPU slot which makes getting at the clip impossible). Any way, I tried this new adaptor, it didn’t work, too much back splash, and the temps wherever worse than with the 60mm fan. In the process of changing fans about, my computer stopped booting. After some fiddling (some of the silver lacquer on the L1 bridges had come of) I somehow fried the proc (XP 1600+). I replaced it with an XP 1800+ and noticed that the temp sense was showing stupidly high readings that I put down to the temp sensor being screwed.
Fast forward to last week and I’m installing a temp probe to read direct off the core. I fire up, and the chip fries. Arse! Now I thought this was down to the temp probe lifting the HSF off the core, so I ordered a new chip (XP 2000+) and was left running at 500Mhz on my old original Athlon with out access to my RAID array; the controller was integrated into the board and I couldn’t use that with out a chip. I also suspected that the board was faulty but couldn’t be sure until I tested it with a CPU I knew that worked. While I was waiting for the new proc to arrive I was fiddling with my old proc, mobo and HSF to see what had happened. To my utter horror I found that even with out the probe in place, there was air between the core and the HSF. I played around with the thing, trying to get it to sit flat to no avail. Then I thought, what if I flip the clip around? Hey presto, contact. It seems that when I first flipped the clip around, it shifted the pressure point away from the core of the CPU, flipping the clip around moved the pressure point back over the core. But I hear you ask, how did I run a proc for over a year with the HSF and core, not in contact. The system being a tower means that the board is vertical all the time. The weight of the HSF is actually enough to pull itself down on to the core, but just barely, and with the help of a little AS, it didn’t fry. This also explains why I was getting much higher temps. So I thought, horra, my mobo is probably fine, and I know why my temps are so high. So the new proc arrives and I try and rebuild. However in the process my KVM starts playing up and I’m forced to arse about with the cables. Then, to my horror, I don’t know how it happened but my main mobo got powered up and a puff of white smoke came out of the keyboard PS/2 port and it no longer worked. I didn’t think too much of it at the time as I knew my keyboard was USB and I could just use that instead. However, for win XP to recognise the keyboard I first had to log on, which I couldn’t do with out a keyboard. I couldn’t run setup with out a keyboard either to make the thing re-install itself.
Well by now I was pissed. So I thought, fuck it, jumped on to dabs.com and ordered the newer version of my mobo, hoping that the RAID chip would recognise my array. In the mean time I sort out the RMA for the original board (which will take 4 weeks or so). The new board arrives, sees my array, horra! But need to run setup over win xp as it needs the new driver for the RARID controller. Backup my stuff and then re-install everything. And here we are, today and how. Old mobo will be picked up on Monday, and everything else is cruising along just fine. I’ve now bluetacked the 2 dead XP chips to my case to remind me of what I’ve done. Pics of which are now going into the official case gallery .
MD
P.S. Mods and admins, feel free to shift this to a more appropriate forum if you wish.
It all started some time ago when I was messing with the idea of sticking a big ass fan to my SK6 to get better cooling for less noise. I was over clocking at the time and was obsessed with low temperatures. I built out of plastic, epoxy and electrical tape an adaptor that would allow me to channel all the air from a 92mm fan through a 60mm x 60mm opening. While I was at it I realised that I could actually make getting at the processor a lot easier by turning the clip on the heat sink around (My case has a support one side of the CPU slot which makes getting at the clip impossible). Any way, I tried this new adaptor, it didn’t work, too much back splash, and the temps wherever worse than with the 60mm fan. In the process of changing fans about, my computer stopped booting. After some fiddling (some of the silver lacquer on the L1 bridges had come of) I somehow fried the proc (XP 1600+). I replaced it with an XP 1800+ and noticed that the temp sense was showing stupidly high readings that I put down to the temp sensor being screwed.
Fast forward to last week and I’m installing a temp probe to read direct off the core. I fire up, and the chip fries. Arse! Now I thought this was down to the temp probe lifting the HSF off the core, so I ordered a new chip (XP 2000+) and was left running at 500Mhz on my old original Athlon with out access to my RAID array; the controller was integrated into the board and I couldn’t use that with out a chip. I also suspected that the board was faulty but couldn’t be sure until I tested it with a CPU I knew that worked. While I was waiting for the new proc to arrive I was fiddling with my old proc, mobo and HSF to see what had happened. To my utter horror I found that even with out the probe in place, there was air between the core and the HSF. I played around with the thing, trying to get it to sit flat to no avail. Then I thought, what if I flip the clip around? Hey presto, contact. It seems that when I first flipped the clip around, it shifted the pressure point away from the core of the CPU, flipping the clip around moved the pressure point back over the core. But I hear you ask, how did I run a proc for over a year with the HSF and core, not in contact. The system being a tower means that the board is vertical all the time. The weight of the HSF is actually enough to pull itself down on to the core, but just barely, and with the help of a little AS, it didn’t fry. This also explains why I was getting much higher temps. So I thought, horra, my mobo is probably fine, and I know why my temps are so high. So the new proc arrives and I try and rebuild. However in the process my KVM starts playing up and I’m forced to arse about with the cables. Then, to my horror, I don’t know how it happened but my main mobo got powered up and a puff of white smoke came out of the keyboard PS/2 port and it no longer worked. I didn’t think too much of it at the time as I knew my keyboard was USB and I could just use that instead. However, for win XP to recognise the keyboard I first had to log on, which I couldn’t do with out a keyboard. I couldn’t run setup with out a keyboard either to make the thing re-install itself.
Well by now I was pissed. So I thought, fuck it, jumped on to dabs.com and ordered the newer version of my mobo, hoping that the RAID chip would recognise my array. In the mean time I sort out the RMA for the original board (which will take 4 weeks or so). The new board arrives, sees my array, horra! But need to run setup over win xp as it needs the new driver for the RARID controller. Backup my stuff and then re-install everything. And here we are, today and how. Old mobo will be picked up on Monday, and everything else is cruising along just fine. I’ve now bluetacked the 2 dead XP chips to my case to remind me of what I’ve done. Pics of which are now going into the official case gallery .
MD
P.S. Mods and admins, feel free to shift this to a more appropriate forum if you wish.