I got the CPU off of the heatsink. The hair dryer worked a treat. I just blasted the edges of the CPU where it met the heatsink for a few minutes, turning it to heat each side, and it eventually just fell off. Was surprised to find it was just thermal grease holding it on, but as its been like that since new it was quite solid and whoever built it used way too much thermal grease between the two. It was caked in it!

That's all cleaned up now and ready to be reinstalled onto the motherboard.

Quote Originally Posted by cicobuff View Post
How old is the PC? Would it be worth re-evaluation rather than troubleshooting? Or even time saved on trying to sort it out?

I mean if you are unsure that it is definitely the PSU....it could be a voltage issue with the mobo...the heatsink stuck to the CPU issue on top, how much time do you want to spend investigating? Time is your monetary loss as well as a pc repairer dont forget....

Depending on the clients computing needs, it may work out more cost effective with less labour intensive repairs to actually get another motherboard (with onboard graphics unless he is a gamer), CPU and PSU if diagnosis is proving troublesome, providing the exisiting RAM is compatible and hard disk, drives etc are ok.
It's a home computer used by a family with 3 children. They all use it for work, homework, internet, a bit of gaming etc...

It's not that new but it is fast enough for their needs. The spec is a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 with 768MB ram. (I upgraded it for them last year by adding a DVD-RW and an extra 512MB ram).

I know that the HD is ok, and the ram would be compatible with a similar spec system, so something newer such as the cheaper AMD64's still available.

My plan is to do the following.

Buy a new PSU and connect it up and test. If the system fires up and runs fine for a day then everything is good to go.

But if that doesn't work then I cam be quite sure the motherboard is the problem, and I have a couple of options I can give the owners to choose between.

I could source a new motherboard for them, outlining the problems this may still cause as I don't know for certain, although I'm pretty sure, the ram and CPU are both ok.

Or I could ditch the existing motherboard and CPU and install them a new motherboard and CPU into the existing case, using the existing ram, graphics and TV cards, optical drives etc...

As for cost, I'm not doing this for free so that's not a problem.