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[RMA] What is this lump on my friend's CPU?
(lemmy.ml)
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?
Last year GamersNexus covered something similar. Can't remember the exact video, but I think it was in the series of videos this one comes from https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fFNi3YNJXbY&t=0s.
Can't remember all the details, but (I think) something was causing a part of the die (I guess not near a temp sensor) to heat up way out of spec, enough to litterally melt the solder on the CPU, and have it drain out.
CPU is likely dead, and certainly not to be trusted. Is it an Asus or gigabyte motherboard? Potentially it's one that's affected and hasn't had the bios update that fixes the issue applied
That's super useful information, much appreciated. MSI motherboard actually. I'll ask my friend when he last updated the BIOS, if at all.
I would suggest not trying to use it anymore though, and just go straight to the RMA process for wherever they were purchased. Or maybe post on the GN discord to see what they say (annoyingly they don't have forums or anything, just a discord and subreddit).
If this is just something that's come from somewhere else, you don't know where else this mysterious metal may have gone, and there's a potential fire risk on your hands at worst, or a mobo that could fry any cpus (or memory, etc) plugged in.
If it's indeed the issue talked about by GN, it's dead, and if it's not completely dead, it's actively dying in an irreversible way.
If it's some other, new issue, I still can't imagine plugging it back in will make anything better.