PCA Forums

Looking at a co-workers Compaq presario 6000 here. He told me one day it just plain would not start.. just a breif glow of the front power light and woulds fade out, and later nothing at all.
I told him I'd take a quick look at it and if I find absolutley nothing else obviously wrong, we can probrably blame the PS and get one somewhere. (cant use my spare atx dang propriatary crap)

I does like he says..nothing. There is a green light on the back of the PS that will light up and glow when you power it up until you hit the start switch. Goes out and the cooling fan twitches.. It will not light back up until you remove power for a least 5 sec. The front power light does nothing.

Well I did find somthing else..

A heatsink/fan clamp was laying at the bottom of the case (looks like a two finger claw with a cam lever on top to force things tight.. all plastic. botton and top half with the HS sandwitched between). The one intact wasn't holding much more. It basically fell offwhen I moved it around!! That was the bottom one! Soo I figure this thing has ran awhile with the HS/fan leaning twords gravity. Saw evidence of that too. The top of the LOWER piece of plasic (of a case that sitting upright) was very shiny and warped.. Thats heat coming straight UP off the core!
But why did this happen? I looked closely at the HS/fan combo at the TOP and found a deep dent where the cam forces the works down, not cracked like blow, but yep heat damage. Looks a slightly dirty fan couldnt remove heat fast enough and the tiny foot of the cam just sunk in leading to all this.
What a crappy set up IMHO!!

OOh back to my question! I see nothing wrong on the face of the proccesor. I've never fried a P4 CPU and would not know if thay even leave a burn mark on that siver plate and I'm thinking It may have survived this.

I have givin the PSU a chance buy unplugging anything unnesesscary to get a post beep and nothing avial inclucding even the proccessor removed.
Not sure how to start this PSU without it being plugged into to mobo as it has a square four pin "what the hell is that" connector from to mobo the PSU.
It has the normal start momentary stwich for the front to normal small pins on the mo ... but dissconnnecting all the Ps to MOBO connections of couse it wount start.
(I was thinking serious MOBO short dragging it down?)

Bleh,, with no parts and no spare "special CompacQ PS's I''m going to tell him to bring it in.. LoL My qiuck look at it turned out to be very interestring..

Anyony else seen crappy melting of HS/fan combo's? Make E'm big but don't suporrt E'm.. Nice!!

cmos may be fried

never cooked off a p4 either...depending on how old it is itmay have thermal throtting that will shut it down if it overheats - possible that it is heating up at post and shutting down....melted clip sure is suspicious though...I assume it is out of warranty so the nice tech won't come and fix it....if you could switch out the ps and try to power it up with the heatsink clamped on somehow....seems to me that directron used to sell compaq p/s for cheap...are you sure the pin out on the compaq ps atx connector is different? the four pin is standard for the cpu...not sure if a regular ps/tester would work if you can't plug in the 4 pin....if you can post some specs on the psu I can check at the fixit place next door to my office - he has the biggest pile of junk I hace ever seen there and works a lot on older compaqs, etc.


good luck!

A P4 should auto throttle if it overheats. Depends on the mobo, but they should all do it.

There won't be any obvious burn marks. The heat sink paste or pad might be dry and brittle.

Modern CPUs are actually pretty hard to kill - there's a lot of overheat protection. I thin kit's more likely his mobo died.

checked with the fix-it guy on the ps issue - he says with compaqs the only way to tell is to compare the pin outs with a standard atx visually - some are proprietary and some are not -

I does like he says..nothing. There is a green light on the back of the PS that will light up and glow when you power it up until you hit the start switch. Goes out and the cooling fan twitches.. It will not light back up until you remove power for a least 5 sec. The front power light does nothing.

'nother vote for bad power supply or mobo. My bet is on the power supply. I've had more than a few drop dead like this.

As FP said, CPUs are pretty hard to kill. Even if it were dead, the system would power up but not boot.

Not sure how to start this PSU without it being plugged into to mobo as it has a square four pin "what the hell is that" connector from to mobo the PSU.

That's the "12V" Connector which is a requirement for Pentium 4 systems. It feeds the CPUs voltage regulator.

I brought it back today and showed the guy what has happened and that I didn't feel to good about odering a PS not knowing for sure that it.
So happens that Jim our guru up front had one! Hooked it up and guess what? Nothing.. Same little
twitch of the ps fan. Yup deffently a short somewhere on the mobo. We never did think of removing the cmos though. Hmm.. oh well to late now. He's decieded hes going to just buy a new one and salvage was he can from that one (drives, cards etc) He has the money but not the wifes aproval yet.. LOL..
Hey thanks for your help guys!

I was thinking motherboard as well, I have had a similar issue before after a power surge (I am not sure exactly how much of a surge lightning gives )