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?

  • keyz@lemmy.world
    1·
    7 months ago

    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

    • onlooker@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      7 months ago

      That’s super useful information, much appreciated. MSI motherboard actually. I’ll ask my friend when he last updated the BIOS, if at all.

    • Lojcs@lemm.ee
      0·
      7 months ago

      That’s not it. Even if the overheating melted something in there, it wouldn’t just ooze out to some spot and form a neat blob without a trace.

      • keyz@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 months ago

        The photo is almost identical to one shown in one of the GN videos. Gonna be a bad internet denizen today though and ask that you take my word, because I really can’t be arsed to try to look up specific videos and times.

        If you don’t take my word, thats completely understandable, but as I said, cannot be arsed with looking it up, so I’ll just accept that you don’t believe me.

    • onlooker@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      7 months ago

      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?

      • Extras@lemmy.today
        1·
        7 months ago

        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)