System fails CPU test after resiting heat sink

arrycatarrycat
edited October 2010 in Hardware
I have always have had programs to keep out viruses malware, spam, and I clean out the cookies at lease once a week. About a year or so ago my homemade system starting getting laggy playing Everquest. Being poor and short on funds it took a few months to save up the money for more memory and a bigger video card. After doing all this the system run about the same as before. After a few weeks of putting with the lag I desided it was time to go back to looking for problems. Looking in the bios I noticed the Hardware Moniter was showing that the CPU was running warm. So I think to myself that was the problem all along. So I clean off and replace the dryed up the thermal compound and reinstalled the heat sink and fan. Then upon turning on the computer all I got was a voice message saying "SYSTEM FAILED CPU TEST" Well crap I think I waited to long so I had to wait again for money to buy another CPU. I got it in today and put it in. Guess what I still get the "SYSTEM FAILED CPU TEST" message. Any help with this would be most welcome.

ASUS P4S8X motherboard
2.5 gigs of Crucial ram (6 months old)
Gigabyte HD4650 AGP 1Gig video card (5 months old)
Antec 430 PSU (maybe 3 years old second one I had in it)

Comments

  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2010
    Maybe a dumb question, but did you re apply thermal compound?

    How did you clean the heatsink / CPU surface?
  • arrycatarrycat
    edited October 2010
    Yes Arctic Silver 3
    most of the old compound flaked off the rest rubbed off with a paper towel
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2010
    arrycat wrote:
    Yes Arctic Silver 3
    most of the old compound flaked off the rest rubbed off with a paper towel

    I might remove the heatsink, re clean the surface of the heatsink and the cpu with some high purity alcohol and and lint free cloth. Re apply, making sure only to use a half BB sized dab in the middle of the CPU (less is more in this case), and see what happens.
  • arrycatarrycat
    edited October 2010
    Ok I did what you said about cleaning and the compound. After I got it together this time and pushed the case power button the case light came on for about a half a second and when out. Barely enother time for the fans to start spining. Push the case button again and nothing happens. I then turned off the PSU switch for a few seconds till the lights on the motherboard go out and retryed the case switch again same thing happened. I tryed this about 5 times. On the last try the power stayed on and I got the system failed cpu test voice message again. Is the PSU bad again? People keep saying that Antec is a good power unit but I have better luck with so called cheap units.
  • arrycatarrycat
    edited October 2010
    Another note I tryed unpluging and replugging all the cable conectors, cards, and memory chips before I bought another CPU.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited October 2010
    What CPU and heatsink are you using?
  • arrycatarrycat
    edited October 2010
    Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz 533MHz 512k 478 pin as per ASUS user's manual that came with the motherboard. The fan and heat sink is a Intel labeled type that came in a package deal when I bought the oringal CPU. Not the best I know but it worked fine for many years. In fact it is the only fan I have not had to replace.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited October 2010
    Redo the heatsink compound again following Arctic Silver's instructions here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appmeth/int/md/intel_app_method_middle_dot_v1.1.pdf

    If it still won't work, your CPU may just be bad. Unfortunate but it does happen.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2010
    Pentium 4 = furnace!

    It's miraculous you have kept it alive this long. The cure for what ails ya is in the form of quality AMD components.

    All joking aside, if the budget allows, I'd seriously consider motherboard/CPU/RAM upgrade. Assuming you have modest needs, you should be able to spend $200 and knock the socks off what you have. I know it may not seem appealing, but if you have not shopped hardware in a while, its not too bad, I was just pricing, a decent mobo with included graphics is $70, good dual CPU's $60 more, 4GB of DDR3 is only $65 now.

    Just some food for thought as you ponder this. Its all about how hard you want/have to work to resuscitate that aging hardware.
  • miragemirage
    edited October 2010
    I bet it is a motherboard failure. I have seen very similar problems in the past with both AMD and Intel processors, they were always the motherboard. You could try to find a motherboard on Ebay if the budget is tight but I agree with Cliff, the best bet is to replace the computer.
  • arrycatarrycat
    edited October 2010
    With my health issues and no job atm I guess I am just S.O.L. Thanks all for your efforts.
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