ak08820

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Jun 15, 2008
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Hello
I had a K7VME based SOYO BB system with AMD Athlon 2800. It was running from inception fine except for the HDD activity like sound when the speakers were turned on. SOYO wanted me to send he MB back which was too much trouble for that annoyance.

Now, I had started downloading torrents and the PC was up from 3 days. I cam home one evening and it was dead. I turned the power on/off and pressed the shiny button on top of the case but no humming.

So, I thought the power supply was dead. I read and found that ATX P/S is too smart and tested it to be working by shorting the green and some black wires on the MoBo connectors. There is also a CPU connector. Its voltage measures 11+V on both the yellow/black combos.
I checked the fan and it turns on when powered.
I reseated the memory cards and still the PC is dead. I can see a slight movement of the fan - sometimes - not all the times. But the PC is completely dead on powering up, no sound, no hdd spinning, no fan nothing.

So I took off the heatsink. It came apart easily, unlike the AMD info that the thermal pad provides strong adhesive action. The grey stuff on the chip was like brittle rubber. Should it be like that or should it be greasy with the thermal pad compound, I had used the OEM pad that came with the CPU from Frys.com.

I have cleaned up all that brittle stuff and now am wondering if reinstalling the heatsink will cure this or am I on a wrong track.

The CPU power conductor wires which are yellow are slightly discolored too near the connector, as if they were heating up.

Please help and thanks in advance for your help to make this PC work again, and possible cure the noise problem mentioned in the beginning. I did have all the latest BIOS etc. for this.
 

ak08820

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Jun 15, 2008
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What is dead, PSU, Processor or MoBo?
I tried to power the MoBo alone w/o any HDD etc and w/o the processor and it quits in a couple of seconds. Is it a bad MoBo or bad PSU?
Thanks
 

ak08820

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Jun 15, 2008
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More testing info.
The MoBo keeps the PSU up without inserting the 4 lead P4 connector. There is no processor in the socket. However I don't see anything on the monitor, when the onboard video or a 32MB AGP video card is used.
Is that normal?

Now the only thing that keeps the PSU from staying on is the 4 pin P4 connector. If I plug it in, without any processor in the socket, the PSU does not start/stay on, which may be normal. The same happened with the processor in the socket, too.

Does it indicate a failed processor by any chance or is it bad MoBo because nothing is seen on the video (w/o processor) or is it normal for the board to not display anything w/o the processor. It has been a few years since my last system build and am quite rusty on these matters.