new system bootup woes

"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in message
news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact). Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)


Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Adam wrote:


The fans spin!!! :-)

purple +5.166V
green +4.321V (short PWR-GND with screwdriver) = +0.12V

That was with CPU and RAM (no video card) on cardboard.

Will install in Antec case and then install video card.

Thanks to ALL for your help.

See, it's magic :-)

Now, on with the testing.

Paul


Amazing magic is right.

Any good burn-in testing ideas? I read something about 200 hrs?

Adam wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Adam wrote:

The fans spin!!! :-)

purple +5.166V
green +4.321V (short PWR-GND with screwdriver) = +0.12V

That was with CPU and RAM (no video card) on cardboard.

Will install in Antec case and then install video card.

Thanks to ALL for your help.
See, it's magic :-)

Now, on with the testing.

Paul


Amazing magic is right.

Any good burn-in testing ideas? I read something about 200 hrs?

Burn in, is for weeding out infant mortality.

You want a stability test that functions as an
acceptance test. To determine whether all
the gear functions well together.

Memtest86+ from memtest.org, is a good test for
stuck-at faults on RAM. Those are bad RAM locations,
that won't store data properly, and always return the
same stuck bit value. I've had a DIMM, where an entire
chip died, and it was pretty comical to see a stream of
errors printed on the memtest screen.

The other one is Prime95 (torture test only), from
mersenne.org/freesoft. Versions available for Linux
and Windows. The OS portion of memory cannot be tested.
The stability aspect of this, is the generation of as
much electrical noise as possible, and the search for
transient errors as a result. Prime95 is multi-threaded,
and you can have a thread per core. You can manually
assign an amount of RAM for the threads as well. And
using Linux "top", you can check how much is being used.

Any where from four to eight hours of that, with none of
the test threads stopping on an error, is sufficient.
After that, it's "on with the show".

Sometimes, I add in a video game demo loop, while
Prime95 is running. But that seemed to be more
important during the AGP slot age of video cards.
I think the only 3D game I have here for Linux, is
the Linux port of Quake 3 Arena, that uses the map files
off the Quake CD. And Quake is one of the most light-weight
resource users, in terms of 3D. It's very economical,
and makes even low end video cards look heroic. Setting
up something like that would be optional, and likely a lot
of work for little benefit. That's always been a weakness
of my hardware testing, is I've never really been able
to give other people a simple recipe for video testing.
Sometimes, I end up fiddling with that stuff for a week
here, before giving up (on the notion of keeping it simple).

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Adam wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Adam wrote:

The fans spin!!! :-)

purple +5.166V
green +4.321V (short PWR-GND with screwdriver) = +0.12V

That was with CPU and RAM (no video card) on cardboard.

Will install in Antec case and then install video card.

Thanks to ALL for your help.
See, it's magic :-)

Now, on with the testing.

Paul


Amazing magic is right.

Any good burn-in testing ideas? I read something about 200 hrs?

Burn in, is for weeding out infant mortality.

You want a stability test that functions as an
acceptance test. To determine whether all
the gear functions well together.

Memtest86+ from memtest.org, is a good test for
stuck-at faults on RAM. Those are bad RAM locations,
that won't store data properly, and always return the
same stuck bit value. I've had a DIMM, where an entire
chip died, and it was pretty comical to see a stream of
errors printed on the memtest screen.


Thanks (Guru Paul) !!

Oh yeah, I remember seeing Memtest86+ on the GRUB boot menu.
Will definitely run Memtest86+.


The other one is Prime95 (torture test only), from
mersenne.org/freesoft. Versions available for Linux
and Windows. The OS portion of memory cannot be tested.
The stability aspect of this, is the generation of as
much electrical noise as possible, and the search for
transient errors as a result. Prime95 is multi-threaded,
and you can have a thread per core. You can manually
assign an amount of RAM for the threads as well. And
using Linux "top", you can check how much is being used.

Any where from four to eight hours of that, with none of
the test threads stopping on an error, is sufficient.
After that, it's "on with the show".


Prime95 is new to me. Will have to try it out.


Sometimes, I add in a video game demo loop, while
Prime95 is running. But that seemed to be more
important during the AGP slot age of video cards.
I think the only 3D game I have here for Linux, is
the Linux port of Quake 3 Arena, that uses the map files
off the Quake CD. And Quake is one of the most light-weight
resource users, in terms of 3D. It's very economical,
and makes even low end video cards look heroic. Setting
up something like that would be optional, and likely a lot
of work for little benefit. That's always been a weakness
of my hardware testing, is I've never really been able
to give other people a simple recipe for video testing.
Sometimes, I end up fiddling with that stuff for a week
here, before giving up (on the notion of keeping it simple).

Paul

I don't do much gaming so not sure about
the video game demo loop (in parallel with Prime95) yet.

On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]

Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"

Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]


Something to be said for the newer packages by Intel with "bumps" not
pins. No more anguished moan when a bent pin becomes a missing pin on a
not-too-cheap CPU.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]


Something to be said for the newer packages by Intel with "bumps" not
pins. No more anguished moan when a bent pin becomes a missing pin on a
not-too-cheap CPU.

Both schemes have their pluses and minuses.

For the pin and ZIF socket case, you can use a ball point pen
refill (the old kind with the metal tube), and slide that over
the pin to use as a lever, to straighten it out. You don't
need to use needle nose pliers to fix one. If a pin gets bent
over to a 90 degree angle, chances are it's toast when
straightened up.

The ZIF sockets have pretty good properties. I've not heard of
electrical issues with them. They can withstand the odd "pull-out"
accident. They can be completely destroyed if you put your
muscles into it (the top will pop off).

The Land Grid Array concept, the socket is the weak link.
When I bought my last motherboard from a local retailer,
I couldn't leave the store with the purchase, until we
went over to their support desk. And had a "socket check"
before leaving the store. That's a visual inspection for
damage to the socket, so later you cannot bring the
motherboard back and complain the product shipped with
a damaged socket. But that does indeed happen - products
do leave the factory with crushed spring contacts in
the socket. The evidence suggests the motherboard got
damaged at the factory, just before being put into the box.

LGA sockets vary in quality. There was an incident recorded on
Anandtech, where socket springs seemed to be making poor
contact, which was detected later on when overclocking and
the other contacts would overheat. I've never heard of
a ZIF socket quality problem, so perhaps they're a bit
easier to make. The springs in an LGA are pretty brittle.
The spring in the socket "bites" into the land pad on
the other side. You can see a mark on the CPU, once it's
been inserted into the socket. I don't know how many
cycles such a scheme could take. I haven't been pulling
CPUs out of LGA motherboards here all that often,
to discover what the limit might be.

Maybe the LGA scheme can be built to higher contact
counts, than a ZIF can. The very largest LGA has
such a high contact force (due to the number of
springs times the force per spring), that it uses
two levers to close the lid. Whereas the same degree
of force isn't as evident when closing a ZIF lever.

If you had a motherboard with a ZIF socket on it,
it wouldn't need a "socket check" just after you
bought it at the computer store. It takes deliberate
tampering to mess one up.

Paul

"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in message
news:20141229082540.79a7786c@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]

Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"

Lesson learned ... always pull that heatsink "straight" up (with "both"
steady hands)!!

"Adam" wrote in message
...

"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in message
news:20141229082540.79a7786c@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]

Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"

Lesson learned ... always pull that heatsink "straight" up (with "both"
steady even hands)!!


And, always look at the copper before putting it down. :-)

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:17:42 -0800
"Adam" wrote:


"Cybe R. Wizard" wrote in
message news:20141228195425.00728075@wizardstower...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:10:32 -0800
"Adam" wrote:

Luckily, all the pins still look perfect (straight and intact).
Whew!

Good to hear!


Thanks, I was surprised that the pins were still okay.

Actually, I was shocked to find the CPU stuck to the heatsink.
Good thing I didn't put the heatsink down. :-)

I recently had the same problem (CPU held the heat sink) and got that
bent pin because of it. New PC helped a lot! ;-]


Something to be said for the newer packages by Intel with "bumps" not
pins. No more anguished moan when a bent pin becomes a missing pin on a
not-too-cheap CPU.

Both schemes have their pluses and minuses.

For the pin and ZIF socket case, you can use a ball point pen
refill (the old kind with the metal tube), and slide that over
the pin to use as a lever, to straighten it out. You don't
need to use needle nose pliers to fix one. If a pin gets bent
over to a 90 degree angle, chances are it's toast when
straightened up.


For the ball point pen refill, which ones (make, model,
fine or medium?, etc.) are best? URL?


The ZIF sockets have pretty good properties. I've not heard of
electrical issues with them. They can withstand the odd "pull-out"
accident. They can be completely destroyed if you put your
muscles into it (the top will pop off).

The Land Grid Array concept, the socket is the weak link.
When I bought my last motherboard from a local retailer,
I couldn't leave the store with the purchase, until we
went over to their support desk. And had a "socket check"
before leaving the store. That's a visual inspection for
damage to the socket, so later you cannot bring the
motherboard back and complain the product shipped with
a damaged socket. But that does indeed happen - products
do leave the factory with crushed spring contacts in
the socket. The evidence suggests the motherboard got
damaged at the factory, just before being put into the box.

LGA sockets vary in quality. There was an incident recorded on
Anandtech, where socket springs seemed to be making poor
contact, which was detected later on when overclocking and
the other contacts would overheat. I've never heard of
a ZIF socket quality problem, so perhaps they're a bit
easier to make. The springs in an LGA are pretty brittle.
The spring in the socket "bites" into the land pad on
the other side. You can see a mark on the CPU, once it's
been inserted into the socket. I don't know how many
cycles such a scheme could take. I haven't been pulling
CPUs out of LGA motherboards here all that often,
to discover what the limit might be.

Maybe the LGA scheme can be built to higher contact
counts, than a ZIF can. The very largest LGA has
such a high contact force (due to the number of
springs times the force per spring), that it uses
two levers to close the lid. Whereas the same degree
of force isn't as evident when closing a ZIF lever.

If you had a motherboard with a ZIF socket on it,
it wouldn't need a "socket check" just after you
bought it at the computer store. It takes deliberate
tampering to mess one up.

Paul

In that case, I think I prefer the "pin and ZIF socket case" myself.
It just takes a little more delicate cautious handling.
Even a newbie like me can handle CPU reinstallation now.

When the pins are straight, the CPU naturally "falls" into
the ZIF socket when properly aligned/positioned.