Hi everyone,

Quick question and i'll explain after.

Is it normal that your cpu has tiny little dents on it's sensor after being installed? Meaning the circualer sensors undereath the cpu that the motherboard's teeth make contact with. Is it normal that a tiny dent is visible when the cpu is removed?

I finally upgraded to Intel, well I tried. This is the fourth machine I built, I even dared to go for watercooling. I have the N500 from corsair. With an AMD ATX mortherboard the mount was a clip that secured itlself on the plastic mount of the board. But with the LGA775 mounting, its 4 posts that are snaped onto the motherboard and then you snap on an "X" shaped metal plate over the heatsink to hold everything in place. You do have to apply a bit of pressure to make the clips snap, but nothing strenous in my opinion.

Aniways, I suspect the board being troublesome since it fails the POST test. I don't even get videocard detection. So I made sure everything was well plugged and clipped in, with no chance. I then proceeded to remove everything from the mobo for RMA. But I looked under the CPU and noticed that where the motherboard's teeth met the cpu I can see tiny "dents". I guess it should be normal since it's probably the imprint that the connectors make upon contact?

Thank you in advance.


ASUS P5N-D
Intel E8400 LGA 775
N500 Corsair WC

Refer to your Processor and mobo manuals and make sure you're installing processor correctly. I have some doubts from your description that you are forcing processor in its place

Did you have to physically push the CPU down to fit it in the socket? Every time I've installed an LGA775 CPU it's more or less sat directly onto the pins if it's aligned properly.

Some motherboards will need to have their BIOS updated to run the 45nm cpus, my Asus Maximus formula needed it. Try to find a 65nm core duo to boot up and update the bios, i know it's alot of trouble if you don't have one or you can also see a computer shop. Hope everything works good after that because the E8400 is an awesome CPU!

PS : I thought it was pretty hard to close the locking arm for the cpu at first too.

To the main Question:

"Is it normal that your cpu has tiny little dents on it's sensor after being installed? Meaning the circualer sensors undereath the cpu that the motherboard's teeth make contact with. Is it normal that a tiny dent is visible when the cpu is removed?"

So your referring to the Pin Contacts on the bottom of the CPU. I've noticed that as well, but my CPU's are working. The amount of pressure from the retention bracket and HS mount would affect that. So I'd say it's normal to see.

I'd agree that what the other say, it could be a bios problem, since it may have an earlier version of it.

Or it's possible that you may have some bent array pins that are causing the problem.

Thank you for all the replies.

@ Kad & Demonic
No I didn't force the CPU in, it's pretty simple now with the new concept that the pins are on the cpu, but on the motherboard. So I had no trouble with it. It fell into place easily. Like someone said here, I did feel ligthly concerced to the amount of pressure the locking arm did, but It's normal. So al is good on this front.

@ ThrillerGT X
Nope, the P5N-D is 65nm ready. No need to update the bios. But aniways, I couldn't even reach a bios update since the board fails the POST test.

@Grimmy
Ahh, that's what I was talking about. Nice, Yeah I guessed that it was normal to see tiny little "dents" from that Pin Contacts under the CPU. And No the Pins from the Motherboard are not bent. If so they are all symetrically bent all in the same direction thus fooling me .

So In retrospec it IS my motherboard. From what I think the beep code meant a LONG - SHORT X3, which seems to refer to video initialization. I tried switching my ram from spot, try 1 or 2 sticks. I tried both PCI-E slots, unpluged all my HDD's or DVD's, and still. Just with PSU, RAM, CPU, Vcard, still the same failing of the POST.

I was told that PCI-E slot failures weren't so uncommon in motherboards, either that or bad memory slots. This just goes to further my belief that I am cursed as to computer hardware. I always have to switch things at least once.

And I know that all the other components work, RAM, Vcard, PSU, for they are from my old machine (that i'm using now). So it has to be either CPU or Mobo. But the CPU seems fine and my fears fall on the motherboard.

Aniways, i'm going to see the retailer to replace it this coming monday.

Thanks for everything!

Have you tried turning it on with everything but the CPU removed from the motherboard? If you still get the same beep pattern doing that then you may want to try taking the CPU out as well. If you get a different beep pattern after taking the CPU out then it'd be pretty safe to say your CPU is ok.

Also with your ram, does it use a standard voltage or a higher voltage than normal? A lot of enthusiast DDR2 ram uses between 2.0-2.2v during normal operation. I used to have a pair of corsair modules I had to run at 2.2v, but the board would never boot up with them in it because the correct voltage wasn't set. I had to go out and buy some crappy low voltage ram to get the board to boot, then i went into the bios, set the 2.2v and put my corsair ram in. Man that sucked! Everytime I got a failed overclock and had to reset the CMOS I had to go through that whole mess with the ram!

It may just be a bad motherboard though. The last Asus motherboard I bought arrived DOA, and the last 680i SLI motherboard (BFG) I bought arrived DOA. I wonder what happened to the days where DOA boards were a rare occurance?

Anyways, good luck!

E8400 is 45nm, try to get 65nm Core 2 DUO and boot with that to upgrade bios.

If you look his board up on ASUS's website it shows that it has support for 45nm CPUs, he shouldn't need to update his BIOS.

Is the CPU power connector connected? That's the 4 or 8-pin connector that mates to a socket near the CPU on the MB. Even with my long experience with PC's I forgot that when rebuilding a system last night. Also make sure the CORRECT connector is on the video card.

Jesus, I can't believe I did such a stupid typo. The P5N-D is 45nm READY, sorry! Not 65nm lol.

No I did not try to boot with the cpu not connected. But at this point i'll simply return the motherboard.

And no I have XMS2 whihc runs at default voltages.

doesn't the xms2 run at 1.9volt? stock ddr-2 voltage is only 1.8...it could be enough to make it not POST.

"So In retrospec it IS my motherboard. From what I think the beep code meant a LONG - SHORT X3, which seems to refer to video initialization. I tried switching my ram from spot, try 1 or 2 sticks. I tried both PCI-E slots, unpluged all my HDD's or DVD's, and still. Just with PSU, RAM, CPU, Vcard, still the same failing of the POST."

sounds like a memory issue from the beep code maybe

My motherboard was 45nm ready and it still needed a bios upgrade.