Broken mainboard?

[Psychophanta]

A known of me called me to ask me to repair his computer.
When i went to his house he told me that he removed the microporcessor (a AMD Athlon x2 4200+ with 939 pins), and then he swithched on the pc.
He told me that the pc didn't boot when he did it

Well, after he plugged again the micro, the pc booted but it hanged randomly.
I got his pc and i was making some tries with it at my home, but i saw that seems the mainboard which is broken.
Now he had to purchase a new mainboard.

I didn't know to tell him the actual reason why his pc was broken, because when pentium 3 times, i remember that when i removed the microprocessor and switched on the board , it didn't break.
May be the modern hardware don't allow to do that?

[Derek]

I would of thought that if you boot a board with no cpu that you would just fail the POST, can't believe that you would be able to break a MOBO just by powering it up without a cpu.

[Tipperton]

Maybe its not an electrical break but a mechanical one.

I don't know about the 64 bit CPU heat sinks, but I do know that the heat sink on my 32 bit AMD CPU requires enough force to mount or un-mount that you run the risk of cracking the circuit board if it isn't well supported underneath the CPU socket.

[Derek]

Maybe its not an electrical break but a mechanical one.

I don't know about the 64 bit CPU heat sinks, but I do know that the heat sink on my 32 bit AMD CPU requires enough force to mount or un-mount that you run the risk of cracking the circuit board if it isn't well supported underneath the CPU socket.

I had an amd64 3000 and it did take an awful lot of pressure to fit the heatsink, it did seem like it was going to break something.

If I recall, I actually had to try three times to fit it as I didn't think it could have been that hard!

[Psychophanta]

perhaps the guy broke some of the tracks or solderings in the board, because he told that he pulled strongly until he got the CPU with fan and all in his hands. Then there was when he discovered that there was a small lever to free the pins of the cpu,...
It was like to listen to a ripper how he acts with victims.

[oldBear]

perhaps the guy broke some of the tracks or solderings in the board, because he told that he pulled strongly until he got the CPU with fan and all in his hands. Then there was when he discovered that there was a small lever to free the pins of the cpu,...
It was like to listen to a ripper how he acts with victims.

Yep, that could well do it. Sounds like he murdered it.

When you put it back in, did the lever provide the necessary 'tension' to the cpu pins or was it just a loose insertion?

[Psychophanta]

When you put it back in, did the lever provide the necessary 'tension' to the cpu pins or was it just a loose insertion?

No, it seems to be well locked. However, we are talking about 939 pins! who knows!?

[oldBear]

Guess there's no good way to tell unless you have a spare mainboard and cpu you could switch out one at a time to tell whether it's the cpu or mainboard (or both) that are bad.

[Psychophanta]

Guess there's no good way to tell unless you have a spare mainboard and cpu you could switch out one at a time to tell whether it's the cpu or mainboard (or both) that are bad.

Indeed, but i believe the CPU is healthy, because there is very low probable that the pc boots, enters the BIOS config, etc, being the CPU broken, but as you say i don't reject even that possibility. I will try with a new MB soon.

[oldBear]

Indeed, but i believe the CPU is healthy, because there is very low probable that the pc boots and enters the BIOS config, etc, and the CPU is broken, but as you say i don't reject even that possibility. I will try with a new MB soon.

Actually, I'm surprised it boots with either a bad cpu mainboard socket or a bad cpu, but if that's the area causing the problem then it wouldn't matter which it was, something is causing the intermittant failure. It could be a 'loose' pin or a bad connection in the MB.

Of course, with that kind of force applied to the MB it could be a totally different area. Was the memory in the MB when they extracted the CPU? There are any number of things that could have been affectedby that sort of trauma.

Good luck in sorting things out

[Psychophanta]

Was the memory in the MB when they extracted the CPU?

Yes. It has 2 mem mods of 512MB each, and there is a curious thing: when i leave 1 mod only, the pc doesn't boot.

[oldBear]

Some MB's require the single stick of memory to be in a specific slot. Or if that memory is too fast it could impact the boot, where with two sticks it probably uses the lower speed or the two.

Any number of 'quircks' with MB's depending on the chipset and manufacturer.

[PB]

> May be the modern hardware don't allow to do that?

Or, maybe he didn't tell you the real reason it won't boot -- perhaps he did
something else to it, and is too embarrassed to admit it to you. It happens!