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I'm having trouble getting my computer to boot up. Would appreciate any help. Is my motherboard fried?

The problem:
Computer won't boot, won't go to POST. No beeps. Power button light does not light up. PSU fan, CPU fan, case fan all spin. Hard drives spin up.

Motherboard:
Acer G43T-AM

What happened:
I removed the passive heatsink on top of the north bridge, wiped off the old thermal compound with 70% isopropyl alcohol and a cotton pad, and reapplied new thermal compound (Artic Silver 5) on the north bridge, re-installed passive heatsink.

What I tried:
I've checked all the wires - nothing loose I tried removing the heatsink and booting without it - no difference I tried waiting several hours before booting again - still no beep, doesn't power up fully Resetting CMOS - nothing

Background:
Last summer I bought a Gateway DX4822-01 and everything ran perfectly until this summer when it started overheating. I did all the basics - clean the dust off the fans, re-appled thermal compound to the CPU, added a new case fan - but the damn thing would still shut itself off randomly. I was busy, so I kept the case open and used an external fan to blow at it while running and it run smoothly for hours with no problem. Today I had some free time so I decided to re-investigate the issue and discovered the north bridge running very hot whenever the computer was on. So I decided to clean and re-apply the thermal compound on the north bridge in an attempt to make it run cooler. Everything else was working fine before (as long as the external fan was blowing).

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  • How much AS5 did you apply? If it squeezed out and made contact with the north bridge connections to the motherboard, that is your problem, use non conductive thermal compound.
    – Moab
    Aug 18, 2011 at 1:26
  • Does the power supply itself work? Try to manually start it, here is an example for ATX.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Aug 18, 2011 at 1:32
  • Tom, he says the fans spin, so the PS is basically working (though maybe not firing on all cylinders).
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Aug 18, 2011 at 1:38
  • @DanH: Hmm, seems I read a bit too fast. Then the next step could be a power meter, although your answer is very likely to be the cause...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Aug 18, 2011 at 2:49

3 Answers 3

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It has nothing to do with the heatsink per se (though running the system without the heat sink installed may have caused further damage).

Most likely while poking around inside the box you did something, however. You may have disturbed an already-loose connection or knocked something loose. You may have dropped something (a screw, eg) into the box and shorted something.

It's also possible, of course, that whatever component was failing intermittently decided to fail hard.

[Though as Moab points out, the Arctic Silver is "sort of" conductive and could muck things up if dropped on the circuit board. Better to use non-conductive heat sink compound.]

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  • My guess is static electricity.
    – surfasb
    Aug 18, 2011 at 5:31
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    Normally, static wouldn't be a serious hazard if the chip itself is not removed from its socket. Plus, if it's summer where the OP is then likely humidity is up substantially and static is less of a problem generally.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Aug 18, 2011 at 11:23
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I had a similar issue, and it turned out to be that the BIOS on the motherboard wasn't up-to-date enough for my CPU to work with, so I put an older model CPU in, did an update on the BIOS of the motherboard, and put the newer cpu back in. It all worked fine.

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I have similar issue, the only workaround I found is lifting the Heatsink to heat up the North bridge for about 10 to 20 seconds and then hit Restart Button. If it doesn't boot even then I turn off the main and turn it back on and start the process again.

The only way to make it boot successfully ( for me at least) was to wait 12 seconds and then hit restart and never before it 12 seconds.

What happens is the Northbridge chip starts to heat up rapidly till whatever that is causing the short or error loses its electrical input causing the heated northbridge to detect a reboot command and start normally.

I recommend to apply the paste again and make sure that your PC is grounded properly. If not, then that might be the cause of the short. (Which is the case for me, my house have bad grounding.)

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