Thank you all for the suggestions so far. I did wipe off all the old thermal paste from the processor and heat sink and reapplied fresh thermal paste and reassembled. I did that when I added the extra side fan. It worked for the week which is why I thought it was done. but no.
As far as I can tell, the power supply fan is still operating and not dusty. (I made sure I blew that and all the components clean when i was inside the box.)
While it was running during this last week, I installed the motherboard utility for getting temperature of the processor. It was running around 32-36 C, and the default alarm was set at 70, so I thought that looked ok.
I can't boot it up at all at this point, whether I am using a boot disk or relying on the C drive. The furthest i got today, was about half way through the windows start up when it crashed. And that in itself seems to have f*cked up my install. I tried again telling it to go into safe mode with a command line and it was loading drivers but shut down before finishing.
Is there some way to check the power supply? I'm thinking it must be hardware since it doesn't even get into Windows.
thanks for the help. If I'm not doing something I should, let me know. S.
I'd do the memtest86 like I recommended above. That takes your OS out of the picture and tests your memory which would be my first suspect. Let it run multiple passes or better yet, overnight. If it still reboots, you're definitely looking at a hardware problem. If memtest shows errors, well you know the problem then.
Thank you all for the suggestions so far. I did wipe off all the old thermal paste from the processor and heat sink and reapplied fresh thermal paste and reassembled.
To be clear, what do you mean by "I wiped off the old paste"? Exactly how did you do this? With a dry tissue?
If you did not use something like rubbing alcohol and got down to the bare and ultra shinny copper - on both the heat sink and the copper, then you still have some work to do. If you are not down to the bare, shinny metal and 100% clean, then all you are doing is adding a heat insulation layer, rendering the heat sink useless. When when you reapplied the thermal paste, how much did you use? it only takes a very small amount and ultra thin layer. More will act as a there conductor and is not better.
I used a dry lint free cloth and rubbed until I saw bare metal. Maybe that wasn't enough? I wiped on a small layer on both the processor and the heat sink. Maybe I applied too much?? I could do it over again.
I used a dry lint free cloth and rubbed until I saw bare metal. Maybe that wasn't enough? I wiped on a small layer on both the processor and the heat sink. Maybe I applied too much?? I could do it over again.
Correct. If you did not use rubbing alcohol then you did not get down to the bare shinny metal and there was still a film of the old goo left. Don't need to apply to both sides.
There are many YouTube videos on this but here's one that demonstrates how to clean the old heatsink well; and it really does take several passes removing layer by layer. It doesn't show cleaning the CPU chip, but the process is the same and must be followed if the CPU is being reused. Both parts need to be as spit shinning clean as they were when new. Take your time with this and get them clean, it really does matter.
FYI, I think the amount they apply is this video is more than generous enough. I certainly would not do more than that.
Correct. If you did not use rubbing alcohol then you did not get down to the bare shinny metal and there was still a film of the old goo left. Don't need to apply to both sides. . . . . .
bbear- thank you. I watched the video and will re-do my job tomorrow. It looks like I may have used too much paste so I'll start over first using the alcohol to clean everything and then be a little less generous with the paste.
I had a little trouble re-mounting the heat sink due to the little plastic feet it uses so I hope I don't screw anything up with those. I'll be offline for a couplel of days while I take care of this and will repost the results.
Correct. If you did not use rubbing alcohol then you did not get down to the bare shinny metal and there was still a film of the old goo left. Don't need to apply to both sides. . . . . .
bbear- thank you. I watched the video and will re-do my job tomorrow. It looks like I may have used too much paste so I'll start over first using the alcohol to clean everything and then be a little less generous with the paste.
I had a little trouble re-mounting the heat sink due to the little plastic feet it uses so I hope I don't screw anything up with those. I'll be offline for a couplel of days while I take care of this and will repost the results.
Keeping my fingers crossed, s.
I recommend that you try to "dry fit" the heat sink to the CPU before applying the thermal paste. It's important that you get a solid and tight fit at all four corners. You might have to experiment with it a bit, but if it's not tight all the way around, then your heat sink will be useless.
The correct amount of thermal paste to use is alternatively said to be an amount equal to "a single grain of rice" for a single core and "two grains of rice" for a multicore.
If a multi-core processor, separate the two grains of rice measure by a little bit so they are about 1/4 to 1/6 of an inch apart.
