Black screen of death :( Help!

TVeblen said:

If we look at post #1 we can see that pushkar mentioned some corrosion/residue on the pins on the processor. He mentioned that this could be wiped clean (one pin at a time).
Normal chemical reaction corrosion will form a lumpy coating on metal parts. A sticky residue makes me wonder if it could be a case of excessive thermal compound that got into the socket?

The fact that the black screen occurs under any type of processor load points to a bad CPU (or motherboard-socket). My problem with that is that a CPU error will normally end with a shutdown or restart, not just the loss of video. There seems to be a missing piece to this puzzle.

Just thinking out loud.....

I think I missed that in post #1 and I should have caught it. Excessive thermal compound on the processor would account for many issues for it would most likely be in the socket as well. If somehow the pins and socket being effected were related to video processing (think i-series intel) it could explain a lot. I will have to take a closer look at the Amd X6 Phenom II 1090BE architecture to know if that is even possible.

TVeblen said:

Yes - video on chip
Specs here:
AMD Processors for Desktops: AMD Phenom?, AMD Athlon? FX, AMD Athlon? X2 Dual-Core, AMD Athlon?, and AMD Sempron? Processor
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - HDT90ZFBK6DGR / HDT90ZFBGRBOX

Thank you Sir for that. I was out at the American Legion for Officer Installation and just got back.

I wonder if alcohol and a pipe cleaner would be gentle enough to pull all of the paste off the processor pins? I know the socket can be cleaned with alcohol and a extra soft toothbrush and a can of air.

Not a pipe cleaner, they have a metal core, a normal cotton swab is best.

The Phenom X6 has no embedded video but may be one on the board. AMD chips with video are APUs and use the FMx series sockets.

Britton30 said:

Not a pipe cleaner, they have a metal core, a normal cotton swab is best.

The Phenom X6 has no embedded video but may be one on the board. AMD chips with video are APUs and use the FMx series sockets.

Sorry bout that Britton. The Pipe Cleaners I get from my local smoke shop have plastic cores and long softer bristles so as not to scratch the seasoning out of a pipe and I forgot that many places are still selling and using the metal core ones. I don't like using cotton swabs as they tend to leave strands behind. Maybe soaking a toothpick in alcohol would work. Especially if the end is squashed/chewed (before dipping in alcohol of course).

I looked at the specs and I did not see vid onboard but it does state it support 3dnow so in might still be debris on the chip pins and socket. At this point I think everything else has been mentioned / tested.

His board should have an onboard ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphics chip.
ASUS M4A88T-M AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

I haven't used pipe cleaners for a few decades, didn't know they were plastic now.
I also would suspect bent pins, it takes a very miniscule bend to trash a CPU, been there, done that.

My 2cents again I use a piece of old but straight credit card (about the length of the line of pins) to line up the pins and if possible like my slot cleaning have a piece of lint free cloth over the edge of it and VERY GENTLY move the piece of card along the direction of the pins to straighten them and clean at the same time.

Now as we know the pins are usually gold plated and as far as I am aware gold doesn't tarnish or get corroded the only substance I know that will attack gold is a solution of nitric and hydrochloric acid - Aqua Regia Aqua regia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I would suggest the "coating" on the pins is old compound that has baked on hard and my other thought is has some compound somehow got into the pin holes in the socket - now that would be a real nut breaker eh?

As Gary pointed outtoo there are a lot of caps all over the board and some are under the cooler of the CPU and can be very small - have they been checked.

I thought too the 5v rail was a tad low but not enough to trigger the Power_Good pin on the 24 pin socket but may be causing a problem somewhere else.