Removing CPU help

[Lid]

My PC was made at the very end of 1998. It's a Pentium II 350 Mhz with 320 Mb RAM running Windows 98. The CMOS battery has been flat for a while and the PC has been misbehaving for over a year - mostly locking up on me.

 

Last night I finally opened the box to change the CMOS battery and saw that the CPU cooler fan looks burnt out. It has a brown mark on top where the bearing probably is and is really quite stiff to turn. In fact it seemed to be stuck at first, until I freed it. No doubt the cause of my intermittent problems.

 

The fan looks pretty easy to replace, but I need to remove the CPU assembly to do so. There doesn't appear to be a locking lever, so do I just pull it straight out of its slot? I don't want to knacker it.

 

Can I just go and find a faster Pentium chip and put that in it's place, or do I need to look up my motherboard specs?

[Paulg]

The old processor can be removed as you say by simply pulling it gently upwards. However, note that it's connection is a large number of small pins, bend one of them, and the processor is stuffed.

 

Re putting in a faster one, you'd be better searching the 'net for info on your specific model of PC. Some are able to take a processor upgrade, and some are not, due to power consumption, extra heat generation, and simply not compatible.

 

Paul

[chesters1]

you can refurbish the fan by removing the lable ,undernease should be a rubber plug ,remove this with a pin and the shaft should be seen .carefully with the pin gently pry out the very small "circlip" and washer ,remove the fan clean the shaft ,oil sparingly and reasemble after cleaning the fins with a new paintbrush ,do not use a hoover and make sure your pc is switched off at the wall but still plugged in and keep one hand on the metal of the case to stop static.

[Lid]

Thanks Chesters, I'll give that a go. The fan is sitting here on my desk as I was able to remove it relatively easily. As I couldn't find a replacement yesterday I reassembled the PC. It's not had a working CPU fan for about 18 months or more anyway!

 

Apparently I might get one in Maplins if I can't refurbish the old one.

 

As to vacuum cleaners, I always hoover out the inside of my PC as there's so much dust everywhere. Haven't had a problem yet!

 

[ 13. June 2004, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Lid ]

[chesters1]

quote:

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As to vacuum cleaners, I always hoover out the inside of my PC as there's so much dust everywhere. Haven't had a problem yet!

---

youve been very lucky ,its been found that the air going up the pipe can generate several hundred volts DC (very small current though) enought however to zap chips .to clean my very large tower case i take it outdoors and blast it with a leaf picker set on blow (suitably clean) it cleans it like new ,very good for defluffing most things and makes a great blast furnace in conjunction with a barby for melting lead

[Lid]

Can you help me test my fan when I've tried to refurbish it please?

 

There are three leads - white, red and black. Can I just connect a suitable DC voltage to the red and black to see if it's going? And what's the voltage too - is 12 or 5?

[chesters1]

it should say on the lable ,if not try 5 first

[Jem]

more than likely be 12v dc,red live, black negative, a word of warning though, set it at a low ampage as to many amps will damage it

[chesters1]

you cant hurt electronic equiptment providing high ampage the equiptment can only draw current that can damage it if its already damaged in which case its damaged anyway

IE a car battery can supply an ampage that will destroy every bit of wire (bar the main battery conections) in the vehicle and its ancillory equipment but only if their is a fault in the wiring itself ,otherwise it will happily draw just a few amps for its own use and purr on regardless ,restricting the ampage only makes the amoungt of damage less in a case of a short circuit in which case the the damage will only occur up to the minimum componant/wiring limit tolerance i.e either a wire/track will burn out or a componant will fail both acting as a fuse but unfortunatly rarely a definable value

ie if a track can sustain 2 amps surge then it will "open" at constant current less than that after a set time and effectivly shut off the current ,volts is the killer of electronics amps is the killer of humans

 

[ 13. June 2004, 11:31 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]

[Lid]

I found a whole slot 1 Pentium III CPU with two fans for £9.99 (buy it now) on e-bay. Mine's a PII 350 Mhz, this is a PIII 450 Mhz.

 

The only info I can find on my motherboard (here) says it should run a PIII? If I just slot in the new processor, will my motherboard reset everything needed automatically?

 

[ 14. June 2004, 12:21 AM: Message edited by: Lid ]