Tong Family

Tong Family Blog: Too much Thermal Grease. Well, it turns out that it wasn’t the thermal grease at all. The CPU fan just got knocked aside, so that is why temperatures went up to 65C.
With the fan in properly, even at full bore, the machine never got above 55C. That is still quite high, so the remaining 5C is probably because of the grease acting like an insulator. I took the machine apart and applied it properly, but I made a big mistake. When you are cleaning the grease from the CPU, wipe *towards the center* otherwise, you get grease all over the pins and the chip won’t workie anymore.
At least I hope it is that and not that the fact that when I removed the heatsink, I found that the chip had come out of the socket. Even though the socket was closed. So, I hope I didn’t zap my $400 CPU!
Right now I’m going to take it apart again, do a CMOS reset and hope that it is some strange thing like that. I also banged the board accidentally a few times, so I hope I didn’t break any traces on the motherboard.
Isn’t making your own PC fun?