- Joined
- Dec 4, 2002
- Location
- Claremore, OK
Ok, let me start, with a bit of history on my box.
Last june, I built my box from scratch with parts I ordered all retail box on the internet, aside from my actual case and power supply which I bought at a my local PC Club.
I started with all the parts in my profile also I bought a 32x20x48x cd-rw, 16x dvd, and a sony 3.5" disk drive.
Well, I put my box together, and everything ran nice. Very nice.
About the middle of October, I felt like my box just ran to hot in general, and I decided I was going to get a new heatsink to make things run a little cooler.
I went down to the local PC Club, and bought a nice copper vantec. I got home, and thermal pasted it up, removed the old, and added the new. Fired up, to nothing.
My screen was blank. Drives were spinning, but no visuals. I wanted to scream. To this day, I don't know what happened. I am not stupid, I had thermal pasted it. The fan was plugged in to the board. I even reset CMOS. I really don't know what went wrong. I know it's dumb, but I actually took everything apart, put it all back together, with the old heat-sink, to no avail.
Well, Scratch those parts.
I used my Retail Box warranty and got a new motherboard and a new processor in the mail.
My old processor was sorta orangish-brown, and the new athlon xp2100+ was a green color. I don't know the difference, but I just assumed I got the same thing.
Well, New stuff actually worked fine, for about 10 minutes. Stock Heatsink mind you, and all. I figured I should be back in the same system as before I got the "Copper Disaster." Well, after about 10 minutes, screen just goes black, and the drives lights all turn on as if they're reading. I push buttons on keyboard, I try the reset button, but nothing works. So, I power off totally, and I try to turn the system right back on. It shows my Geforce-4 Ti-4600 BIOS information, then screen goes black again, to stay black.
I want to cry almost. I just feel like there's no way that anything could be wrong. I have double checked, and triple checked, and so on. Fans are all hooked in right, I'm not overclocking, I'm doing everything pretty much standard.
Well, that's not the end of it. The problem changed a bit.
I come back to the PC later, and I turn it on, it powers up, boots into windows, and after I launch Battlefield 1942, it plays for a whole 2 minutes, when screen goes black again, and the problem from earlier, where I have to turn the pc off, and then if it turn it on, all I'll get to is Geforce BIOS, then black screen happens again.
So, Next, I take the motherboard back out of my box, heatsink comes off, and I see that my heat paste appears to have "mostly dissapeared.
I decided I'd look on Ask.AMD, and I find that I need to use "Phase Change" Material for my heatsink, and I actually order some from 6 different companies that it suggests.
Well, with the phase change material in place, I put everything back together, and I fire the system back up.
It seems as if by magic, everything works for around 4 hours or so. I even gave Battlefield 1942 about 2 good hours of play.
Somewhere, I get tired, and fall asleep along the way.
I wake up, to a black screen similar to before, the drives reading and such. This must be 2-3 hours later, and I can't believe my eyes.
I remove the motherboard again, and see that the "PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL SOMEHOW GOT SO HOT IT MELTED!"
I read all the specs for the phase change material, and I see it isn't supposed to melt, just get bigger basically. Well, I remove it, from my heat sink, do a good cleaning job, and put new compound in.
The new stuff works again, and now I can go for about 15-30 minutes, and I get the black screen with drives reading again anytime I want.
I need to be able to use my computer again, and I've never heard of a problem like this before. Can anyone give me a suggestion? I've just about run out of ideas. Maybe I'm just cursed. I've done heat tests, the thing doesn't ever get hotter than about 44* degrees celsius, and that's got to be peak.
Please, any help would be appreciated.
-Justin
Last june, I built my box from scratch with parts I ordered all retail box on the internet, aside from my actual case and power supply which I bought at a my local PC Club.
I started with all the parts in my profile also I bought a 32x20x48x cd-rw, 16x dvd, and a sony 3.5" disk drive.
Well, I put my box together, and everything ran nice. Very nice.
About the middle of October, I felt like my box just ran to hot in general, and I decided I was going to get a new heatsink to make things run a little cooler.
I went down to the local PC Club, and bought a nice copper vantec. I got home, and thermal pasted it up, removed the old, and added the new. Fired up, to nothing.
My screen was blank. Drives were spinning, but no visuals. I wanted to scream. To this day, I don't know what happened. I am not stupid, I had thermal pasted it. The fan was plugged in to the board. I even reset CMOS. I really don't know what went wrong. I know it's dumb, but I actually took everything apart, put it all back together, with the old heat-sink, to no avail.
Well, Scratch those parts.
I used my Retail Box warranty and got a new motherboard and a new processor in the mail.
My old processor was sorta orangish-brown, and the new athlon xp2100+ was a green color. I don't know the difference, but I just assumed I got the same thing.
Well, New stuff actually worked fine, for about 10 minutes. Stock Heatsink mind you, and all. I figured I should be back in the same system as before I got the "Copper Disaster." Well, after about 10 minutes, screen just goes black, and the drives lights all turn on as if they're reading. I push buttons on keyboard, I try the reset button, but nothing works. So, I power off totally, and I try to turn the system right back on. It shows my Geforce-4 Ti-4600 BIOS information, then screen goes black again, to stay black.
I want to cry almost. I just feel like there's no way that anything could be wrong. I have double checked, and triple checked, and so on. Fans are all hooked in right, I'm not overclocking, I'm doing everything pretty much standard.
Well, that's not the end of it. The problem changed a bit.
I come back to the PC later, and I turn it on, it powers up, boots into windows, and after I launch Battlefield 1942, it plays for a whole 2 minutes, when screen goes black again, and the problem from earlier, where I have to turn the pc off, and then if it turn it on, all I'll get to is Geforce BIOS, then black screen happens again.
So, Next, I take the motherboard back out of my box, heatsink comes off, and I see that my heat paste appears to have "mostly dissapeared.
I decided I'd look on Ask.AMD, and I find that I need to use "Phase Change" Material for my heatsink, and I actually order some from 6 different companies that it suggests.
Well, with the phase change material in place, I put everything back together, and I fire the system back up.
It seems as if by magic, everything works for around 4 hours or so. I even gave Battlefield 1942 about 2 good hours of play.
Somewhere, I get tired, and fall asleep along the way.
I wake up, to a black screen similar to before, the drives reading and such. This must be 2-3 hours later, and I can't believe my eyes.
I remove the motherboard again, and see that the "PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL SOMEHOW GOT SO HOT IT MELTED!"
I read all the specs for the phase change material, and I see it isn't supposed to melt, just get bigger basically. Well, I remove it, from my heat sink, do a good cleaning job, and put new compound in.
The new stuff works again, and now I can go for about 15-30 minutes, and I get the black screen with drives reading again anytime I want.
I need to be able to use my computer again, and I've never heard of a problem like this before. Can anyone give me a suggestion? I've just about run out of ideas. Maybe I'm just cursed. I've done heat tests, the thing doesn't ever get hotter than about 44* degrees celsius, and that's got to be peak.
Please, any help would be appreciated.
-Justin
