Shorted motherboard?

My system was running fine until today I installed a zalman passive heatsink on the NB. I started it up and it all ran fine. While in the middle of running I moved the heatsink around alittle with my hand and then all of the sudden my machine reset its self. After that it would not start up and my power light would not come on on the only one that would come on was the hdd activity light and it would stay on. I am not hearing the beeping at post or anything and for some reason the only way that my cdrom will work is if the IDE cable is unplugged. Is it possible that I shorted or fryed my mobo somehow? It makes no sense to me what so ever. Atleast the good news is that ill get a new mobo if I did screw it up. I have also tryed another powersupply and I got the same results.

Messing around with internal components while a pc is running is risky and many people will tell you its your own fault...including me

And I do it all the time myself

But it IS possible to destroy things quickly while power is running through them, and you may have broken something, unfortunately.

Try this (if you haven't already):
Unplug power, remove the cmos battery and leave it sitting for half an hour.
Leave the battery out but plug it back in and power it up: it may work now that it has all reset...maybe.

If it doesn't, don't give up yet but you may want to build the system over with the other board.
Leaving the board unpowered for a week or two may get it working again: I have had this happen for one system in particular and it took a week before it worked. Been fine ever since.

Good luck, and remember: messing with powered up components is risky and those of us that do it may not be entirely.....sane

Yup....I know its my own fault guess i gotta learn some how haha. Ill try what you said with the battery and stuff i already tried it with the jumper though. What I think might have happend was one of the "mounting brackets" touched a capitor. If I do need to get a new board what do you reccomend for some pretty heavy duty overclocking and that will cost about 80 bucks or so.

Could it very well possibly be my cpu? Although I dont see how what happend would have effect on the CPU. The reason im wondering this is because about a year ago I short-circuited a motherboard and only 1/2 of the 3pin fan connectors would work and stuff and I dont seem to have that problem this time around.

What did you use to attach the Zalman? The mounting hardware?What kind of thermal paste did you use? If it was AS3 you might have gotten some on the board and shorted it out. AS3 conducts electricity, you may have gotten a little on the board when you twisted it. I would remove the heatsink and clean up the area around the NB Chip, reapply less AS3 and reseat the heatsink and see what happens.

or just clean the area around the NB with some rubbing alcohol carefully, the leave the heatsink off entirely and fire the board up and see what happens.

Good luck



WOOT 4th Star

I used the mounting hardware crap that comes with it. As for the paste i used as3. Iv tryed to fire it up w/o the heatsink on and still no luck but ill try to clean it up alittle better and try again.

Well I cleaned it all off alittle better and I cant see any on the NB or around it and im still not having any luck getting it to start up.