help, friend might have killed his mobo

[jboland]

hey, I have a friend who killed his processor and possibly his mobo, but I am not sure if it is salvageable or not. He had one of those new athlonXP chips and has been running it about 7 months, on an asus board, im not sure exactly what model, i think its a K7-something. Anyway, he has the 1.6ghz chip and decides recently to upgrade it, so he bought a new chip, an athlonXP 2100, and he plugs it in and boots it up, and about halfway through booting windows he says it made a huge sound like a "hollow gunshot", he says he tried booting twice and it made it again at the same time as on the previous boot, and is making a sound like a capacitor being shorted and discharging. We investigated the issue a bit over the phone, and the next day he tells me that he put his heatsink on backwards (like an idiot), and chiped his die, making the processor dead. This is where it gets intresting, is I went over and took a look at this and nearly 1/4th of his die has been damaged, and the mobo looks ok. Now he says that he put the old processor back in and that doesnt work, no POST or anything, and hes talking about his power supply. I told him I havent encountered anything like this before, and so couldnt give him figures on weather the mobo was dead or not. Anyone here have any ideas, should I just tell him that thats the end of his mobo, or has anyone encountered this and know any tricks?

 

[Titan386]

Well, its very possible the mobo is dead. However, try clearing the CMOS (consult the manual for instructions) and see if that helps. The system might be trying to use the settings for the faster CPU on the older one.

Also, if you concerned about the PSU, if you short two of the pins on the ATX connector, it should start right up. I don't remember which pins exactly off the top of my head, but you could try searchin on google or something.

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