Toasted Processors?

[elguapo]

I was putting together a no-frills machine last weekend using an Athlon XP 1600 processor (bought it used), Thermaltake Volcano 8 slimline cooler, a Syntax SV266AD mainboard, a 256meg stick of generic DDR2100, and a generic 300W PS. Slapped it all together, smiled at the moment of truth power-up and....nothing happened, no POST, no nothing. =( After a little bit of fiddling, I got power, the drives spun up, but no video signal whatsoever. I tried a new video card (old Matrox Millenium PCI) instead of the Matrox G450 (4xAGP) that was in it, swapped memory, swapped procs (another 1600 from my other box), even swapped mainboards (I'd bought a second Syntax board (same one)....nothing. What gives? Here's the kicker: I put the CPU that I pulled from my other box back and now it's doing the same thing. Sweet Jebus, what have I done?!?!?

 

[ChipDeath]

Seeing as you've swapped out everything bar the power supply, maybe try a better one?

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[elguapo]

Thanks for the idea. It sounds possible, but when I took my other proc and replaced it in my original box that worked, it did the same thing. The older machine had a PS that was working in it.
I'd read in another posting that sometimes the amount of thermal grease (or type) could affect the machine in this way. I'd used Arctic Silver when mounting both procs, and I didn't use any more than the usual bb sized drop spread thin on the heat sink. Could it be something like that?