Hard Reseated Heatsink: Did I break my mobo? Fans, no screen, codes

[daniel1212]

Hi. Because of dust, I took off my fan and heat sink  ( which is  like this one )   to my ASRock 970 Extreme 3 mobo, with an AMD 6350 CPU, which was running fine. The cpu came off with it (even though the lever on the mobo was down),  which  i later separated from the HS for cleaning. I cleaned out the dust from the HS and cleaned off the old thermal paste, and inspected the cpu which looked fine.

I then could not find the thermal paste i  thought i had,   but (i read how some ran without it temporarily)  for the time being i wanted to see if it would at least  run.      However, after seating the cpu (arrow matches top left) snugly, i could not gt the top HS latch to connect, though it was close. I tried many times, and finally loosed the 4 screws a bit to the plate the HS latches   to, and then they snapped into place, and i tightened the screws snugly.

But on power up only the fans will run, and the cpu fans   speed adjusted  up for the few seconds i ran it (not more than a minute),  but just a black screen, and no kybrd or mobo   lights or beep codes. The hard drive kicks in, but no activity after that.

I reseated the cpu and HS again, and also cleared the CMOS, but it remains the same.

What think ye??
 

[patio]

You cannot run that CPU without thermal paste applied properly...
Hence the shutdowns...

[daniel1212]

Thanks.     Some say they have, yet i am not even getting a post screen. But i will apply paste after  i get some.

[BC_Programmer]

The way I see that thread is analogous to people saying "I went into a hard hat area without wearing a hard hat and nothing bad happened, therefore nobody needs to wear a hard hat in hard hat areas"

[daniel1212]

Thanks, and I understand. I was just wondering why i could not even begin to see if anything would happen, as  if surely would not heat up enough in about 10 secs to prevent any screen output.

If it still will not POST after trying it with a quality paste, the question would be whether it is the mobo or cpu. I have read many stories of new mobos only getting the fans to run, but that could be due to poor cpu connection.

[patio]

Many AMD CPU's will completely fry in under 20 seconds...look it up...

[BC_Programmer]

Thanks, and I understand. I was just wondering why i could not even begin to see if anything would happen, as  if surely would not heat up enough in about 10 secs to prevent any screen output.
If it still will not POST after trying it with a quality paste, the question would be whether it is the mobo or cpu. I have read many stories of new mobos only getting the fans to run, but that could be due to poor cpu connection.

Running without Thermal paste (or really with any form of poor thermal dissipation) has the potential to destroy a CPU in less than a second. A failed CPU could result in this sort of problem.

On the other hand, they would be the same issue you get if the CPU is not seated properly, so it might be worth checking that first.