PCA Forums

just be me. that'll do it.

how to summarize my stupidity...hmmm. well, my aging shuttle ak31 v3 has been my trusty overclocking rig. the only problem with it is that the chipset fan (super cheap stock fan) has been dying for a long time and the cpu fan was also going bad (a cheap AMD stock unit). so, i ordered some goodies from SVC to solve the problem. a vantec chipset cooler and a cheap (but supposedly quiet) HSF combo. i even picked up some extra round cables for fun.

soooooo, the circus began when i needed to remove the motherboard from the case to get the stock HSF off of the chipset. no problem with the fan, then the pushpins on the back of the mobo. then, my m4D 5KiLz kicked in. i had to get the heatsink off the chipset. ok, it's stuck on, so of course----the trick is to use a screwdriver and gently pop it off.

after i had gently removed one of the surrounding little shiny transistors or something next to the chipset, the heatsink popped off nicely!

i looked at the little piece that crumbled away and thought "hmmm. that's pretty tiny...it'll still work fine without THAT!".

next, the cpu HSF. i didn't take the time to crush the core...nah...but i think i banged the mobo around enough while putting it back into the case that even if that shiny little piece was just an ornament the thing was toast anyway.

i throw everything in, power it up...and just get a long BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-----pause--------BEEEEEEEEEEP-----pause--------BEEEEEEEEEEEEP. as expected. it's done. dead.

as an ironic bonus: the new chipset cooler and cpu HSF are just as loud as the others were.


best part is that i'm not even that upset. what i did was so sad that i keep chuckling about it and shaking my head!

so.........now the question is should i just replace the mobo, or do the whole mobo/cpu upgrade. hmm.

might as well upgrade the board and cpu whil your at it... just keep any screwdrivers far away

nice one.

I got a abit nf7-s v2 if you are intreasted.

Greg

you could get a shuttle AN35N Ultra cheaper than when the AK31 first arrived on the scene.

welcome to my world bman

"hmmm. that's pretty tiny...it'll still work fine without THAT!"

lol
every shiny part on any mobo has it's duty
crappy luck on your part, I know I've been there as well
one of the shiny parts that I knocked off was from the hard drive 0_o but I used plastercine to hold it in place and it worked !

That sure sux.

I believe these shuttle mobo's are a bit more sensitive than others. I had 2, and a ak35. As with you, all the northbridge heatsink fans either stopped or got very noisy. I replaced the nb on one with a silent <a href="http://www.svc.com/zazmnobrhe.html">zalman</a>. It went ok so thought I'd replace the other. I removed the old one the same exact careful way, but that mobo would not boot again.

btw, the best way I've found is to first heat up the chipset/heatsink with a blowdryer. Then it comes off easily.

Using a shuttle an35n ultra for my main setup now and am skeered to replace the nb sink. :;

There was this guy that I was talkin' to a while back when the DFI Lan Party KT400A mobo first came out and when they installed it in a system they were going to sell off the floor as a display model, one of the transistors fell off...it just fell off. they plugged it in, turned it on and it ran like a beauty. I don't know what the transistor was for or anything but aparently not ALL transistors are tough cookies.