How can I be sure whether my CPU and/or MOBO is fried or not?

cnone87

Honorable
Jan 30, 2018
4
0
10,510
So my dear friend was supposed to change my CPU while I'm away. Apparently, he wanted to test the PC without putting back the heat sink. The terrible thing is, he did it with both CPUs :_(

He says the computer very quickly shut itself, so he's "sure" that the CPUs are fine. However, I tried booting the PC with both CPUs (with heat sink fixed and thermal paste applied); I get a black screen in both cases.

Unfortunately, I don't have any extra parts to test or extra PCs to test these parts. Is there any way for me to determine which parts are working and which are not? Unfortunately, I don't have spare parts to do A/B testing or an extra PC to test my current parts.

When the PC is turned off but plugged into the Power Source, the LEDs of my MOBO and the GPUs are working. When the PC is turned on, both my main cooler fan and the fans of the GPUs start working. Also, I suppose the heat sink is working as the thermal paste was spread evenly across the CPU surface. Hence, I assumed the MOBO was fine as well.

That being said, I realized that DRAM LED was solid red. I have been running with this RAM setup for a long time; I haven't added, changed my RAM setup and had been running this for a while. I've taken them all out, and put all four one by one into A1 slot and boot the system with a single stick. Still, the led is on. I hardly assume that I may have fried all 4 sticks. Any guesses?

In case it helps, here's my setup:

  • ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming MOBO
    Intel i7-7700K and i5 6400
    2 * GTX 970 ASUS Turbo(aka SLI)
    32GB (4*8GB) DDR4-2800 ADATA XPG
    700W Standard 80 PLUS Bronze
 
Solution
Sometimes when you change your hardware, you need to reset the BIOS to get things working again. If you find that doing that gets your say i5 working, but not the i7, then you'll need to update your bios. You can find the instructions resetting the BIOS in the manual, but all in all what you do is power off and uplug the system, located the "CLEAR_CMOS" header (sometimes it'll say something else, but it's along those lines) and move the jumper over one pin for 5-10 second, then put it back.

jdog2pt0

Distinguished
May 28, 2009
569
0
19,160
Sometimes when you change your hardware, you need to reset the BIOS to get things working again. If you find that doing that gets your say i5 working, but not the i7, then you'll need to update your bios. You can find the instructions resetting the BIOS in the manual, but all in all what you do is power off and uplug the system, located the "CLEAR_CMOS" header (sometimes it'll say something else, but it's along those lines) and move the jumper over one pin for 5-10 second, then put it back.
 
Solution