Jun
5
Written by:
Justin James
6/5/2008 2:04 PM
Last night I re-learned an important lesson for the zillionth-time: check everything when it comes to system problems! I got a new CPU in for my server here. I eagerly installed it, and poof, no POST. I reseated the heat sink. No POST. I reseated the CPU and heat sink. No POST. I put the old CPU in. No POST. Huh? While the old CPU had its quirks (namely, rebooting/hanging during a compile, which made this FreeBSD server fairly crippedled and created chaos in its ports tree when it would shut down in the middle of an install), it always started up. That's when I got down and dirty, and started going over everything with a fie toothed comb. I did find a stray cat hair which looked like it may have been between the fan and the CPU; stupid, but not killer. I removed the CPU and took a good, hard look at the CPU and socket, looking for scorch marks, mutilation, etc. And I found my culprit. Somewhere, somehow, one of the pins on the socket had gotten bent. Now, bent VGA pins are easy but annoying. The ancient era of CPU (like the original Athlon line) were a snap. I honestly miss the Pentium II "CPU on a cartridge" routine. Fixing a 775 socket's bent pin with nothing but a standard sized flat head screwdriver and no magnifying lens is no fun. I got it after a few minutes, but the CPU back in, and POOF, it started right up. Now, the BIOS is throwing out an error code on POST that F1 deals with, I'll figure that out later, but the system is up, and running. And yes, it compiles just fine now. 
J.Ja
Tags:
4 comments so far...
Ouchy Ouchy Ouchy
I lost an Athlon 64 3000+ because instead of the pin bending, it snapped off. Neat job by me.
LGA 775s are supposed to prevent the entire bent pin scenario. How ever, you managed to accomplish that. YAY You!!!
All good fun though. Hopefully I don't have the same luck in the near future with pulling some procs out. Right now the problem is more based with hard disks and lack of cash. The latter always being a problem though.
By nuCrash on
6/5/2008 3:22 PM
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775 socket is designed to protect the CPU at the expense of the Motherboard
775 socket is designed to protect the CPU at the expense of the Motherboard. If a pin gets permanently messed up, there goes your motherboard but the CPU is fine because there are no more pins on the CPU. One of my free motherboards that I got from a Fry's deal was poorly made such that when you squeezed the CPU down, it bent ALL the pings. But the system still worked luckily :).
The one thing that really bothers me about socket 775 are the plastic snap ins which break after a few times and they're really tricky to snap in to place.
By host on
6/5/2008 9:38 PM
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Re: System problems: sometimes, it's the little things that matter
What I despise most about the 775 MBs is the fan mounts! I nearly destroyed the pins on the new fan just putting it in 4 or so times. It's not a bad design if you just need to do it once, and it's a lot less potentially damaging than the ones where you'd be putting all of your weight on a screwdriver to get it off, and when it slipped you'd split the MB in two, put at the same time, I don't like needing to spend $20 on a fan every time I take the old one off...
J.Ja
By jmjames on
6/5/2008 9:58 PM
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Stock fan mounts from Intel are JUNK!!!!
I use them only because I don't care to whip out an extra $50 for a Zalman. When I do though, the installation is worth the money.
I have lost probably 5% of my CPU fans because the plastic clips busted. Fortunately warranty does cover Intel's shoddiness.
As for the mobo verses the CPU. Where does the money normally lie? I know that if I had a bent pin on my QX6700, I would flip, as opposed to losing a Gigabyte G33 Motherboard or an MSI nForce 7150 or even my eVGA 680i mainboard. The cheapest CPU I buy at this time is $200. The cheapest mainboard I buy is $65. Regardless of time to install, sacrificing the mainboard is no big deal compared to losing the CPU.
By nuCrash on
6/6/2008 7:15 AM
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