HELP! I'm in quite a dilemma.
Okay, about two weeks ago, I built up my system with the following new stuff:
P5N-E SLI
E6400
2 Gigs Corsiar XMS2 Dominator PC6400 (Yes, yes, I know, they're "allegedly" bad sticks. I wish I had known that two weeks ago)
Antec P180 Case + Antec Power Supply
eVGA 7950GT (nVidia)
Scythe Ninja
Arctic Silver 5
I carried over my hard drives, dvd-rom, etc.
My initial build of my system went much better than I thought. Sure, cable management in the P180 was a surprising pain in the butt to get used to, but I was able to get everything situated. However, I could *not* attach a fan to the Ninja because the P5N's standard north bridge heat sink was too big and got in the way. No big deal, however.
I started up my system, the BIOS posted like a peach, and I was able to get Windows reinstalled without a hitch. I figured that since I had a passive heatsink on the CPU at the moment that I wouldn't overclock. On top of that, I was able to time my memory to 4-4-4-12 2T just like the specs on the memory said I could. I also set the memory voltage to 2.08v Everything, so far was hunky dory!
But, of course, I wanted to overclock. After reading this thread, I decided to purchase a couple of more items - a Zalman heatsink for the south bridge, a Thermalright HR-05 for the North bridge, and some MX-1 to try as the thermal compound instead of my Arctic Silver 5. Everything arrived this past week.
Fast forward to yesterday, when everything went to hell during the "surgery." I was able to get the Zalman on the SB without much of a hitch. But getting the stock heatsink off the NB was a horrible ordeal. The biggest problem was the stock thermal compound on the North Bridge itself. I was able to get about two thirds of it off with isopropyl alcohol, but the last third seemed to be stuck, as if it were cement. Alcohol couldn't *touch* that stuff.
Being impatient, I did an (admitedly) stupid thing and used a jeweler's screwdriver to carefully chip the rest of the compound off of the NB. After getting everything off and cleaned up, I put some MX-1 on the heatsink and mounted the HR-05. The mount itself was relatively easy. I also cleaned the AS5 (no problem) off the E6400/Ninja and replaced it with MX-1 - basically reseating the heatk
I turn on the computer, and everything posts. Unfortunately, I got the following error:
<b>WARNING! CPU Has Changed. Please re-enter the CPU settings in the CMOS setup and remember to save before quit.</b>
Of course, I didn't really change *anything* on the CPU, so I found this to be a most unwelcome message. After entering the BIOS, I noticed that all of my settings were reset. Okay, no big deal - I just set them back, including my memory back to 4-4-4-12 2T@2.08v. Besides that small change, I did NO overclocking at all.
No dice. I got the same "CPU has Changed" error after (again) saving my BIOS. During that second boot up, I noticed also that my memory timings were set to something like 5-5-5-31 1T on the post screen. Huh? After pressing F1 to clear the CPU error, I was able to get into Windows just fine. I didn't run any tests (no memtest, etc.), but I opened up CPUz and noticed that my memory was clocked just like it said previously on the post screen (5-5-5-31 1T) instead of how I set it in the BIOS.
Disgruntled, I made some further changes, reset the BIOS back to default, etc. I tried everything short of resetting my CMOS. Nothing. I still got the "CPU has changed" error as well as the problems with the memory timing. Windows appeared to be fine, but I still didn't want to take any chances if I was going to overclock.
So, I downloaded the BIOS onto a memory stick and used the built-in BIOS utility (Ctrl-Alt-F2) to flash the BIOS to 401.
After the flash was complete, I rebooted. NOW after I reboot, I have *nothing* but one big, major problem; the only things that appear on the post screen are the first two lines. Unfortunately, I'm at work so I can't tell exactly you what those two lines are. But on top of that, everything else seems to be completely unresponsive. The keyboard isn't recognized, so I can't get into the BIOS at all. Basically, I'm at a standstill.
One thing that I HAVEN'T done yet is reset the CMOS, which I will do when I get home, but I have a sneaky suspicion that doing so won't fix my problem. My problem could be a number of things:
1. Bad northbridge due to "unsafely" cleaning up the crusted-over thermal paste from the stock heatsink.
2. Bad CPU. I don't know how it could be bad, but the 202 BIOS said that it had "changed"
3. Bad memory. The timings post-heatsink change were different in CPUz than what I set them to in the BIOS
Anybody got any ideas?