[RESOLVED] AMD CPU fried?

[H-Bomber]

A friend of mine has been having quite a few problems recently with his new PC which he built. It is an AMD K6-3 450 and is running on an Asus P5A board. Currently the machine wont boot or do anything, the monitor lights up but there is no image, and he also says the IDE devices (hdd and CDROM) dont "spin up" when plugged into the motherboard (Although if they are not plugged into motherboard, they spin up fine and can be opened/closed, in the case of the CDROM) Now the reason why I suspect his AMD CPU is fried is because when asked what temperature the CPU has been running at (P5A has mobo temp and CPU temp monitoring) my friend replied 70 degrees celsius .... Now really, how many chip can run with stability and not "melt". When asked is his machine had any problems, ie: Lockups in 3D games, BSOD, Machine reboots in 3D games etc he replied, "yeah in 3D games it does screw up after a while, locking up and rebooting etc, but I just thought that was a Windows problem". He has a spare Pentium 233 chip so he will swap chips out with the AMD one on the P5A board tonight I would think to test if the board is ok etc. From what I have said, how many people would it be safe to assume the chip is dead (What temps can these chips take) and could you even go as far as saying the Mobo is also dead? I'll let you know how it goes (I told him to get a Celeron).

[gnslngr]

How high did he o/c? and has he heard of a heatsink/fan combo for the cpu?
Sounds to me like he's fried the works.

[H-Bomber]

The strange thing is he didnt overclock it at all (or so he claims) but he did experience some strange problems with the voltage. He said he set up the board with the correct voltage for his Chip, but in the Bios, voltage monitor, it was .1 volts less than what it should have been (Dont ask what the correct voltage for an AMD K6-3 is though, cause I dont know) He then changed the jumpers on the board to increase the voltage by .1 volts so it read the correct voltage in the BIOS. Would this then mean he was in fact running he voltage at .1 more than what he should have run it at? As for the heatsink/Fan debate ..... He didnt actually get a heatsink/fan with the chip when he bought it, and yet actually ran the thing without one for a while (He just used one of the case fans blowing air onto it, so he has probably done damage then anyway) So, based on this new piece of information, and what I said earlier, what does everyone else think .... is this thing fried for sure or what, thanks.

[rusabus]

You mention that the hard drive wont spin up when he has it plugged into the MB, but will if it is only connected to power. A lot of IDE devices will not spin up, and will prevent the system POSTing if they are jumpered incorrectly. Example: two master devices on either channel, two slave devices on either channel, a device set for "master with slave" when there is no slave present, or (this one rarely causes problems) when a device is set for slave, but there is no master present. Have your friend try the system with JUST the hard drive plugged in to the Primary Master channel on his P5A. Nothing plugged into the secondary channel, no cards in the PCI/ISA slots (except for a video card) and no floppy drive. Make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the drive is jumpered properly -- in this scenario, it should be set for "single" or "master w/o slave present." If thesse options are not present, then set the drive for Master. If this setup works, try adding the CD-ROM drive as the Master on the Seccondary channel. (this is faster than slaveing it off the Hdd on the primary. Says so in many MB manuals i.e. BH6) If it continues to work, keep going. If not, troubleshoot what you've got left by trying it with known-to-be-good components.

You ask if your CPU is fried. Possibly. at 70 degrees Celcius, you run a huge risk of meltdown. Some CPU's can take this heat (like the pentium overdrive, the 486 -- any speed, or the original P-II .35 micron 2.8 volt space heater CPU) so 70 degrees dosen't necessairialy mean death, because silicon can take it, but it aint good either.

[H-Bomber]

The strange thing with this is that he hasnt changed any of the jumpers on the drives (After all, it was working fine before, he had no reason to change them, just stopped working all of a sudden). He will be giving it a thorough once over tonight, ie testing different devices etc playing with IDE cables and slave/master settings etc. basically the advice I gave him was to try and eliminate other devices, by changing cards, CPU's and drives. I also mentioned case air flow to him, as he has an extra fan at the front of case sucking air in, but the fan in power supply sits above CPU and I have a suspician that these fans also suck air in, so essentially, this air is not able to escape and is swirling inside the case getting hotter .... So I said he should consider swapping the fan around to pull air out. Also suggested using some thermal paste on the AMD chip (providing it isnt dead) to get better heat transfer. I even suggested that maybe he should consider pulling all devices out (apart from a floppy drive and an ISA video card) to see if it will boot. If his BIOS is dead or corrupted I have heard that under certain circumstances with certain Bios chips, you can sometimes boot from a floppy this way? Either way I'll find out his situation tomorrow, when he sits down for a couple of hours and gives it a thorough going over. Anything else he might want to try at all, that I have missed?

[3fingersalute]

Also, hard drives don't spin up and ide cd-rom drives don't open when the ide cable is connected to them backwards. With whatever chip he replaces this with, tell him to invest the $8.00 in a fan/heatsink, it'll be worth it.

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[H-Bomber]

He has since then invested in a fan/heatsink and I dont think he would be stupid enough to have IDE cables around the wrong way ... Although this is someone who has been running his chip at 70 degrees celsius, and thinks Windows is to blame for the errors, so I spose that wouldnt surprise me. Ill let you know how he gets on.

[Jman]

What the hell are you thinking!!!!!!!!!!!

AT 70 that's a fire hazard. I have a k6-2 350 overclocked to 450 and it doesn't run that hot!! Your settings we really messed up. What did you let a 4 year old put this computer together??? I wish I had a k6-3 and you blew it up!?!?!?!?!

I think not only is the cpu fried you also killed the motherboard. You also might have killed anything attacked to the motherboard.
First of all the voltage gos up and down on the cpu, it doesn't stay the same all the time. The voltage increase isn't needed. You say that nothing happens at start up, so

Take out the manual and underclock it. Set the settings at 2.4 volts, 4.0 mult., and 100 mhz bus. Try this if nothing happens then the whole system is screwed.


Hell my overclocked 350 to 450 runs at the moment at 50*C.

What the hell were you thinking, your computer could fry bacon to a crisp in minutes.

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Think about it, but not to hard don't want to give you a headache.

[H-Bomber]

First up Jman, If you had read all the posts you'd know that a friend of mine built this PC, when I say friend, more of a work collegue. He knows how to build a PC (well at least I thought he Did) as he has built a few before, but dont ask me what the hell went wrong with this. He just came up and saw me asking if he knew what could be wrong with his PC and after going through a heap of possible problems, I casually asked about temperature of CPU, got a reply of 70 degrees and nearly started laughng at him. I got him to test the PC out last night using no attached devices whatsoever except an ISA graphics card, and still nothing. Fairly safe to say the board is rooted for sure (Which he has brought in and I might test later today) I have suggested bringing in the chip also to test (I too think that would be fried .. at 70 degrees, it would have to be). Thanks for posting that information and PC specs of yours Jman. Ill let you know how successful/unsuccessful this chip tests out when I get it tomorrow.

[H-Bomber]

One other thing I forgot to mention .... that also confirms the mobo's death. He replaced the AMD chip with a Pentium 233 with the same result ie: Nothing, and that was also with no devices attached and an ISA video card ..... Since he bought this Motherboard from us (Not the chip or other components though) Should warranty cover it?

[rusabus]

Your question on warranty: If it is under it's normal warranty period, I would say yes. You will just send the board back to who ever you bought it from, and get a replacement. While shipping sucks, and it appears to be his fault, you can say "even though this board was destroyed from improper cooling of your CPU, which is your fault, I convicned my boss to let me cover this under warranty just this once . . ." They say word of mouth advertising is the best you can get. This guy will be your customer forever. He may also bring in other business (which I assume he already does since he's a business associate of yours.)