had to happen while i was away to the mcrae gathering

got a text from the missus to say she was playng a cd on the pc, it went bang, made a noise, then smoked filled the room, and now the pc wont switch on

picked up a new PSU today on the way home from work and had a look, new PSU in, still wont switch on, stripped the entire thing down to the bare bones, still nothing

removed the CPU chip (old xp2600 jobbie) and found heat marks underneath, had a rummage around in my box of old spares and found an XP2500 chip that i always had trouble overclocking for some reason (hence why i had fitted the xp2600 instead)

bish, bash, bosh, fitted it, and the old girl sprung into life

its now running 2.2ghz and is recognised by windows as a XP3200+ chip, plus it seams to be doing it with ease.

a lucky escape! i was all set in my head to rip it all out and fit a new dual core/quad core system, looks like the old thing still has another few years left in it

 

Nice save, but check your cooling

 

vantec tornado case fan modded to fit on the cooler is doing the "biz"



extreme but works well