EDIT: We decided not to pursue further diagnosis, because we wouldn’t know what the hell we’re doing anyway, and decided to start the RMA process instead. It might not even be the reason why the PC won’t turn on, but I’m not comfortable with putting that CPU back into his PC again. Once we get a replacement, we’ll see what happens. If it’s still busted, we’ll just take it to a local shop. Thank you everyone for your for your suggestions and insight, they are very much appreciated.
My friend called me to take a look at his PC that wouldn’t turn on. Upon inspecting his CPU, I noticed a silver bump at the bottom. I’ve never seen this. Can anyone tell me what it is?
Looks like a drop of solder fell on to it
Wow, that reply was super fast. That was my first thought, but my friend doesn't know how to solder and doesn't own a soldering iron. Is it possible it was like this from the factory?
Was it new or brought used? Either way probably not the best for it so maybe get your friend to return it (unless they lied and did it themselves, haha)
New. He bought it last summer in August, so it should still be under warranty. Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I've never seen this, so I kind of don't want to put it back in the motherboard for fear of causing further damage.
Wait so it had been running fine since August?
Yeah, that's the weird part. We were playing online without issue just a few weeks ago. His PC only died sometime last week.
That is sooo weird. Unless that thing shorted and heated up so much that it melted the solder, in this case I'm not sure there's any extra harm in putting it back in the socket. I usually wouldn't advise this but if it was gonna cause damage it's probably already done.
At this point I think there is a definite possibility that this solder blob has always been there and that we may be barking up the wrong tree.
Fair point. I'm probably not going to experiment too much. I was just curious about the silver blob, because I've never seen this before. If I can't find any obvious faults, I'll just advise my friend to take his PC to a repair shop or something.
Alright, well if you want you can let me know what actually happens when you push the power button. Any beeps, lights, fan spins, clicking, demonic apparitions, just completely dead, etc.
Sometimes just reseating everything is the fix too.
I chortled.
It's funny until you see faces in the blue smoke.
Then it's a PARRRRTAYYYYYY
Oh it definitely can be depending on your preferences.
POV the frickin' solder globbed again
Hmm I had something different in mind. More along the lines of getting freaky with demons but hey inhaling the magic blue smoke is 100% valid too. I'm down.
POV turns out the smoke demon was a succubus after all (nsfw)
🫣
That's very kind of you, thank you. I'm actually meeting with my friend again tomorrow. We'll try re-assembling everything and see what happens.
Awesome! Good luck!
Unfortunately nothing changed even after reassembling the PC. We're just going to take it to a local PC shop since they have more tools on hand to diagnose the problem. Thanks for your help, though!
Yeah figures. As another user mentioned, this could very well be the issue that Gamers Nexus exposed a while back. That CPU might still be under warranty. Hopefully the PC shop will be able to sort this out for you.
With a bit there the cooler probably isn't making good contact with the CPU, but if that was the case I wouldn't expect it to just die if it was working before. Though the higher heat may have caused permanent issues too, hard to say.
I have an all in one CPU liquid cooler that had a bracket on incorrectly but it still worked fine until I played with overclocking so that's all I base this comment on.