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Can I blow my CPU by not using heat paste?

jamescbritton

jamescbritton

jamescbritton

Associate
Joined
9 Oct 2004
Posts
18
My pc stopped working a few days ago so I swapped over parts which another idenitical spec PC that I built for a friend unfortunately they now both don't work!

The only logical reason I can think that my friends won't work is that I may have overheated the processor as the paste has hardened and may not have been in full contact with the CPU. Does anyone know whether I could fry the CPU due to poor contact with the paste? Also how likely is that?

thanks
 
What type of chip was it?

I did some tests a year or two ago without paste and though the temperatures were higher than with paste they were no where near a dangerous level.
 
Hi,

Well the AMD athlon Barton 2800 runs at 2.083GHz so make sure the board is set correctly.

Also the AMD XP series are quite fragile with regard to temperature so it is possible it has suffered and if it did fail it could take out the mainboard.

Personally, I'd remove the CPU, clean with meths or similar and cotton buds taking care not to break any loose surface components on the CPU. Also clean the HSF well using meths. Leave to dry for a few minutes then assemble with a thin coat of thermal paste, reset the CMOS on the mainboard and see if it boots.

The XP chips I had trouble with usually has spare paste on the top surface and were ok once cleaned and refitted.

AD
 
Energize said:
I would imagine the motherboard would shutdown the pc before the cpu was damaged.
Click to expand...

Don't believe the socket a cpu's did this, i'm sure i've seen tests where the heatsink is removed, and intel cpu's just shutdown and cause no damage, whilst amd cpu's literally die, sometimes in quite spectacular ways...
 
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