Can you get me out of the dog house?

[Mr. Smith]

I think I killed my (old) family HTPC. CMOS reset was no help.

I have an old rig (from new) for my family to use hooked up the the TV as a HTPC.

Zotac H55 itx, lga 1156 -
Xeon x3470 (i3-550 to hand) -
H50 corsair aio -
8gb micron 1333mhz ram (have 4gb of mushkin too) -
550w Silverstone psu -
Hd5550 GPU -
Kingston SSD -

It was pretty slow so I picked up some ram and a cpu for cheap to keep it going longer. Stuck pop_os on there too for good measure.

Everything worked fine and I thought for nostalgia I'd try OC the H55. Lightly. Left ratio high as wasn't shooting for a high FSB. Basic bios so worked with what I had.

Ratio 22 -
FSB 160 -
CPU vcore set to +0.1 so 1.29 effective -
RAM downclocked manually stock volts -

So up from 2.9ghz to a modest 3.5ghz.

Almost 5 mins stress testing and I got a hard freeze and something smelled hot, maybe dust from old rig. Last temp value was 74 for highest core.

Couldn't power off by holding power button so switched off psu.

Lights come on, fans spin and when vcc led and SATA led flash green it loops back over and over.

CMOS reset seems to do nothing -
Batter has been out for varying amounts of time -
Cleared capacitors -
Checked manual for cmos pins -
Put old i3 back in -
Tried every stick of ram in each slot -
Back with xeon in -
Tried all ram again -

Stuck in the loop.

Inspected mobo closely and cant see any scorch marks, blown caps etc.

Ideas please? My kids won't be pleased!
Thanks

 

[WYP]

I'd give parts the old sniff test. I'm curious what the burning smell was from.

 

[Mr. Smith]

I'll sniff around but it wasn't a burning smell. It was a bit like when dust gets hot. The psu and mobo had a fair bit on as this stuff is 10 years ish old.





Edit. Internals of psu have lots of dust so given I was stress testing and it hadn't done more than play some HD content for a while, I think that's what I could smell.



Anyway, I sniffed everything and no burning smells. Pulled battery and hoping overnight it'll fix itself.



Any suggestions appreciated

 

[RobM]

There is an old say, if it ain't broke

 

[Mr. Smith]

I left the CMOS battery out all night. No joy. Tried another cmos clear. Not sure if it's worth getting a replacement bios chip

 

[WYP]

If you haven't already, try a different PSU and graphics card. If that fails, you may need a new motherboard. Not sure if you'll have much luck finding one.

 

[Mr. Smith]

It might be time to retire this then. I wanted to keep it going because this will likely end up in a landfill and old parts are strangely expensive at the moment.