I used my power drill on a broken motherboard last night...

[digitalwanderer]

My wife is in Florida this week, so my schedule has been a bit looser and more relaxed. Last night at around 1:30 I decided to call it a night "early", but then something happened on the way to bed... (quoted from a Facebook posting of mine, too lazy to retype but thought y'all would like to hear about my latest adventure with my kid's hardware)

So would you believe that I honestly intended to go to bed last night at a reasonable hour, up until I walked past the box with the busted Asus Crosshair Formula V in it. After looking at various AMD cpus and mobos on Newegg and Amazon for a few hours I suddenly felt it was worth it to try and see if I could get the Crosshair working. It just had a couple of pins stuck in the CPU socket, how hard could it be?

A few hours later all the pins were cleared from the socket with the help of a half dozen tiny prying tools, a magnifying glass, and believe it or not my power drill with the smallest bit I had that I used to widen the top of one of the CPU socket holes just a smidge so I could pull half a broken pin out. (First time I used power tools on a mobo, so proud!

)

With the socket all cleared I grabbed my son's old Phenom 955 to toss in, but it wouldn't fit. Took a look at the bottom of the chip and sure enough there were bent pins. I'd had my son remove his heatsink/CPU himself to get more hands on, and he'd removed it without lifting the locking lever. ("When faced with a jammed part, USE MOAR POWAH!", he gets it from his dad.

) After about 40 minutes of annoyance and failure trying to straighten the pins I gave up and passed out and decided to tackle it in the morn.

Well the morn is now noon as I didn't get up quite as early as usual, and the 955 pin situation is pretty borked. I think I'm gonna see about pulling an original bulldozer out of my daughter's old PC and seeing if I can get the mobo to fire up. If I can, that means Justin can get an 8350 with a nice cooler for xmas rather than a cheap mobo and a 6300 or something.

I figure it's best to get all the geeky out of my system while my wife's away, and with the bonus of getting most of xmas squared away in the process. Win/win.

Just getting ready to go up to Mad's room and steal her Phenom, her desktop hasn't been working all year since we've slowly been stripping it for parts to keep our other PCs going. She doesn't mind, she uses her laptop as her main computer. (Another reason why I felt it was such a big deal to get her a good one for her birthday, and thank all of you again for your help with that one...I'm so pleased with the results still!)

 

[digitalwanderer]

Hmmm. Plugged in a PSU, the lights on the mobo all lit up proper, turned it on, and the PSU made horrible crackling noises and let all it's magic smoke out.

Not sure if the PSU was bad or the mobo is a PSU killer, and I have one spare working PSU I can test it with. Debating now.

 

[entity279]

Unlikely that a MB can be a PSU killer. Perhaps a short circuit done by stuff in the case touching the mb ...

I think its safe ; just get the MB out first.

 

[digitalwanderer]

The mobo was sitting on a piece of cardboard, I'm just bench assembling now.

I tested it with my other power supply and nothing blew up! It didn't post or do anything really either, but it didn't blow the PSU so big plus!

I read that you actually need a functioning CPU in the mobo to even test if it will post, and so far from all my efforts this seems to be true. So now I'm debating on if I should risk just buying and 8350 and testing it and hoping for the best, or mebbe buying a cheapy AM3+ chip to test it with...but there ain't a whole lot of cheapy AM3+ that I'd really want to be stuck with either right now.

Dilemmas, story of me life.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Hmmm, $140 for an 8350 with Wraith cooler local.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Woah, or $193.93 will get me that CPU along with a mobo and comes with a $30 mail-in rebate...and it's on the way to the airport tomorrow. :s

 

[digitalwanderer]

Ok, I was good and didn't get it yet...but is this a great deal or am I way off base?

 

[digitalwanderer]

It was a great deal, my son loves it. I gave up on the 9590/crossfire after much playing around and getting absolutely zero response. Decided it was a total lost cause.

But the other night I got in a fight with my wife, and my very wise daughter to distract me challenged me to build her a desktop PC she could use exclusively for school so she wouldn't be as easily distracted. She just wanted a basic webcruiser, so I figured sure no problem. What the hell, I got a duo and I'll throw it in. Went in to the basement, pulled a lot of bits and her old PC we'd been using for parts for the last few years, and gathered 'em all up in my red room. (I call it that because it's painted red. I think it's supposed to be a formal dining room since it has a fancy chandelier I had to raise up all the way to the ceiling to keep from bumping my head in to it. Oh, and the little wet bar with the wine glasses holder and the fancy glass cabinet and a sink that really works! Really impressed me and made me think I live in a fancy house, I have the wet bar absolutely covered in tools and bits as the formal dining room has been turned in to my personal work space. ) I got a big empty table in the red room and a couple of old office chairs and a rolling bench/tray thingy to hold bits in that makes playing with PC SO MUCH MORE FUN! Just having a space where you can lay everything out and leave it for a day or two feels like such a luxury that I still giggle with the happies when I use it. Plus it's nice 'cause the cats and dogs can visit and hang with me when I do it, or the kids. (Believe it or not they do sometimes just because they enjoy my company and learning how 'puters work more, weird again I know).

Anywho, I built a computer in to her old case leaving her old HDD in and that was about all. It was basically the Intel build that a friend from here sent me when I was in need with an old nVidia 1GB 9800XT, so I new all the bits worked but figured it would probably need a reinstall since i was going from an AMD cpu/gpu combo to an intel one. Got it all ready and turned it on, and nothing happened.

Nothing.

Checked everything, changed power cables, still nothing.

Horrible thought creeping up my spine....

Pull the Corsair 650w from it and toss my last known good PSU a Corsair 430w I think?

Fires up like a champ, boots up to windows and loads drivers and asks to reboot, reboot and all I had to do was uninstall the AMD gpu drivers and the thing works like a charm. Hurrah!

My daughter really helped to distract me from my troubles, and that made me glad. Plus we both really do like the idea of her having a dedicatedish school computer where she can sit and focus rather than lounge on her bed with her laptop. (Which she still loves to death btw, thanks again for all the help with that too!)

But something has been niggling the back of my brain since....that 650w PSU was the one I did all the tests with the 9590 and the Crossfire with.

Now please realize that I am VERY down right now about my PC and current PC abilities. Nothings changed except a lot of stuff broke down and I haven't been able to fix it like I usually can, which just bums the hell out of me.

I know it's irrational, but it's me.

Anyways, I'm trying to decide if it's worth risking my daughters 430w PSU to try and see if the crossfire adn 9590 really are dead or if it was the PSU I was using to test it. I'm not so worried about losing the PSU as I am my sanity if it doesn't work after I try again.

Any opinions?

 

[Davros]

Do you know any electricians ?
psu's are pretty simple devices and your 650watt could be repaired

 

[digitalwanderer]

My father started his own electrical contractorship when I was about 7, I started working there at age 8 and worked there on and off until about age 28. I played industrial/residential electrician for several years, what I need is someone who is good with electronics.

So I should just pull the PSU apart and find out the problem? I mean I betcha 10-1 it's just a blown cap or a fuse, those are pretty easy to check. I'm not so worried about that as to get a new mobo/cpu working before the one I'm currently using actually dies.

I played NFSU last night, and I getting pretty decent framerates...but the lack of ability to game is slowly killing me inside.

 

[Davros]

So I should just pull the PSU apart and find out the problem?

if you know what your doing

 

[digitalwanderer]

I know enough to know which bits can hurt/kill me even if it is unplugged, so I figure I got a pretty strong advantage going in.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Oh, and today it hurts extry much because I really thought Rzyen was being released today. So I've been holding on and holding out until today, and I find out it's not until the end of March.

Not a good day, not at all.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Then I put on my big boy pants, took a double dose of my extry bravery pills and....

I made it work. I don't think it's possible but I think I might, JUST MIGHT have a shot at making it f-ing live again!

I'm still in shock, it fired up. With the good PSU and after some pin re-re-re-repairing on the damaged CPU it fired up!

It only had CPU with no cooler and a couple sticks of old memory in it and the PSU connections and the fan connection from the computer sitting next to it...but the mobo fired up properly and the fan spun up on the other computer!

I have this very strange sensation, I can't quite recall it. It's one of those emotions things like happy, hungry, sleepy...HOPEFUL! That's it! It's just been so long.

If I can pull this off, I'll f-ing impress the hell out of myself...but even if I totally fail I'll be proud as hell of myself for trying.

 

[Malo]

Oh, and today it hurts extry much because I really thought Rzyen was being released today. So I've been holding on and holding out until today, and I find out it's not until the end of March.

The end of March? Everything I've seen points to start of March, has that changed?

 

[digitalwanderer]

No, you're right. I had heard it was being released 2/3/17, which like a naturally stupid american I assumed to be Feb 3...it's actually March 2nd in the more common d/m/yy format.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Would someone please tell me to quit being such a pussy and to just try and fix this thing? My fears of failure again with it are paralyzing me. :|

 

[Davros]

quit being such a pussy and fix the thing

/Me waits for a post saying "why the hell did I listen to you"

 

[digitalwanderer]

You won't get that, my biggest argument with myself right now is; "What, you're afraid you're going to break it MORE? It's fucking bricked now and basically not even any good as a paper weight, you have NOTHING to lose dude except what tiny remnants of geek pride remain alive inside of you...and even if you fail it ain't gonna be able to kill that. Nothing will be able to totally kill that, just 'cause you fail at a nearly impossible project doesn't mean you're a total failure...it just means you're human"

Problem is, I don't want people to start suspecting I'm human. I've been spending YEARS convincing people I'm an advanced AI experiment...

 

[AlNom]

Do it or I'll ban you from the forums and you can tell me all about it in the AI haven when it's complete, and then I'll unban you.