Computer Upgrade Nightmare

Short story. I built my PC over 18-months ago around a Antec Sonata Quite Case. One regret, I oversized my CPU heatsink/fan. Way too much fan, and too much noise, for my 2.6-GHz P4 (Northwood). I bought a replacement heatsink/fan that runs at a 3600-RPMs instead of 5400-RPMs and thus is quiter. My CPU temperature usually runs very cool at around 90-degrees F and I've never seen it get above 100-deg F.

With more effort than I thought it would take I pull my old fan out and ... MY CPU WAS STUCK TO THE BOTTOM OF THE HEATSINK!!!! The latch was still closed, it came right out of the socket with the latch closed.

At that very moment my wife is calling me to come see something on a show she's watching and my 4-year old son is "helping me". My first thought was that I've killed my computer. I've either broke my CPU socket, and will need a new motherboard, and / or I've zapped my CPU.

Well, I get the CPU unstuck from the bottom of the heatsink/fan. That heatsink compound was really something. I then spend the next 30-minutes using rubbing alcohol to clean the top of the CPU. I got it clean and reinserted it into the socket. I then reapply more heatsink compound and install my new heatsink/fan.

It booted up and is running and running quiter. Not as quite as I had hoped but I think I'm hearing the case and power supply fans. I have two case fans and they're 120-mm and are variable speed and run around 1600 to 1700-RPM.

Anyway ... I'm calmer now ... I hope I did no permanent damage.

The CPU temperature right now is at 90-deg F.

Wild story man. Quite a "sticky" situation!

BTW, dachsund - I've grown up with a few. Have 2 at the moment.

Originally Posted by freestyler

Wild story man. Quite a "sticky" situation!

That's funny now. At the moment ...

Originally Posted by freestyler

BTW, dachsund - I've grown up with a few. Have 2 at the moment.

Here name is Chloe' and she be 10 this year. What about yours?

Two females, one is 7 the other is 2.

Silver and Goldie, hehe.

Originally Posted by rkr1958

With more effort than I thought it would take I pull my old fan out and ... MY CPU WAS STUCK TO THE BOTTOM OF THE HEATSINK!!!! The latch was still closed, it came right out of the socket with the latch closed.

Nothing really to worry about. Ive had exactly the same happen to me. I just simply removed the CPU from the heatsink and re-inserted it back into the socket. Didn't bother with cleaning or anything else. The PC worked just fine.

Originally Posted by waheed

Nothing really to worry about. Ive had exactly the same happen to me. I just simply removed the CPU from the heatsink and re-inserted it back into the socket. Didn't bother with cleaning or anything else. The PC worked just fine.

That's a relief. I batched a DVD-RB job (using CCE-Basic) that backed-up two movies overnight. It finished and my computer is still up and running. As best as I can tell CPU temperature under load stayed around 115 to 117 degrees F. After finishing the CPU at idle went back to a temperature of 90 deg F.

had same thing with a 64 bit still works fine and a few hours to fix the bent pins, me very lucky

wow..that must have been tedious straightening all those pins!
Several years ago a friend of mine had a pc mailed to him..his uncle sent it over..

i don't know why because it was a 386! anyways..we got it and i noticed something was banging around inside there...i opened it up and there was a parallel card as well as the cpu just laying inside the computer. The cpu had gone round and round a few times and the pins were all bent up...

so what is my point exactly?

Well I bet you weren't able to straighten all your pins with a butterknife

Originally Posted by lumis

i think you dodged a bullet there, lucky to have not bent any pins.

I didn't even think about that. I was lucky. FYI and for future reference (after reading your post), I did some searching on the net concerning fixing bent CPU pins. One solution that seems like a good idea to me is to use a 5-mm mechnical pencil to straighten the pins out. Though, I hope I never have to find out how well that works.

credit card just fit between the pins and needel to push the open to get it in ,and gently push them until they are in line with each over

i was really lucky. none of the pins were bent on my cpu when it stuck to the heatsink.

I decided to change out my CPU fan again ... I really wasn't happy with the one I bought back in March ... It wasn't that noisy but, I came home last week and it sounded like a bearing was going bad ... It was making a kind of rattling noise ... Not too loud just annoying.

Since I went to the trouble and expense a couple of years ago to build my computer around a Antec Sonata Quite Case with two 120-mm case fans, I decided to bit the bullet and get a ZALMAN CNPS7000B-CU variable speed quite fan from newegg.

This time I knew what to expect when I pulled my old fan ... my CPU was stuck to the bottom. This time I didn't panic ... I pulled it off and cleaned it off with rubbing alcohol. Acutally I ended up soaking it in rubbing alcohol. When I pulled it I'd gotten heatsink compound on the side and even a little on the front and at the base of four of the pins on the CPU. I took my time and spent about an hour cleaning it. I used a thin plastic playing card to get the compound out of groves on the side and off the front and from in between the four pins.

I then installed the Zalman fan. Boy was it big ... but my PC is running quite. So quite in fact is that all I hear are the case fans. I'm running a Northwood P4 2.6-GHz, which runs cool, so I installed the variable speed control for the CPU inside my case and set it to low (i.e., the slowest fan speed). My CPU has been idling around 90F (32C). I did a load test by running DVD-RB w/CCE-basic. Under load, the CPU temperature varied between 110F to 113F (43C to 45C) and peak to 115F (46C).

Hopefully, I've made my LAST fan change and / or CPU pull for this machine. My PC is running so quite now that I turned off an external 60-GB firewire harddrive that I have and I don't want to turn it back on because the noise from its fan dominates the noise from my PC now. Also, the fan noise from my wife's PC across the room now is louder than the noise from my PC right next to me. So far, this Zalman fan rocks.