Upgraded to Aftermarket CPU cooler and PC will not boot up

[mregdosz]

Hello again tom'sHARDWARE community!

I have a very serious issue! I have recently started to upgrade my PC. I upgraded my GPU and then I noticed that my CPU cooler (stock) was getting hot and loud when playing higher res games. So I decided to upgrade it.

I took out the stock one and I followed a YouTube tutorial on how to install the new one. During the tutorial though my finger slipped and I touched the thermal paste tube with the processor (and then a second the man giving the tutorial said "DO NOT TOUCH THE TUBE AND THE PROCESSOR", oh the irony). Besides that I think everything else went fine. I took the GPU out then I took the mobo out, after I unplugged everything, and installed the new cooler and put everything else back in and I made sure that everything was plugged back in right.

I try to turn the PC on and it starts to turn on. It beeps once then once again right before it WOULD boot up and show a startup screen but it powers down and try's to boot up again.

I have tried :

1. Removing the fan and placing it the opposite way (as it was kind of touching my RAM when I wanted to point the air direction out)

2. Reinstalling the CPU cooler (CoolerMaster 212 EVO) and reapplying the thermal paste (the paste that came with the CoolerMaster) after cleaning it and noticing that I applied a little too much the first time around. This time I used the pea sized method.

3. Unplugging the fan all together to see if it was just drawing too much power from my 750W.

4. Reinstalling the stock cooler.

5. Looking on the internet and praying to the Google gods for an answer.

All to no avail. PC will not boot up to the start up screen and I hope it is my mobo that is the problem but I fear, and I am pretty sure, that it is my CPU. Which will suck when I am 100% certain it is.

(BTW I was grounding myself by constantly touching the case every couple of minutes to make sure I didn't produce and ESD)

 

[R_1]

have you tried removing and reseating the CPU?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

1. Is the fan plugged into the CPU fan header on the MoBo ?

2. Read your MoBo manual, BIOS section to see if it has a setting for minimum fan rpm. Thee tiny stock fan spins very fast and most MoBos are designed to prevent boot up if fan is not spinning that fast. You now have a big fan which spins slower.... set the BIOS at the 20 less than the minimum rpm of the fan.

3. I'd say about 1/4 of the peeps who install the Hyper 212 over tighten the mounting mechanism. This can warp the board and or socket so that CPU pins are no longer touching and even break the circuit races in the board. Lighten up a bit on the hold down screws to check this..

 

[mregdosz]

1. Is the fan plugged into the CPU fan header on the MoBo ?

2. Read your MoBo manual, BIOS section to see if it has a setting for minimum fan rpm. Thee tiny stock fan spins very fast and most MoBos are designed to prevent boot up if fan is not spinning that fast. You now have a big fan which spins slower.... set the BIOS at the 20 less than the minimum rpm of the fan.

3. I'd say about 1/4 of the peeps who install the Hyper 212 over tighten the mounting mechanism. This can warp the board and or socket so that CPU pins are no longer touching and even break the circuit races in the board. Lighten up a bit on the hold down screws to check this..

1. Yes.

2. Can't get to BIOS because PC won't boot up. Can't remember where I put my mobo manual as I built the pc about 4 years ago.

3. I do feel as if I applied a lot of torque on the screws the first time around. However, I unscrewed it and when I reinstalled the CPU cooler I applied much less torque and still nothing. After seeing what you said, I fear that now it may be both my mobo and cpu.

 

[mregdosz]

have you tried removing and reseating the CPU?

Yes I have.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Yeah, you said that in original post (step 2).

Let's try this.... leaving everything else "as is"

1. Unplug the Hyper 212 fan from the MoBo header.
2. Take the stock fan off the stock cooler and plug it in to the CPU header; let it lay on the Hyper 212

See if it starts.

If it does, go into BIOS and set the fan rpm to say 580, save settings and exit.
When it restarts, turn the system off.
Reconnect Hyper 212 fan to CPU header.
Put stock fan / cooler back in box,
Restart PC

If not I would then try and troubleshoot the over tightening issue.

 

[mregdosz]

Yeah, you said that in original post (step 2).

Let's try this.... leaving everything else "as is"

1. Unplug the Hyper 212 fan from the MoBo header.
2. Take the stock fan off the stock cooler and plug it in to the CPU header; let it lay on the Hyper 212

See if it starts.

If it does, go into BIOS and set the fan rpm to say 580, save settings and exit.
When it restarts, turn the system off.
Reconnect Hyper 212 fan to CPU header.
Put stock fan / cooler back in box,
Restart PC

If not I would then try and troubleshoot the over tightening issue.

Ok, so the PC still will not start. It keeps on trying to start, like I said before, but still won't start and will not go into POST.

How would I go about trouble shooting over the tightening issue? As of right now I have the stock cooler back in the mobo and it isn't tightening the mobo at all. It's clipped on.

I doubt it's shorting because I took the back plate off from my rig and tried again with the stock cooler and no dice. Wont boot up to BIOS.

How do I check if it is the CPU or the MoBo that is causing the issue?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Tried resetting CMOS ? If you had a failure of the type described, CMOS may be borked.

Did you take anything else out when ya swapped coolers ?

RAM in right slots and full seated ?
All cables fully seated ?
Did you perchance for get to plug in the EPS cable next to CPU ?

 

[mregdosz]

Tried resetting CMOS ? If you had a failure of the type described, CMOS may be borked.

Did you take anything else out when ya swapped coolers ?

RAM in right slots and full seated ?
All cables fully seated ?
Did you perchance for get to plug in the EPS cable next to CPU ?

I also tried resetting CMOS (The AsRock z77 Extreme4 has a button in the back to do this) and nothing.

I made sure the RAM was placed right. All cables are plugged in and the EPS cable is in as well.

 

[mregdosz]

Oh, I also was using compressed air to progressively clean the dust from my pc while upgrading it as a way to kill two birds with one stone. If that helps anyone solve this problem.

 

[mregdosz]

So.. I decided to have one last go at it before I called it a night.

I took out the RAM, the stock cpu cooler, the wiring and unscrewed the mobo and cleaned the thermal paste off the processor with q tips and removed the dust off the mobo with computer duster once more.

Then I proceeded to install the new CPU cooler because, you know, if I'm gonna go out, I wanna go out with a bang! I installed it and made sure it wasn't over torqued like last time. And then I used the last remaining thermal paste I had and used the pea size method once more. Installed the heat shield, once again making sure it was not over torqued.

Lastly I reinstalled all the components in and wired it up nicely because was of my suspects was that some wires were touching or shorting the PC.
I turned on the power, prayed, and what do you know. We have booting!

I read somewhere that most of the time when a PC doesn't want to load again after installing/upgrading a critical component to it is because the mobo was installed wrong where metal touches metal or the wiring wasn't hooked up again properly so I decided to give it a shot and well, it looks like it worked for now. We will see later.

Anyway, thank you guys for the help! I really appreciate it!