Hey just a quick question to confirm my suspistion. We have a computer here, brand new, top of the line built from scratch. Originally the power supply died, we brought it back, got a loaner that was only 460 watts even though this computer has a core 2 duo CPU and a Nvidia 8800 XFX, the original PSU that was bought is 600W, So the original one died, we put in this loaner and it worked fine, for about 2 months. One day while using this really nice gaming machine it stopped working. Turned off completely. After that we were not able to power it back up at all. Assuming that the lowner PSU was dead we brought it back to Cbit who said they had the original ready to go.

We brought back the original, everything is plugged in fine, hit power and we get the internal case fan(The one connected to one of the standard power ports comming from the PSU) spining slower than it should be, and the CPU heatsink fan gittering. Nothing else powers up. Now aside from the main Motherboard power cable there is a CPU 1 4 port cable the connects to the motherboard which is normally connected. If we dissconnect this cable and hit power everything, all the fans, the CD drive, SATA HD and graphics card turn on, even the blue light in the PSU comes on that normally doesn't with that CPU 1 cable plugged in. The problem is that we get no POST, not video output and no beep codes even after trying a different speaker just to be sure.

At this point my guess is that the CPU is dead, visibly it looks fine, it's a new intel that has no pins so nothing can be bent but it doesn't seem to be working. Do you think that you would pin this issue on the CPU aswell? Unfortunately we do not have another CPU or Motherboard of the same kind to do any kind of troubleshooting.

-Justin Bonneville

It sounds like the CPU got fried, either static zapped or heat. However, if it's heat then the thermal diode in it should have saved it before any damage occurred.

You may want to take it out and inspect it. Make sure there's sufficient thermal paste between it and the heat sink (not too much or it will adversely affect it). Also, make sure the heat sink is clamped down correctly.

I had a system once that came with a copper "mask" that was supposed to protect the CPU frome being crushed by the heat sink, but I couldn't get the thing to work. I thought the mobo was bad so I bought a new one. Same problem so I removed the copper mask and it worked. Turns out the copper was doing it's job a little too well: the heat sink was prevented from actually making contact w/ the CPU so it immediately heated up on boot. Removing the copper and just being careful when I put the heat sink on made it work fine.

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Does this mean that you had the original PSU repaired? If this is so then I would point strongly at that.

If you have splashed out on such a high-end system, it doesn't deserve a bodged repair job on something as important as the PSU, imho.