computer problem
 

Went to investigate why my multi card reader quit working so I opened my box up to take a look.
While I was in there (hey, the hood was open...) I thought, why not clean up the heat sink and get some of the dirt out of here?
When I released what I thought was the heat sink holding device the whole dang cpu came out instead. :eek:
They glued the heat sink to the cpu. :mad:
What the heck am I gonna do now?
Tried putting it back in but pins are bent now.
I can't see any way to align the cpu with the socket since it's buried under the heat sink.
What are my options?
I'm on my son's old laptop now. Thankfully I didn't listen to my wife and toss it out. The computer with the problem is an HP Pavilion a6720y running Vista 64 w/AMD Quad core processor. It had been flawless until the multi card reader stopped working the other day. I use it a lot to download pictures from my cameras.
Help?

No they didn't...they applied some thermal grease to the cpu to transfer heat to the heat sink... the grease can be "glue" like.. maybe use a blow dryer to heat the ass'y up an pry apart.. straighten the pins with a tooth pic.... and try to seat it...

And if the cpu is hosed because the pins are to damaged... you could always get a replacement cpu..

I'll give it a try Tim, but if this is 'grease' I'd hate to see how tuff their glue is. This thing is really on there.

Don't forget to place new thermal compound on the CPU before you replace the heatsink. A little trick is to get the heat sink warm as mentioned above and gently twist it off to break the bond. Of course yours is out so you can pry it off I suppose.

Tim is correct, it's thermal paste.

You should clean the old paste off and reapply new.

You can get a tube pretty much anywhere, Best Buy will carry it, couple of bucks.

You want to reapply anytime you remove a cooler from the cpu to prevent hot spots on the CPU.

Once you get is all back together and working. A bit of advice...




.... don't take it out again. ;)

You know what they say?

If it ain't broke....

good luck

And better real working advice - clean all traces of thermal paste and put new thermal paste on. A must-do, unless you want to fry your cpu

Once a year I haul all my PC's from around the house and my office outside for a little spring cleaning.

Screw those little cans, I hit them with 100psi of shop air.

Shocking how much crap comes out.

It sure is nice to know you guys are with me on this one.
I'm going to give the removal a try in the morning after I straighten the pins. My eyes aren't good enough to do it tonight. There's a lot of those pins and they're TINY.

Be gentle when bending them back in place, and LOOK first to make sure you're bending the right side in the right direction...

I plan on using my digital camera to take pics of the pins to verify they're straight. It can see things I can't.
Anyone know what the min focus distance is for a Logitech web cam?

If you have two rows that you know are straight make a feeler gauge from sheets of printer paper.

Stack a bunch of sheets together then add / subtract till you have the correct number of sheets.

Trim down so it's easy to handle, maybe tongue depressor size, then tie them together with Scotch tape.

You could probably use a feeler gauge set to straighten the pins if the pins are not touching adjacent rows / bent too much.

Slide a smaller one in and use it to bend the whole row straight.

If you do that scrub the snot out of it to make sure it's clean and free from contaminants.

Make sure you are grounded, when you go out for thermal paste grab a grounding strap. If you go to Best Buy ask the geek squad guys if they have an extra floating around or make one real quick.

I can replace the CPU for you, if you like. What CPU do you need to replace it with?

AMD Phenom Quad-Core 9xxx series (AM2+) up to 9850 (Agena)

Box came with a 9550 so it's 1 step below max.

If it were me I'd cruise over to microcenter and grab an AMD CPU / MOBO combo for a couple of bucks more than the cost of the replacement CPU. Would need RAM, his box is DDR2 and most new are DDR3 but RAM is dirt cheap.

I'd grab one of the ASUS bundles. Nice MOBO, 4 RAM slots, 2 HDMI ports, surround sound and tons of PCI /PCIE slots for expansion.

For a couple of hours time and ~$250 he'd have a new box.

I agree, but DDR2 RAM is very expensive, compared to DDR3. If Scott buys the parts and sends them to me, I'll rebuild his system and send it to him the next day... All he will pay is the shipping...

So here's where I'm at on this.
Got my other computer from the garage set up so I can at least communicate and look at pics I've taken of the cpu.
I think I've got them pretty straight, but, one of 'em spins when I go to straighten it. (sigh)
I can't see tossing this box, it's just got too much good stuff in it.
I'm going to try to take the heat sink off and try inserting the cpu to see if it will work. Worth a try IMHO.
If I just replace the cpu, what would be an 'plug and play' replacement upgrade?
I assume a cpu/ MOBO combo is a cpu on a mother board, correct?http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1388511924.jpg
I'm really starting to appreciate how fast my old computer is compared to my old old computer. sheesh this thing is slow.

Yeah that's the thing.

A direct AMD replacement CPU is going to be just as, if not a tad more expensive than a current / better CPU plus MOBO.

Doing a quick search it's a discontinued CPU so finding one new is going to be tough and they are in the $150 range.

You can find them used for ~$50 and up.

Personally I would not go the used route unless it was for a piece of legacy equipment that I had no choice but to keep set up the way it is.

FWIW IIRC you can generally run an AM3+ socket CPU in an AM2+ MOBO, it fits, but I believe you lose some memory features of the AM3 CPU and is not 100% supported?

You can replace the CPU with the appropriate AMD CPU that the motherboard will support. Look up the motherboard model on Google, then look for the manual and it will list the CPU's that the board will support. You start by ID'ing the socket type. If it's an older CPU, you may have to get one on eBay ar Amazon as the local MicroCenter only carries the latest CPU models (at least mine does)...

Here's a pic of the after straightening.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1388512669.jpg
Sorry I couldn't crop it for a closer look.

It's sounding like I either have to live with my old old computer or get a whole new one.
Problem is my hard drive in the 9550 box is scsi or SATA and I don't think I can just plug it into the old old box (Dell Dimension 8200) since it's IEDE(?) [I must be getting old I don't remember what that designation is anymore]

So here's the Mother Board...
Pegatron M2N7B-LA
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1388513245.jpg
I'll take a look and see what I can find.
Sounds like my old RAM isn't used any more. Yes/No/Maybe?

Most hard drives are SATA. I have software that will let me make an exact copy of a hard drive, so a new drive would have everything copied over to it. The key here is the motherboard and what it will support. SCSI drives are rare, unless you are talking about a server, so I'm assuming your drive is SATA. A 1TB drive is about $50.

CPU:
Socket type: AM3
TDP: 95 watt
Motherboard supports the following processor upgrades
AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb)
AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka)
AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto)
AMD Athlon X4 6xx/6xxe (Propus)
AMD Athlon X3 4xx/4xxe (Rana)
AMD Athlon X2 2xx/2xxe (Regor)

RAM:
Dual channel memory architecture
Four DDR3 DIMM (240-pin) sockets
Supported DIMM types:
PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333)
PC3-8500 (DDR3-1066)
Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
Supports 4GB DDR3 DIMMs
Supports up to 16 GB on 64-bit PCs
Supports up to 4 GB* on 32-bit PCs

Yes, you have SATA hard drives... The good news is the board supports DDR3 RAM, which is dirt cheap...

You also have a video card slot, which means you can upgrade the video, which is very convenient!!

That must be a later mother board Art, mine is a socket AM2.

You could drop this CPU into it...

Amazon.com: AMD Athlon II X3 455 Processor (ADX455WFGMBOX): Electronics

Motherboard Specifications, M2N78-LA (Violet) | HP® Support

this is the page with my mother board specs.

That's a SATA drive.

SCSI you usually only find in servers these days.

You can get an external SATA case for the harddrive and use it with your old computer.

You can get a newer CPU, AM3 socket will fit your current AM2+ socket but you'll need to do a BIOS upgrade and your motherboard vendor may not support it. Research hard before going that route.

You can look for a replacement for the CPU you currently have but like I said, it's older architecture so you'll need to look for new old stock, refurbed or used. Used will be cheapest.

Replace the mother board / cpu and RAM. You have no expansion cards in your current box and you are happy with it so you don't need a crazy motherboard as it seems you don't use / need the expandability.

There is a Microcenter in Tustin. Go there and talk to them.

Look here, http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx

Those are the bundles they have going now.

FWIW I recently built a couple of game testing rigs using the FX 6xxx line of Six Core CPU's and the Gigabyte MOBO. The FX series is AM3+ socket and "should" fit your current motherboard but if they are giving you the MOBO for free then why not just toss another ~$50 bucks at it and stick in 8 GB of RAM and for under $200 you are good to go.

Don't forget what got you into this mess, your card reader stopped working which could be a variety of things from the reader itself to a MOBO issue.

Why spend the money for a new CPU just to possibly end up back in the same place?

FWIW every time I go to Microcenter the sales guys are willing to haggle on price. You might get them to toss in RAM for next to nothing.

So something like this: Micro Center - Computers, Electronics, Computer Parts, Networking, Gaming, Software, and more!

would only need RAM added and I could plug in all my other stuff (HD, CD/DVD player etc)?

Think I cleared the cookie on that cart on my end.

Micro Center - Computers, Electronics, Computer Parts, Networking, Gaming, Software, and more!

Is what you had I believe.

Your current MOBO looks to have an IDE connection (top right) but it's unpopulated, you did not disconnect anything from it?

Hard to tell but it looks like your CD/DVD drive is SATA as well.

If correct then yes that combo will work.

Well I just tried my wife's hair dryer on the cpu heat sink.
pin side of the cpu got to 113*F and still wasn't budging so I stopped.
Guess I'll go empty my piggy bank and make a trip to micro center.
Thanks for the info/help Art and Stomach.
I didn't unplug anything from the MOBO except the heat sink, so I don't think the IDE is used.

OH NO! You have a WD hard Drive!

AMD processor will come with a new heat sink and the thermal is already applied to the CPU so you don't have to worry about that bit.

1st boot it will likely freak out a bit complaining about drivers but toss in the MOBO disc to sort it out.

good luck.

She who pays the bills says the computer is pretty old and doesn't think it's worth putting money into.
Asked if I could just use the old old one. sigh.
I'm gonna look at what's on sale...

I just came back from my "local" MicroCenter (60 miles round-trip) and they have great deals on returned items. You can get everything you need there, very cheap and if you don't want to build it yourself, I'll build it for you...

Yeah I would have just built it out using the existing box.

The case is not a wear item and will last forever.

Case fans go but they are $5 and 5 minutes to replace.

Hard drives are a wear item and require replacing. I have some drives I've had forever and also new ones that blew up, one literally fried, smoke and all on 1st power up.

CD / DVD drives typically last a long time but still dirt cheap to replace and takes 5 minutes.

PSU, same as hard drives, some last, some don't but end of day they are a replacement item.

Replacing CPU / MOBO is still OP's best bang for the buck option.

WD drives...
 

I always use WD drives, usually the Black or Red models. No problems after 25 years or so...

I'd tend to agree with Stomach on building it out in the box I have.
I just hate tossing all that RAM away and having to replace it.
I don't suppose it's worthwhile building it with DDR2 RAM is it?

DDR2 RAM costs a lot more than DDR3, more than twice as much... You can get 8GB of DDR3 for less than $100.