Nola’s not the only one with computer woes. My office PC crashed and burned last week when the little tab that holds the heatsink onto the processor popped off while I was playing Far Cry working furiously on a writing assignment last Tuesday evening. I heard a noise, but ignored it, and a few minutes later, total shutdown.
One new motherboard, processor and heatsink later, all is well. Here are some shots of the carnage:
Old motherboard on top of new motherboard’s box. For the geek amongst us, here’s the step-by-step.
- Open case.
- Disconnect everything from motherboard.
- Remove old motherboard.
- Take new processor and mount on new motherboard. Follow directions carefully.
- Mount heatsink on new processor.
- Install motherboard into case.
- Connect all cables.
- Start up machine. Catch it in post, go to PC health part of BIOS and watch CPU temp for ten minutes to make sure heatsink is working. Mine stabilized at 102, which is ok.
- Boot up Windows, install new motherboard drivers.
- Play Far Cry to make sure new processor works through all its paces. Check temp. Up to 108, still ok.
- Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
New motherboard, processor (upgrade from Athlon 64 3000 to 4000) and heatsink/fan (much quieter than old one). With 2 day shipping, $133! Not bad.
Gosh. I think this has happened to me about 5 times in the last 8 years. Reminder to me, thank you, to back up all files to external drive!
That’s something I need to do, to. Luckily, none of this had anything to do with any of my hard drives. I lost nothing and I did not need to reinstall Windows.