Knowledge for the not-knowledgeable

[Mr.Twabfish]

I have a friend who tried to clean out his pre-built Dell inspiron (old pentium cpu, 6gigs ddr3, ect) and to my horror, he told me he had taken off the cpu fan to clean it, and did not reapply thermal paste, and turned it on. The PC will not show video now- did he fry the CPU, or is there a chance the Mobo has some sort of overheating safety mechanism? I can get you the mobo info if you need it.

 

Thanks for any replies.

[Orangeator]

Well, inspect the motherboard and see if there are any black spots. Also check the CPU and see if it is warped or damaged in any way. 

[Senzelian]

Even without thermal paste the CPU shouldn't overheat.
Not sure if there were any safety mechanisms on such old pentiums.

[DioOmicida]

My guess would be that the CPU was fried pretty quickly.
The transistors would be damaged so you many not see any sort of "burn" on the heat spreader, CPU, itself. 

[Mr.Twabfish]

1 minute ago, Orangeator said:

Well, inspect the motherboard and see if there are any black spots. Also check the CPU and see if it is warped or damaged in any way. 

Just a bunch of pretty Green PCB staring back at me. CPU seems fine (Visually).

[Orangeator]

1 minute ago, Mr.Twabfish said:

Just a bunch of pretty Green PCB staring back at me. CPU seems fine (Visually).

Okay, well from what I remember about Pentiums is that their motherboards (especially the cheap ones) did not have overheat precautions. I am sorry to say but it is more then likely the CPU/Socket got toasted. 

[Mr.Twabfish]

6 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Even without thermal paste the CPU shouldn't overheat.
Not sure if there were any safety mechanisms on such old pentiums.

He ran it for about 1 hour before it quit on him. would that make any difference?

[Senzelian]

Just now, Mr.Twabfish said:

He ran it for about 1 hour before it quit on him. would that make any difference?

Usually not.
Even without thermal paste it shouldn't run hotter than 80°C which is fine for a Pentium.

[Mr.Twabfish]

Well, in that case, I will tell him to get a little thermal paste, and try it out. Thanks for the help, all.