core quad q660

[Arrunas]

wonder if anybody would give a second opinion on my diagnosis please.

I was given yesterday an asus mobo with a quad q660 and a silent knight II cooler. (very good but i had only just bought a new amd chip so never mind)

the cpu and cooler were already attached to the mobo so i put it in my case, plugged into my hdds/drives/relevent buttons and reinstalled windows. no drama so far.

however once windows was installed it lasted about 5 minutes and then simply froze, no movement in the mouse, no movement on screen and the lights on my wireless receiver went out so that wasn't getting power either. turned it off and on again and it just about gets past posting and then immediately turns itself off.

now i would think that this is overheating especially after i took the cooler off and saw it had no thermal paste on at all. I've also tried it with only one stick of the 6gb of ram that is in there and that makes no difference so its not a ram thing.

however if that was the case all along why it it say on for 30mins or more whilst installing windows and then decide to die. unless of course the first death simply knackered the cpu in which case never mind as twas free anyway.

any ideas? is the thermal paste really that important?

thanks for anyone who takes the time to reply.

 

[eddyr]

Likely be due to no paste. The windows install maybe wasnt pushing the cpu as hard untill the windows load screen. Best start would be to use any paste (no matter its supposed quality) and see how that helps.


Also check that the bios isn't set to overclock, could be the combination of an unstable oc+heat. Have you check the board for an signs of visible dmg, esp worth a look aroud the cpu and pci16 slot for deep scratches.
(I'm assuming your psu is more than capable of runing the components)

 

[Arrunas]

Likely be due to no paste. The windows install maybe wasnt pushing the cpu as hard untill the windows load screen. Best start would be to use any paste (no matter its supposed quality) and see how that helps.


Also check that the bios isn't set to overclock, could be the combination of an unstable oc+heat. Have you check the board for an signs of visible dmg, esp worth a look aroud the cpu and pci16 slot for deep scratches.
(I'm assuming your psu is more than capable of runing the components)

I did check the mobo, seems completely fine (almost new) i did ask the guy who gave it to me if he had experimented with overclocking and he said he had but since the problem described above the procedure on turning on is as follows: it only just posts, gets closish to the log in screen and then turns itself off again so i cannot get into the bios to check the settings for any o/c without it turning off.

The psu is fine. more than enough power there.

Will go and get some thermal paste and give it another go later when i'm not at work.

hopefully its not knackered as is a good cpu but i suppose if it is ive not lost out as i still have the amd chip and my previous mobo (now spare)

it MUST be something heat/bios related as it doesnt get far enough now to be windows interfering in any way and tried with a linux tinycore live and it just does the same thing.

will soldier on. thanks for you help.

 

[j.col]

it only just posts, gets closish to the log in screen and then turns itself off again so i cannot get into the bios to check the settings for any o/c without it turning off.

you go into the bios, before widows starts
just press either F1, ESC or DEL, its usually one of them.
when you get into the bios, make a record of some of the settings.
cpu speed.
FSB
Multiplier,
Ram speed
Vcore (try raising this, you are safe upto 1.5v, so raise it a couple of levels)
raising the vcore should get you into windows, then stress test using prime95

 

[Emphacy]

Alternatively head into the BIOS and reset to factory defaults, failsafe settings would be the best option... Therefore if there is already a preset overclock which is causing the system to become unstable it will disappear.

 

[eddyr]

If it wont post for long enough to get into the bios, there's always the good ol' clear CMOS jumper. Hope it works out.

 

[C64]

what sort of power supply do you have ?

 

[Donkeyfumbler]

Highly unlikely to be due to a lack of thermal paste. That would raise temps a reasonable bit, but nothing like the amount needed to kill a cpu as long as the heatsink was on tight.