JasonTheMiller

Update: Now the pc “turns on” and by that I mean, the mobo lights, fans, case lights, and LED’s on the connected peripherals turn on, but the pc doesn’t output signal, tried different cables and monitors even though I know for certain the ones I have work fine, tried both with and without my gtx 1060, does not output any signal. So essentially the problem has overnight become that the pc turns on but does not boot

I’ve had some issues with my cpu & mobo recently. I found that I had some bent pins in my cpu socket on my last mobo, despite doing my best to align them, cpu wouldn’t start. I bought a new board, took my rig apart and redid the whole build, it booted up and worked perfectly for a day, the next day I started it up and began gaming and it randomly restarted, it began spam restarting itself. Anytime I’d turn it on, within the first second it would restart and would keep doing so. I was unable to get to bios or anything because it restarts so quickly. I’ve taken the build apart 5 more times just today and inspected anything and everything piece by piece for imperfections and have found nothing, it makes it even weirder that it was running perfectly the night before. I’ve also reset CMOS and stripped it down to the basics of mobo and CPU, and it still doesn’t boot. I’ve pulled out and reseated the cpu several times and have observed no noticeable damage to it. I’ve tested the power supply and it’s also in good shape. Not sure what’s causing my PC to spam reset. Any thoughts? CPU: i5 7600k MOBO: ASRock 270 SLI killer (was using MSI Z270 tomahawk before and was having similar issues)

Motherboard: MSI Z270 tomahawk CPU: Intel i5 6700k CPU Cooler: Cooler Master hyper 212 evo GPU: Asus ROG Strix GTX 1060 6gb Memory: 1x Corsair Vengance 16gb ddr4 I have the full details below, but the TLDR is I went to reapply thermal paste due to temperature issues I was noticing, noticed a nut fell out the back of cooler stand when reapplying thermal paste, applied too much thermal paste, ignored the nut(did remove it to not cause a short) booted pc and had it work fine, then it spam shut down and rebooted, took it completely apart and redid everything properly, noticed CPU would no longer boot, and MOBO ez debug light was indicating CPU issues, cant figure out why. So I was having issues with overheating for a while in my CPU on a one year old build. My GPU and all other items were perfect and stable, but my CPU fluctuated very heavily jumping between 40-80 degrees constantly, I cleaned out my PC with air, noticed the same problems so figured since everything else was fine and my pc was dust free, it must be the thermal paste, the PC operated fine as I ordered the thermal paste and waited a week for it to arrive, I gamed constantly during that period and it ran perfectly fine and didn’t have issues. The day the thermal paste arrived I took my cooler off, wiped the CPU and heat sinks with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs, as I had done before, then I noticed the nut in the back of the cooler stand had come off, I cleared it away from the MOBO so it wouldn’t cause a short, not wanting to disassemble the whole thing for what should be a very quick and simple maintenance, I ignored that there was a nut missing, especially since I was still able to tighten the heat sink fairly well to the MOBO and CPU. Now I want to add I did put too much thermal paste as well, definitely not to the point where it leaked into the socket, but it did get onto the edges of the lid and later on when I removed the heat sink from this particular application, I noticed the paste had scattered away from the center. My application was a fat line instead of a pea sized dot, which was a mistake. I brought it back to my room and hooked it up, it ran fine for a good 10 minutes, then it suddenly shut down and rebooted, it shut down and rebooted 2 more times before it would even load up the windows screen. Once it did load up, I opened the thermals to monitor the CPU temps, still having the fluctuation issue even with freshly applied thermal paste, so I shifted my attention to the one other thing it could be, the nut that I ignored, but at this point it was late in the night, so I didn’t want to disassemble at this hour, so I tried just hand checking to make sure everything was a tight fit and the heat sink was sitting properly on the CPU, it was a little crooked, so I realigned it and made sure everything was tightly fastened, CPU booted for 5 minutes I kept thermals monitored, the fluctuation issue was not resolved then it shut down and rebooted again, within the next 20 seconds it proceeded to continue shutting down and rebooting 4 more times before I quickly pulled out the cords to stop the power from running through it. I went to bed and took it the next morning to my workstation again, disassembled made sure the nuts were on properly, really put a lot of attention to detail, cleaned and reapplied the proper amount of thermal paste, and brought it back to my room. Case lights turned on, GPU lights turned on, MOBO lights turned on, all fans spinning, I was relieved then I realized I wasn’t getting signal on my monitor. I reinspect everything and realize the EZ Debug light from the MOBO is on, and it’s on the CPU section, meaning it’s not detecting a CPU or the CPU is failing to post. I shut it down again removed the cooler and CPU, took the CPU out of the socket for the first time and inspected it thoroughly with a magnifying glass, did not see anything in the socket, no thermal paste, bent sockets, hairs or any other object that could obstruct, checked the CPU and it appeared to be in perfect condition, reseated it properly, lining up the triangle, and still it would not post and the light remained on, I pulled it out, inspected, and reseated it 2 more times to no avail. It will not boot up, and I will not get signal to any monitor through any display, even after removing the GPU and focusing on receiving video display directly from the MOBO it failed, leaving me with no display to look at, and potentially a dead CPU. I did the battery reset and all that, I double and triple checked that all the CPU cables were connected where they needed to be, but nothing has worked, has my CPU fried, did I cause problems in my MOBO? It’s hard to tell since it won’t post and there’s no obvious signs on either the CPU or the MOBO that one is damaged, besides the CPU debug light being on, on my motherboard. I do not have any other rigs to test my equipment on. Does anyone have any idea what may have happened to my system? My suspicion is when I ignored the nut in the back I was unable to get a 100% properly situated heat sink sitting on the CPU and perhaps a microscopic lack of a contact point, caused the thermals to go crazy in the CPU overheating and frying it until it became unusable. I may be wrong though, this was my first build and I barely made it last year, and haven’t paid much attention to PC related stuff since then, so I’m not PC knowledgeable enough to know if that’s right, would really appreciate any insight.