so i bult my own pc about a year and a bit ago.. as follows:
6600 intel duo core
Asus P5B motherboard
Nvidia Gforce 7900 GT(X?) not sure which
1 gig of ddr2 ram
using win xp
It worked fine (to my suprise) and has had no problems whatsoever. until now.
A few weeks ago i had a look at the temp. of the cpu. It was 70degrees C. Ive had a look for the specs for the 6600 and it says that 60 is the optimal temp. i thought thats ok theyre designed to work a bit hotter and as it had been working fine for over a year, thought no more of it.
I moved my computer into another room today, and when i booted up, there were 3 or 4 beeps and an error on startup warning about the temp of the cpu. So i quickly powered off and had a look inside.
it seems that the cpu fan/ heat sink had come loose and wasnt in contact with the cpu. So i took it off completely and reapplied thermal paste and put it back on.
So i started up the pc again and everything worked...i got to windows and it was fine. checked the temperature of the cpu and it says 90 degrees...uh oh! so im about to turn off the power and a sound in between a click and a bang was heard. Dreading what i would see i looked inside and found a smell of smoke but no noticable damage to the cpu or motherboard. That was 10 minutes ago and havnt dared turn anything on again. Im a bit worried that its actually the psu (its only a 450W) but it hasnt been a problem before. What is the likely problem? Have a applied the thermal paste wrongly or could the overheating of the cpu somehow cause damage to the psu?
Ill try rebooting the pc now and give you an update....