Well guys..Ive had nothing but bad luck with the last few rigs Ive built but I will start from the begining. I had a shuttle for lan partys and such with a 3.0 p4 (this was like 2-3 years ago) which literally cooked itself while I was shopping. Got home to a burned electronics smell (I know Im not the only one 
) and found that the shuttle was pot holder hot to the touch. It seems as though the cpu was getting power or running while the computer was off. Never heard of such a thing but thats the only thing that can explain it. The lights were all off and it was quiet (not running) and when I went to take it apart to find out what was going on I burnt my hands on the case. I pushed the power button to see what would happen and it fired up but no post or anything. I unplugged it and the next day opened her up. The cpu heatsink got so hot that the plastic heatsink mount was melted onto the motherboard. The funny thing is every other part survived which is why I know it wasnt running. The ram, graphics card and hard drives all worked fine and still do today.
After that happened I decided to go with a mach II gt. I got an FX-60, A8n32-sli and 7900 gtx. About 2 months later I was playing games..no problem. Turned it off and went to bed. Next day mach started up normally but when it turned on the pc lights came on and immediatly went back off and never came on again. (I wrote about this in the forums before so forgive me if this is de ja vu) Anyway, this was right about when core 2 dropped so I decided to upgrade. I ordered a power supply and amazingly it fired up the a8n32-sli that I had taken out of the rig...tried with the old one and nothing! So now I had a new power supply and all my other stuff was good...so I sold it off for new parts as I already had an x6800 ES in the mail.
After putting the x6800 on a p5n32-sli se delux and 2 gigs xms2 pc 8500 it was doing all sorts of wierd things for the first week. Every now and again during start up it would fail for overvoltage or overclock fail which I never tried to do. Then one time I got really freaked out when my cpu temp went from -35 to 107 in a split second setting off alarms left and right. Then I rebooted only to have a cpu temp high fail during post and a 109c in the bios hardware monitor. Then It all went away on its own. Last night I was playing...no problem. today I turned it on and when the pc started all the lights and fans were running but it would not post and nothing on monitor. Thought it was a little strange so I rebooted...nothing. I stripped every thing off the mother board except graphics card and cpu (didnt want to take prommy off just yet) NOTHING. Initially when I put the prommy on I had too much seal string around the caps and because its such a tight fit the mount kit would not go flush. ...so I re-seal stringed it with a more reasonable amount. I guess I was a little to light in the seal string department this time. I took the prommy head off the processor and there was a lake just chilling in the bottom of the 775 kit. Thats when Pi55ed off turned into terror. I then proceeded to take the rest of the kit off and found a couple drops of water looking up at me from the back of the motherboard...it was like the were saying "hey...how you doing?
" Then came the bad part. I found water on the transistors on the underside of the x6800. The only thing that might have saved me was that I generously squirted a ton on dielectric grease into the 775 socket pins, covered the entire undersurface of the x6800 including transistors and around the heatsink itself....
A new p5n32-sli se delux is in the mail...so I should have it in a few days. I really hope the cpu survived....I took care enough to grease it so I hope it paid off.
My question I pose to you experts (mav, fatty....)and others with a conroe setup on a mach is this: Is useing my prommy on the x6800 a good idea? What should I do to prevent this in the future? Is there a way to 100% ensure there are no holes in the seal like pouring alchohol into the kit to see if it leaks anywhere then waiting for it do evaporate before putting it all together?
Or is this a simple case of I was not careful enough when applying the seal string the second time? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Im about a 256mb usb drive away from getting a beating from my wife so everyone pray the x6800 made it.....thanks for being my shoulder...boa
) and found that the shuttle was pot holder hot to the touch. It seems as though the cpu was getting power or running while the computer was off. Never heard of such a thing but thats the only thing that can explain it. The lights were all off and it was quiet (not running) and when I went to take it apart to find out what was going on I burnt my hands on the case. I pushed the power button to see what would happen and it fired up but no post or anything. I unplugged it and the next day opened her up. The cpu heatsink got so hot that the plastic heatsink mount was melted onto the motherboard. The funny thing is every other part survived which is why I know it wasnt running. The ram, graphics card and hard drives all worked fine and still do today.After that happened I decided to go with a mach II gt. I got an FX-60, A8n32-sli and 7900 gtx. About 2 months later I was playing games..no problem. Turned it off and went to bed. Next day mach started up normally but when it turned on the pc lights came on and immediatly went back off and never came on again. (I wrote about this in the forums before so forgive me if this is de ja vu) Anyway, this was right about when core 2 dropped so I decided to upgrade. I ordered a power supply and amazingly it fired up the a8n32-sli that I had taken out of the rig...tried with the old one and nothing! So now I had a new power supply and all my other stuff was good...so I sold it off for new parts as I already had an x6800 ES in the mail.
After putting the x6800 on a p5n32-sli se delux and 2 gigs xms2 pc 8500 it was doing all sorts of wierd things for the first week. Every now and again during start up it would fail for overvoltage or overclock fail which I never tried to do. Then one time I got really freaked out when my cpu temp went from -35 to 107 in a split second setting off alarms left and right. Then I rebooted only to have a cpu temp high fail during post and a 109c in the bios hardware monitor. Then It all went away on its own. Last night I was playing...no problem. today I turned it on and when the pc started all the lights and fans were running but it would not post and nothing on monitor. Thought it was a little strange so I rebooted...nothing. I stripped every thing off the mother board except graphics card and cpu (didnt want to take prommy off just yet) NOTHING. Initially when I put the prommy on I had too much seal string around the caps and because its such a tight fit the mount kit would not go flush. ...so I re-seal stringed it with a more reasonable amount. I guess I was a little to light in the seal string department this time. I took the prommy head off the processor and there was a lake just chilling in the bottom of the 775 kit. Thats when Pi55ed off turned into terror. I then proceeded to take the rest of the kit off and found a couple drops of water looking up at me from the back of the motherboard...it was like the were saying "hey...how you doing?
A new p5n32-sli se delux is in the mail...so I should have it in a few days. I really hope the cpu survived....I took care enough to grease it so I hope it paid off.
My question I pose to you experts (mav, fatty....)and others with a conroe setup on a mach is this: Is useing my prommy on the x6800 a good idea? What should I do to prevent this in the future? Is there a way to 100% ensure there are no holes in the seal like pouring alchohol into the kit to see if it leaks anywhere then waiting for it do evaporate before putting it all together?
Or is this a simple case of I was not careful enough when applying the seal string the second time? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Im about a 256mb usb drive away from getting a beating from my wife so everyone pray the x6800 made it.....thanks for being my shoulder...boa
