hi
i was replacing the heatsink and fan on my motherboard when i sliped and stabed the motherboard with my screwdriver (dumb i know) now there are no signs of life what so ever. Does any 1 know if i broke the motherboard or the cpu? would there be signs of life if i had just broke the cpu? i need to know what to replace cpu or motherboard.

any help would be great
l.kennedy

more than likely you've broke your motherboard..have you another board to try the CPU in?

no i dont have another mother board but i have another cpu i tryed that and still nothing, i was scared that id broke 2 cpu's in 1 day. iv ordred a new board it will be here tomorow.
do you have any advice regarding instaling heatsink as i dont want to make the same mistake.

luke

be very careful when you try and clip the heatsink on

I would just like to say that i feel heatsinks should be made a little easier to install! I have suffered lukes fears a number of times because of how much grunting it takes to get some heatsinks on!

Heatsinks have to be fitted extremely tightly against the processor in order to transfer the heat properly. I agree that it would be much easier to fit if there was some kind of screw fitting but that would leave the fitter the capability of not tightening it up enough and ending up with a melted CPU. I think it's something that we're all going to have to live with for a long time. In fact, I've noticed over the last 10 years that each new kind of CPU / heatsink combination seems to be tougher to fit than the type that it replaced!

I totally agree with the logic of it... but i still feel it is another symptom of the industry as a whole not being very dilligent with respect to end user concerns. But maybe that is just because i have been severely burnt in the last couple of years by PC crashes and SCORES of weekends wasted on painful trouble-shooting sprees. I think my tag line says it all!