> They don't tell you that closing the CPU guard feels like you're breaking hundreds of dollars worth of equipment 100 percent of the time.
I had a brief summer job as a 17 year old, assembling computers. Even after over 100, I still had that feeling of imminent destruction of expensive electronics.
When I built my PC, I learned about this beforehand, so when I heard the "crunch" I wasn't worried. Until the thing wouldn't boot.
I took the CPU out, and sure enough, I'd bent a few of the pins in one corner. Fuck. I then spent the next couple of hours with a tiny magnifying glass and tweezers, painstakingly trying to bend the pins to where it would boot again. 20 min of bending, stick the CPU back in, try to boot... nothing. Several times.
Finally it booted, miraculously. I'm never taking that CPU out again.
After a decade doing embedded development for bleeding-edge SoCs and working with devkits with sockets for interchangeable chips... I was kinda shocked when I once again built a gaming PC two years ago...
These are antiquated connectors!
Then again, I hear the sockets we use for the BGA chips I work with cost in the thousands of dollars (because custom-desiged), so I can kind of understand that the razor-thin margins the custom PC industry works with stays with cheap old connectors.
>Then again, I hear the sockets we use for the BGA chips I work with cost in the thousands of dollars (because custom-desiged), so I can kind of understand that the razor-thin margins the custom PC industry works with stays with cheap old connectors.
BGA means 'ball-grid array' - meaning it's an array of solder balls, meaning that ouside of testing, it will be soldered to the board... no socket required.
Your sockets for testing are super expensive because they are taking a chip that was never meant to be socketed... and socketing it, which is pretty useful when you are testing the things.
Really? the last opteron I saw with a zif pga socket was an opteron 940, which was obsolete a decade ago. I haven't worked with the gaming amd sockets, but I bought a tonne of 2000 series opterons, socket F is LGA, and a few c32 and G34 opterons, all LGA.
You can still fuck up the connector on the motherboard, and consequently, the CPU. I'm speaking from experience: I had to replace a motherboard and a CPU. I still have the useless i7-870 as a sort of trophy of my ignorance of those pin-less CPUs (it was my first). Edit: actually, I remember now that the initial motherboard had a manufacturing problem on its socket, but as that was my first, I didn't know, and that led me to try and fail blatantly, killing both the motherboard and the CPU ; I only realized when seeing the new motherboard with a non-busted socket.
This has been my method for a while, but the last 2 PC's I've build have had fan/power connectors in places that I simply can't get my hand too once the board is installed, leading to me either pulling out case fans, or even CPU coolers, just to connect a 4 pin CPU power lead.
Double check your hand will fit in the thing first!
Use a credit card!
I helped a friend build a PC, but when the parts came in he eagerly attempted to put the CPU in the mobo and then proceeded to crush 1/3 of the pins.
We used tweezers to "unmash" the pins, and a credit card to fully align them.
Worked like a charm.
I had to use a credit card to fix one of these builds... :-)
Actually, your credit-card suggestion is useful. My last bent-pin disater was fortunately a mostly-obsolete PGA Pentium 4 CPU, tweezers and careful, repeated re-insertions into the socket sorted it out. Given that the CPU could be had for about $5, it wasn't worth the effort, but I was trying to help a friend and I felt stupid for dropping the CPU.
Oh God you've brought back some memories from when I assembled my PC.
I also bent a pin. Now, the pins in my case were on the motherboard (my understanding is that this used to be reversed, and they used to be on the CPU. Frankly, I am quite happy that they're on the mobo, since that's the cheaper part) and IIRC they don't point straight up (they're slanted, and just kinda graze these contact points on the bottom of the CPU).
It turns out that, for my particular motherboard, ASRock's manual's instructions and images describe a different piece of hardware than the one I actually had. Same model number though, IIRC. As best I can tell, at some point, there was some sort of hardware change, but like so much tech, the docs were never updated. It was only after scrutinizing the manual very closely that I discovered the error, but it was already too late and the damage was done.
I contacted ASRock about it, sent them images detailing the differences and obviously laying out the problem. The representative essentially just sent me the same bad instructions back. Finally caved and had it repaired, which they did not cover under warranty (which I consider a violation of the warranty). (I also finally figured out the correct procedure, which I had to figure out in order to send the motherboard back to them for repairs, as they claimed they would refuse it if I shipped it with the pins exposed, which is extremely frustrating when they also can't tell you how to actually accomplish that.)
The next motherboard I buy will not be from them.
Finally got it all back, and now, equipped with the knowledge of how not to screw it up, got it all assembled. Still didn't boot. Got a friend with a working machine to swap parts with until we could isolate the failure; turned out to be our first guess, the PSU. But it was somewhat surprising at the time, as we thought the PSU was good. You can short two of the leads on the main plug from a PSU with a paper clip, and that is essentially the signal to "turn on" and start supplying power. We did this, and it would start right up, but it never started when hooked up to the motherboard itself. Beyond that, IDK. (and since you have to short the two contacts w/ a paper clip, the plug isn't attached to the mobo at that time, so you only really power things like the DVD drive, the fans, and the HDD, which mostly then go into loops b/c they can't find the motherboard.)
Finally, it booted. I'm never taking that CPU out again, either.
Pssssh... you don't know fear until you've tried to put a spring clip cooler on an Athlon XP or Pentium III without rocking it. Even after they added those foam circles to the corners it didn't add much comfort.
Nothing makes you sicker than the sound of a corner of your CPU die crunching.
We had one of the sockets on one of those fail. Never figured a real reason for it, just one day all the sudden with the computer on there was a big snap, the cooler fell off and the CPU cooked itself. Was well outside any kind of warranty but it was certainly a unique failure.
At the beige box retailer I worked for, about a decade ago, we got a couple of the local high school's computers in for repairs. They told us the systems just wouldn't boot, and they "smelled funny."
Took the case off, and behold! The Intel fan had seized, melted, and caught fire. It wasn't a particularly old system so I'm not sure how the thermal protection didn't kick in, but that had happened on two near-identical systems. No saving those boards.
For a couple of years, 2007-2009, I kept encountering budget-build AMD boxes with cooked thermal compund. The first time a client brought in a comouter with the heatsink rolling around loose on the bottom of the case, I thought it was rough treatment, customer error. But then two more, Dell instead of eMachines or Compaq... weird.
That's not surprising. Towards the end of the Mhz Wars the heatsinks had become pretty ungainly but they were still using the flimsy spring clip instead of the more modern 4 post or gantry type systems used today (sorry I'm sure they have proper names but damned if I know what they are).
I had a solid copper heatsink that was easily 5lbs for my Athlon XP system. I held onto it for the longest time after I got rid of the system because I knew the metal was easily worth $20.
Oh, great memories. Those were absolutely terrifying, but luckily I never broke one and only had one instance of a friend breaking one. The absolute worst was when I (being a more experienced PC builder) was helping a friend with his first build, and the friend insists that I install the cooler.
I destroyed my 600MHz Pentium III while fiddling with the cooler. A corner of the chip broke off.
I used the same motherboard and bought an adapter which allowed an upgrade to a 1,3GHz PIII Tualatin. It had a proper headspreader so the installation was a breeze in comparison.
The horror ensued on my next upgrade to an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ which again had the die exposed, but thankfully I never managed to destroy it.
Heh. I've built a bunch of systems over the years (including updating and moving motherboards around), and I'm always nervous when I power it up the first time.
Especially my latest, when I updated my main rig to a Ryzen 7/32 GB ECC/250 GB NVMe setup. About $1000 worth of new hardware, and the POST delay nearly gave me a heart attack. I shouldn't have worried, though, it worked on the first boot. wipes sweat from brow
CPU cooler installation always seems to be the worst part of it, and there just doesn't seem to be a way around that, since lots of force is needed to squash the cooler down and insure good contact. Still, I like the screw-down setup on the Ryzen far better than the older spring-clip designs, or the spring-loaded pegs on Intel coolers.
I just put a threadripper build together and was surprised with an extremely difficult and finicky foxconn socket.
Takes a while for my monitor to wake up and was sure I had killed it on first boot with the stream of cryptic messages from the motherboard, but it was fine.
"Tinting" the cleaned surface of the CPU with thermal compund, mostly removed with a credit card or thin plastic scraper... and then applying the pea...
Could it be that there is some merit to the "thin layer all over" message? But yes, easy to mis-communicate. I had not considered the problem of bubbles.
I think those damn intel fans with the four corner press-n-rotate "screws" were the worst; every time it felt like you were going to crack the mobo in half...
I just replaced a cooler like that yesterday morning (with another one with the same screws)! Pretty annoying to work with.
Funnily, those screws also sort of fit into the grid on the back of my computer case, so I mounted the old cooler externally, and it helps draw the hot air out. No reason to throw away a good PWM-controlled fan if you have a free connector on the motherboard, after all.
And after a few minutes of trying you've forgot in what direction you are supposed to screw them ...
If you're doing it for the first time, try a few times without the thermal paste so you get the feeling of it. Then the pins will also go down easier when you do it for real.
Yes, replacing capacitors on Pentium 4 mainboards that are controlling equipment that the university cannot replace the license for is still lucrative.
Wasn't saying CPU is hard just nerve wracking as it crunches. Heatsinks are annoying as fuck. The first time I did a CoolerMaster H212 EVO I botched install... Had to pull it off which is a careful exercise in and of itself as you sort of wiggle slide it off the top of the CPU which is glued to it with thermal paste at this point and seated to the motherboard.
I had a brief summer job as a 17 year old, assembling computers. Even after over 100, I still had that feeling of imminent destruction of expensive electronics.