Ok, so I bought me some new parts to update my Socket A XP 2800...it's been a while....and vista is kinda sluggish. I got: AMD X2 5200 2GB PC800 Ram dual channel kit Asus M2N-E (not SLI) 550 Watt PS MSI 1950Pro PCI-E video card. Got all the parts today from newegg... and everything looked ok, until I got to the processor. It had thermal grease already on it!! And on the heatsink too!! (I'd guess some punk kid very gently opened up the box/seal, toasted it, and returned it.) I was optimistic, and continued the build... maybe someone returned a working processor...stranger things have happened. All of the retain CPUs I got before had the thermal pad on it...not grease already smeared. Put it all together, and fire it up. I got into BIOS. I saw my processor displayed correctly. It also detected my 2GB of ram. I saw the timings, which were as advertised, 5-5-5-12 I think, and at PC800. A few seconds later, it shut down. I hit the power button again, and it started up; beeped for post, and died right again. So, to troubleshoot, I took EVERYTHING off except the video card, the RAM, and CPU....no drives...no PCI cards... and same thing....power down before post. If I took out the video card, I'd get a long beep, then two short beeps. I drove to work and borrowed a buddy's PCI graphic card. Put it in, and booted...got to the bios, saw temp ~40C, and it shut down... reboot did the beep and shutdown before the screen displayed. I ruled out video card at that time. I put in my old power supply, only 350 watts...but should have been enough without anything in it. Same thing... power down after beep. I thought maybe the 110 power I had wasn't enough...tried 220 on both power supplies...same thing. I tried without RAM, with one RAM, with RAM in each slot...every combo I could think of...nothing. I did note that the Vcore was at 1.5 (default!) I turned it down to 1.3. It stayed on a little longer, enough for me to watch the CPU temp hit 45 and shut down. I also put the RAM to 1.9, which I read was common for my Mobo/RAM. No help. I even took the whole Mobo out of the case to make sure it wasn't a shorting problem. At this point, I was pretty convinced it was the CPU...and was thinking it was getting too hot. Obviously, 45C isn't that hot for an AMD...not enough to shut it down. So, in a final act of desparation, and after noticing that it stayed on longer when I left it alone for more than 10 mintues, I put the heatsink in the freezer for a few minutes... and guess what? The computer stayed on for longer than 10 seconds. Once it did shut down, after about a minute, attempting to turn it back on was back to the same routine. The bad part is I am overseas, and it took the post office 13 days to get the box to me. I've never had a problem with any part I've ever bought from Newegg, so I was a little worried about the return process...but they sent me a RMA right away. I reordered the CPU, while the old one is going back, and wait for a refund. The folks at Newegg seemed cheery and glad to help. So, after all that, I put my old computer back together, and am waiting. Anyone have any comments on my troubleshooting, or provide any tips for next time? If the CPU wasn't 'used', I'm not sure I would have jumped right to the CPU being bad.
Look at [link=http://www.hardwareforums.com/power-supply-sticky-5218/]this thread[/link], you might get some ideas what I want to tell u
Wait. The 110/220 switch on the back of the PSU is for the AC input voltage. If you're in North America, you should run it at 110. If you're in Europe, you should run it at 220. You could seriously damage the PSU if it's not set to the correct input level. What's the default voltage for the CPU? The motherboard should detect the correct voltage, but if not, then correct it. Now, remove the CPU heatsink and clean it and the heatspreader off with isopropyl alcohol. Now, apply a thin layer of thermal paste to the CPU heatspreader and re-attach the cooler. After that's done, make sure to plug in all power connectors on the motherboard (there's at least 2) and for the video card if it has one.
I'm in Europe, and have both 110V and 220V. I actually RMA'd the CPU and should have it early next week. I tried two heatsinks, both with just a little bit of grease. Newegg reports 1.3/1.35 for the voltage... so I turned it down to that. The only thing that made a difference was putting the heatsink in the freezer...other than that, no matter what I did, the results were the same. Thanks for the inputs!
I got my CPU in the mail today, and after about 5 hours, I'm dual booted with XP/Vista. ...and this one came clean with the thermal pad in place! It's a huge increase from my XP2800+. Thanks for the help from all.
