A long and sorry tale, or...have I fried my CPU?

(if there's a sound of grating teeth that someone passes through the ether while your reading this, it's because I just spend ages writing this out, only for IE to have a hissy fit when I posted and delete the whole thing....and hello, by the way )

This might go on for a bit...thanks in advance for your patience...

Here's the story: I'm very new at all this...I've only ever bought pre made systems before, and have been very happy with them. However, I've recently got a) a bit more disposable income and b) a bit more cocky

It starts a little while back, when I decided to replace my tired old 3D card with a sparkly new GF4Ti4600. Everything was good. I get a taste for high benchmark scores...so, I decide to treat myself. Consultation with Those Cleverer Than I reveals that I have a rather tame motherboard (I'd kind of assumed that would be the case), and one that in fact doesn't supposedly support my processor. So, I am recommended the MSI KT4 Ultra. It also seemed to be reviewed pretty highly, so like a good little drone I buy one. This takes the spec to:

Athlon XP2000
MSI KT4 Ultra
512mb RAM
80gig HD
GF4Ti4600

Then arrives the moment of truth. I put everything together. I boot up. It works. Hurrah! Nothing has caught fire or anything like that. CPU temperature, given 1) I used some generic type white pastey stuff 2) it's in a hot room and (most importantly) I'm incompetent and hadn't done it before, seemed OK if a little hot at 40 degrees on idle.

OK. It's working. Ish. Might get someone better than me to redo the heatsink.

And here comes the problem. It appeared to be running a little slow. Close inspection reveals that what had been 1.67GHz was now 1.25GHz. Hmmm....a little research reveals that the FSB is at 100Mhz and not 133, where it should be. Huzzah! Problem solved. Except, clearly not. I go to BIOS and change it, as instructed. And now it won't boot. It POSTs, and then says 'Woah! Windows don't like this! You're not going any further', or something like that (WinXP, by the way). So, I go back and change it down again. Oh, well, says I. I'll see what I can do about that. In the meanwhile, the machine is now very unstable when it was like a rock before. It crashes fairly frequently and comes up with a rather scary sounding 'Your computer has recovered from a serious error' type message when it restarts. Oh dear...More research begins to indicate a power supply problem. So, out comes the PSU. Aha! It's only 250W. General opinion seems to indicate that that's way too low for my system. Again, I'm fooled into thinking the problem is over.

I take out the HD and put it in my old machine to back things up (I didn't like the idea of it being subjected to crashing in 'serious errors' a lot...). I look at the old machine without the HD in, and wonder if it would now be OK without the HD taking power (it was booting on a CD). So out of curiousity (which not only killed the cat, but now appears to have killed my computer), I change the FSB back up to 133Mhz to see what it says on POST (where it was now saying 1250MHz). Oops. Now it doesn't POST at all. It just sits there. The drives whirr a little, and the fans are on, but nothing else. Zip. Zilch. Nihil. And so on.

So...what have I done? I had changed it up and down from 133 to 100 a couple of times before, to no apparently serious consequence...I can't into BIOS to change it back down...

Is it dead forever? If so, which bit? If not, how do I get it back? Or even just a little sympathy...whatever ideas you might have...

Any answers to the above would be gratefully recieved...I'm impressed you've even kept reading through all this...you all deserve cake and medals for getting this far

Thanks in advance...

Have you tried clearing out all the CMOS settings to default ?

There should be a jumper or some pins on the motherboard
that you use to reset all BIOS settings to defaults.
Short it for a min while the power is off. Search in the
motherboards manual for it.

6502kid said:

Have you tried clearing out all the CMOS settings to default ?

There should be a jumper or some pins on the motherboard
that you use to reset all BIOS settings to defaults.
Short it for a min while the power is off. Search in the
motherboards manual for it.

Click to expand...

I agree with Kid.

however if you dont have/cant find the right jumpers- can you see a large watch battery somewhere on your mobo?

take it out for about 5mins- re-insert and try to boot up again.

By the way... WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

i would seriously consider getting a decent, QUALITY powersupply.. at LEAST 300w, 350-400w even better. if money's tight check out units from Sparkle. they are the best bang for the buck IMHO..

Looks to me like a CPU problem may have to RMA it, btw what are your temperatures? and what is the 12V line of the power supply?

Before I returned anything, I would upgrade my powersupply, 250w is not nearly enough for an athlon XP2000 and a Geforce 4Ti4600. Im assuming that you also have more than one optical drive (CD-ROm, CD-RW, DVD). I would recommend 350-400 watts minimum.

40C is not anywhere near hot enough to fry your CPU, so your probably safe there, not to mention that temp at Idle is pretty respectable and well within the safe zone.

You might want to do some research on your MSI motherboard, I seem to remeber some issues with that particular motherboard when folks tried to adjust the FSB, but if I'm remembering correctly, it was when they tried to take it past 133. Also, try getting the newest bios, The Kt4 has the via KT400 chipset, which is pretty new, so they may have a new bios with some of the problems fixed.

Thanks for all your replies...

Right: I think I've cleared CMOS (at least, I change the jumper to the setting described in the manual and left it for a few hours, put it back and booted up). It didn't help at all Still won't POST.

I am intending to get a new PSU...it was on its way when this happened. What's interesting is that it appears to be the new mobo that's pushed it over the edge. It was fine before...

Is there a way I can find out the 12V line without the computer working?

Also: is there a chance that if it was at 40 at 100Mhz, putting it up to 133Mhz smoked it? Or would it not happen that fast? I had had it at 133 before, at least for a couple of times during POST.

Or could it be that the PSU has just given up? Can you overload them and they die? The fans and stuff still whirr when I turn it on, but I've read that they can do that even with a broken PSU.

If you think it is the CPU, why? As in - what would I have done to it?

At least this has been a good learning experience, even if I have fried my computer

Gosh, I hate to sound pushy or something, or that I'm demanding YOU FIX MY PROBLEMS NOW!!!, but anyone? Help!