Athlon 64 won't POST with heatsink clamped down...?

Some time ago I built an Athlon 64 3000+ system, MSI K8T Neo motherboard,
GeIL Ultra Platinum RAM. I put everything together, booted it up, started
installing WinXP and such. After a while I realized that I had neglected to
turn the latch-thing to clamp down the heatsink. (Standard AMD heatsink.) So
I did, and then it wouldn't boot. With the heatsink locked down it hangs at
"early chipset initialization," according to MSI's diagnostic "D-Bracket"
LEDs.

Since the computer worked, mostly, I didn't worry too much about it. I
watched the CPU temperatures carefully for a while, in case the unclamped
heatsink wasn't heatsinking properly, but everything seemed ok. Well, now
that it's abruptly become HOT outside (and WARM inside), I'm concerned again
about what effects this might be having.

I'm tempted to just toss the pair out the window and get a Socket 939 CPU
and mobo (whenever the mobos come out), but that's not real wise, says my
wallet. So, then, has anyone else had such a problem? Any suggestions out
there?


Replies to rsquared at sidbushes dot com.

"Richard Rudie" wrote in message
...
Some time ago I built an Athlon 64 3000+ system, MSI K8T Neo motherboard,
GeIL Ultra Platinum RAM. I put everything together, booted it up, started
installing WinXP and such. After a while I realized that I had neglected
to
turn the latch-thing to clamp down the heatsink. (Standard AMD heatsink.)
So
I did, and then it wouldn't boot. With the heatsink locked down it hangs
at
"early chipset initialization," according to MSI's diagnostic "D-Bracket"
LEDs.

Weird suggestion - try earthing the heatsink. Also, take out the motherboard
and look closely underneath the cpu socket - are there any fine cracks in
the PCB tracks?

Hellraiser.........

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 08:41:50 +0100, Hellraiser wrote:


"Richard Rudie" wrote in message
...
Some time ago I built an Athlon 64 3000+ system, MSI K8T Neo motherboard,
GeIL Ultra Platinum RAM. I put everything together, booted it up, started
installing WinXP and such. After a while I realized that I had neglected
to
turn the latch-thing to clamp down the heatsink. (Standard AMD heatsink.)
So
I did, and then it wouldn't boot. With the heatsink locked down it hangs
at
"early chipset initialization," according to MSI's diagnostic "D-Bracket"
LEDs.

Weird suggestion - try earthing the heatsink. Also, take out the motherboard
and look closely underneath the cpu socket - are there any fine cracks in
the PCB tracks?

Hellraiser.........

It could also be a bad solder joint uder the socket.