I have a clients desktop that powers off consistently within 1-2 minutes (of course when I got it back to my workench it has been running Dell diags flawlessly for an hour.) At the customers site it would get past the BIOS most of the time and usually go dead before XP Home is fully up. It was installed in an older farm house so I made sure it wasn't power related by plugging it into a small UPS I keep in my truck.
At first I was going to substitute a PS but like I said it's been running for an hour now. So I pop off the covers, poke around and find the problem!
It turns out the plastic carrier that screws to the MOBO was slightly cracked where one of the two fan/heatsink retaining springs attach. This provided uneven spring tension so the heat sink was allowed to slightly pull away from the CPU chip. It was installed vertically at the customers house so it must have pulled far enough away to lose good contact and allow the CPU to overheat and power off the PC. I laid it on it's side on my bench and it appears the fan/heatsink was heavy enough to stay flat on the chip so it kept running.
I have an old Dell I cannibalized for the carrier. I cleaned the old thermal paste off the chip and added some fresh Arctic Silver 5, stood it back up vertically and it's been running like a top! Just thought I'd share this unusual fix.
At first I was going to substitute a PS but like I said it's been running for an hour now. So I pop off the covers, poke around and find the problem!
It turns out the plastic carrier that screws to the MOBO was slightly cracked where one of the two fan/heatsink retaining springs attach. This provided uneven spring tension so the heat sink was allowed to slightly pull away from the CPU chip. It was installed vertically at the customers house so it must have pulled far enough away to lose good contact and allow the CPU to overheat and power off the PC. I laid it on it's side on my bench and it appears the fan/heatsink was heavy enough to stay flat on the chip so it kept running.
I have an old Dell I cannibalized for the carrier. I cleaned the old thermal paste off the chip and added some fresh Arctic Silver 5, stood it back up vertically and it's been running like a top! Just thought I'd share this unusual fix.
