I've been running my cpu without any thermal paste for months now overclocking it. Today, for some odd reason, I decided to add thermal paste and try to overclock it further. Anywho I took out the cpu and cleaned the die with isopropyl alcohol 99%. Then i proceeded into cleaning the copper heatsink the with the same stuff. I applied the thermal paste and installed the cpu, turned on the switch, and nothing appeared on the screen. There was no beep nothing. All the fans are working and the hard drive and cards seems to be running but i don't see anything. I want to ask for help in solving this problem. Thanks will
Ok, first off, running your cpu without thermal paste was not a good idea in the first place (unless your cpu had one of those thermal patches preinstalled on the heatsink). Second, how did you clean the die with alcohol? Did you pour the alcohol onto the die and then whipe it clean, or did you wet a rag with alcohol first and dab it onto the die? The second method is the proper way to do it, and I ask because if you poured the alcohol strait onto the die and didn't let it dry before you turned on your cpu, it could have potentially short circuited some of the traces on your cpu (although I don't know for sure, alcohol may not be a conductor). That is honestly the only thing I can think of, unless you didn't seat your cpu right when you reinstalled it (very unlikely, it only goes in one way).
I heard this kind of problems before and sometimes the cause was that the person forgot to plug the monitor into the videocard or some other small thing. So double check the small things.
Hi, it is sorry to say this. I think your processor has become defective due to the application of the thermal paste.:frown: The problem is not the thermal paste itself, but during the the application of the paste, something must had happened that causes the defect. Maybe during the cleaning of the core of the processor. The core is very delicate and can easily become defective. If there is even no beep coming from the mainboard, then the cpu is dead. And try to clean the cmos of your mainboard. To verify this you have to test your athlon xp 2100+ on another mainboard. All the symptoms of a dead cpu are here: no beeps, only the fans are spinning and no screen on your monitor. The most important things are the beeps, if there are still beeps then your processor may not be dead yet. I wish you good luck!
Thanks, for your help. First of all i cleaned the cpu and the heatsink with a q-tip and did not pour the whole thing over the cpu. Secondly i made sure it was properly dried. I tried as well reseting the bios, disconnecting all devices from the motherboard except the video card, and making sure i didn't crack the die by mistake. I went through the trouble in RMA my motherboard today just to make sure it wasn't the motherboard. Hmmm, i can't test the cpu but when I brought it to the technician, he said there's no problem with it and it might be the motherboard's fault. I think he might be right because the board had been RMA just 2 months ago and again 2 years ago. The board is a Nvidia2 A7N8X-E deluxe from asus. I thought asus was a stable motherboard producer. Anywho, thanks for all your input. I'm going to wait a couple of week for the motherboard to come back and then test the cpu. Thanks, Will
For some odd reason the cpu didn't overheat as i thought, it idled at 44C and under heavy load only went up to 58C and there was no thermal patch or anything. Just the cpu and the copper/aluminum passive heatsink w/ a case fan modded on to it.
first of all why no paste?second does anyone know the highest temp a athlon 64 should hit?i think yours was high
Hi, the technician says that there's no problem with your xp 2100+. Did the technician really test it or did he look at it? It is very unlikely that your mainboard suddenly fails after applying the thermal paste. Have you unplugged the powercord while taking the cpu out?
Yeah i made sure that i unplugged everything when i took out the cpu. The technician just looked at the cpu and didn't test it out. He said he highly doubted that there was a problem with the cpu and that there was probably a problem with the motherboard.
If for some reason the cpu is busted, should i just get an athlon xp 3200+ to replace and upgrade or should i just go and build a new system. budget:500
hi, An athlon xp 3200+will be way to expensive (even a secondhanded)! 500 bucks budget! with that money you can build a reasonable pc! A mainboard cost around 60 bucks, for example the Asrock 939 dual sata2 with socket 939 and upgradable to the new amd AM2 by an upgrade card for an AM2 cpu. Great mainboard also with 8X AGP and pci express 16X, so you still can use your 9800pro and upgrade later to a pci-e graphic card like the GF 7600gt or ati x1800gto. Another choice is a Nforce 500 serie mainboard, but less flexibility - no agp! the choice of a processor should be at least an AMD64 3500+. With you budget you can choose the X2 3800+ dual core, which is more futureproof. Since the new AM2 is coming out, there will be a pricecut on the "old" X2 (soon). the X2 3800+ cost around the 280 bucks, the amd64 3500+ cost around the 190 bucks. Wish you good luck!
