Dead Intel quad core?

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duskeyy

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Feb 20, 2014
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Hey

Recently I bought this secondhand PC to give to a friend, when I received the PC it only booted for a few seconds until entering a "boot-loop". After taking off the CPU heatsink I saw blackish thermal paste. I assumed it was just overheating because the PC would just shut off, so I removed the heatsink and applied some new Themal Paste after removing the old Thermal Paste. Upon reinstallation the PC stopped booting at all, meaning it will not power-on at all. I tested the PSU and it works fine, but I cannot test either the motherboard or CPU because I do not have any other compatible parts.

PS. the seller did mention that it was faulty, I did try one RAM stick at a time and all of the wires are appropriatly attached and secured.

Specs:

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.4GHz
Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-AM
Graphics Card: Asus AMD Radeon HD 5850 Direct CU GDDR5 1gb
RAM: Strotium pc800 DDR2 2gb / Transcend pc800 DDR2 2gb (4gb DDR2 overall)
Hardrive: Western Digital 250gb

Any help would be highly appreciated.
Regards
 
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Chicano

Chicano

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Aug 29, 2011
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1. Was the BIOS giving beep codes before the PC stopped powering-on?

2. The CPU does not controll the fans, HDD, etc. So the symptoms are not indication of a dead CPU. There is graphite thermal paste, so maybe that's what you saw. http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/thermal-grease/7226855/

3. How did you test the PSU?... with the trick bridging the green to black wire pins, or testing it on another computer?... Only the second can be conclusive. The green to black trick only determines if the PSU runs, but normal electrical values (voltage, amps, watts), are what run the computer (motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD).

 
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duskeyy

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Feb 20, 2014
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A1. Before it was powering on I didn't have the internal speaker(I think that's what it's called) installed so I can't answer that.

A3.a) yes, I did try the bridging trick.
b) I can try the psu on another PC if necessary.
 
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Chicano

Chicano

Judicious
Aug 29, 2011
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Well, the speaker could have helped but not if the restarts were to short.

The PSU on another computer is the only conclusive test. You'd need special test tools otherwise.

There is graphite thermal paste, so maybe that's why the blackish thermal paste. A computer would shutdown long before thermal grease could burn black, so I don't see how that could happen.
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/thermal-grease/7226855/
 
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duskeyy

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Feb 20, 2014
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The paste had a shade of black, because I could still the the original grey colour. The black shade was present in two of the corners of the cpu, one darker than the other. Also the PC before hand would boot onto the windows loading if I was lucky until finally just rebooting.(P.S. when I tried to install Windows 8.1 it would just freeze)
 
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Chicano

Chicano

Judicious
Aug 29, 2011
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It's possible they reapplied different color thermal paste without cleaning off the old paste... I doubt it can burn long enough to turn black.. as I explained before.

Try another PSU, that's the next step to take. Only then you will know what next step to take... if results are the same.

The initial reboots could happen if the HD has a Windows installed, but was switched from another computer. Did you see a BSOD by any chance?

The Windows 8 freezing during installation can have different causes... bad optical drive, Windows disk burning errors, Windows licensing issues, bad Hard Drive, unformatted hard drive...
 
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duskeyy

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Feb 20, 2014
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A1. It wasn't old Thermal paste, mixed thermal paste, it was literally burnt. But not burnt into crusts, more like https://img.youtube.com/vi/hsqGyLH-foQ/0.jpg this image, not exact but similiar.

A2. I tried a different PSU, same result

A3.beforehand I could boot into the bios settings, until it just rebooted. Symptoms of an overheating CPU?.(safe shutdown?)

A4. I was booting from a USB drive(don't ask :I), of which has successfully loaded windows on before. I did also try different hardrives.
 
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Chicano

Chicano

Judicious
Aug 29, 2011
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1. ok.. may have been very cheap thermal paste to have burned that much and it's also possible the CPU ran hot for a long time.

2. Taking the PSU out of the possible causes, the CPU becomes the most likely.

3. If you initially accessed the BIOS the CPU was still working, then when it started rebooting (safe shutdowns) It may have started to overheat severely, or the damage may have finally manifested.

4. Seems that the failed atempts to install Windows were due to the same cause.

As it seems that it severely overheated, it's possible the previous owner had it overclocked. The motherboard has "Overclocking Features" which was not common with older motherboards.. not when socket 775 and the Core2 Duo were top of the line technology.. so it's safe to asume that the CPU was overclocked, on stock cooling, and it may still be overclocked... therefore I'd suggest you reset the BIOS to remove possible overclocking settings.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5KPLAM/specifications/

How to Reset Your BIOS
http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-Your-BIOS

To resume: Reset the BIOS, and check that the heatsink fan runs at normal speed.
 
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duskeyy

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Feb 20, 2014
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I reset the BIOS using the two of the three methods from the provided link and the results are still the same, I think it is becoming more conclusive that the cpu belongs in the bin.
 
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