Ok so I bought a new heatsink and fan for my Athlon XP 2600 chip, because I was having cooling issues with the stock one after two years. I'm not overclocked at all. I pulled the old heatsink off, and I did actually pull the chip out of the socket for a second but then I put it back in, then installed the new heatsink. The heatsink fit fine, so I plugged the fan in, put everything back together, then turned the computer on.

After the startup memory test it tells me that the CPU has changed and sends me into the BIOS setup. I was like wtf. So I restarted the computer, the same thing happened, and it went back into setup. This time I just said what the hell and hit save changes. Then when it exited the thing reads Athlon 1250 or something. So I restarted the computer and went into the BIOS setup, then told it to switch to optimized defaults, but it still said I had an Athlon 1250. Everything loaded up fine though, and the computer is running way cooler. I'm using it right now.

So here are my questions:

1. Did I somehow fuck up the installation? I don't think I did anything wrong. I mean I removed the chip for a second but that's it. When I went into the BIOS setup it said the new fan was spinning just fine at around 4000rpm.

2. Did I buy the wrong heatsink/fan ? Here is exactly what I bought. http://www.interloper.com/products/product-details.php?productid=52410015&ca

3. Does it even matter if the BIOS thinks I have a slower chip? Is it going to degrade performance?

9/7/2005 1:58:57 PM

you might need to change (increase) the FSB speed

9/7/2005 2:06:17 PM

I was thinking that too, and in fact I went back into setup while you were posting and changed it. For some reason it had gone down to 100mhz. I set it to 166 and all is well. Thanks.

9/7/2005 2:16:48 PM