The scariest 60 min. of my life....

[bumblebee_tuna]

It all started of when I went to go re-apply thermal grease on my CPU. I had lost one for the screws to my heatsink and was going after it with a pair of tweezers (probably not a good idea....) That's when I started smelling something funny...... (strangely enouugh coming from the mobo.....). I put everything back together when, *gasp* my computer wouldn't turn on..... After some troubleshooting, I figured out that I had fried the mobo, hence the strange smell. So i went out and got a new mobo and realized, when I tried to install it, *double gasp* realized it was not compatible with the Compaq's prefabricated OS. So I had to go borrow my neighbors Windows XP Pro disk (Thank god he works at cNet....) And had to wipe my hard drive clean. (SO now I have Pro, *woot*...)

*Now here comes the scary 60 min. part....*
I figured that I didn't apply the heatsink right since I was in a hurry when applying it the first time (didn't bother to spread it), so I decide to go re-apply it again..... When I restarted the compy, I found that I wasn't getting any signal and the power light was flashing.... I pull the CPU again and, *thrice gasp* I had bent some of the pins...... So for about an hour, I tried to moving the pins back staight again with a toothpick, as originally I was doing it witha pair tweezers again..... And luckily, after the third try, the computer began working again and here I am, typing this useless thread......

 

[Lamilia]

Yeah messing with something you spent hundreds of dollars on is a scary thing. I couldn't imagine people who spend $2000 or even more working on their computers. Good job on fixing it though I'd take it to a proffesional if the pins bend again you don't want to break a pin off.

 

[Arm_Pit]

IF this was the scariest 60 minites of your life, you need to be shot at, hopfully without sucess.

 

[bumblebee_tuna]

IF this was the scariest 60 minites of your life, you need to be shot at, hopfully without sucess.

Okay.... Maybe I was exaggerating..... Kind of like 'I'm starving' when in actuality you're just really hungry.... Reading 'Life of Pi' kind of put that into perspective.....

But my parents were plenty pissed when I fried my mobo and the last thing I wanted to do was explain why my CPU was broken.....

 

[Diamondsleeper]

Dude... Slow down. Cut back on your caffeine or something. You can't be in a hurry with this stuff. Its too fragile. Good to hear its not so damaged you had to buy new parts though.

 

[Nightrain]

ditto to the above statement..breaking something u spent all that money on cuz u were going way to fast n not taking the time to put thermal pase on the right way...ur lucky u didnt get a hotspot n fry that cpu of urs. The whole fun in upgrading is taking the time to make that computer urs, and then after all the time u put into seeing the final results and how it runs. why rush thru it. i dont know maybe its just me but rushing with computers doesnt seem like a very good idea. and if i had to rush i would just wait till i had time to do it right. idk not an attack or anything but dude slow down next time, u got lucky. it may not happen again

 

[bumblebee_tuna]

Well I was reading around about applying paste and people have said just to let the heatsink spread it and then I read a recent post saying that doin that wasn't a good idea and, looking at my temps, found the paste could have been applied better..... It was really the act of accidently pulling out the CPU along with the heatsink that screwed things up.....

 

[Archangel]

well... shit happens.. all you can do is just stay cool, and try to fix it (and thats what you did) so to be hones,... I'm pretty impressed the processor worked afterwards... its something you can be proud of tbh

 

[SirKenin]

Man, you shouldn't be working on computers until you slow down a bit. lol. It sounds like you're in too much of a hurry. The spooky part is that it's when you're in a hurry that everything screws up on you. Did you know that if you take your time, 9 times out of 10 you will finish sooner than if you were in a hurry?

I'm glad you got it working. Hopefully it will serve as a lesson learned for next time. It sucks blowing things up, especially as a result of human error.. I was in a hurry once. I was trying to get a heatsink off an ATHLON XP!! *barf* CPU when the screwdriver slipped and scratched the traces on a $160 board, rendering it useless. That hurt. It came out of my own pocket. Last time I ever did that.