My desktop PC has been with me for more than 5 years now. Recently, after turning it on, while I was about to move some files to my USD, it abruptly turned off, without warning. It didn't even go through the shut down process, one moment it's on and the next, pitch black. Right after that, I switched it on again, and there were some loud beeps. At the bottom, it said that the computer had experienced a thermal event (overheating), and that I should get it fixed, or press F2 to continue. I pressed F2 and it booted up as usual, all the way to the start screen.
Of course, it happened again. After letting it cool down an entire day, I booted it up again, let it load up all the way to the start screen and just timed how long it took before another shutdown. It wasn't that long before it happened again.
After a quick google search, I decided to open up my desktop and change the thermal paste. The old thermal paste was completely solid. It was like hardened cement. This was a problem because the solid aluminium (or some sort of metal) cooling block was stuck to the intel chip. I had to pull out the chip without un-locking it from the frame, because there was no way to take it out. I yanked it out, and I feared I broke the chip or some pins. I took some alcohol swabs, cleaned out the old hard paste, and put in a new layer of paste. I figured the chip was not broken, because it booted up just fine.
After 10 minutes or so, it turned off again. But when I booted it up, there was no thermal event warning message. I figured the paste needed to be "broken-in" and it would be fine now.
But after some simple internet browsing, thermal event happened again.
I changed the paste twice already, because I thought there was bubbles or the paste wasnt in contact or something.
Then today, I booted it up, and after 3 minutes, a thermal event shutdown happened.
On a side note, this may or may not be important.
- I recently changed my CMOS battery because the time and dates were being reset all the time. After I replaced the new battery, I did not touch or reconfigure any bios settings, just the time and date at the start menu bar, because I dont know how to configure BIOS.
- My intel chip is one of the series of chips that had a hole at the top. I'm not sure if that hole was supposed to be cleaned out or not. I just squirted a dot on the intel chip and sandawiched the cooler block on to it.
Am I doing something wrong? Do I have to change some settings or something?
How do I narrow down what is wrong with my desktop so I can fix it?
Because I just need it to run long enough to transfer my files to an external HDD, then I'm going to buy a new desktop.
But I first need it to turn on long enough to actually do something without shutting down
Please tell me what info you need. I'll post all the relevant specs in my next post.
Edited by chromejael, 20 June 2013 - 06:52 AM.
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