Discussing cooler installation means talking about placing or fitting cooling systems effectively.
Discussing cooler installation means talking about placing or fitting cooling systems effectively.
I just placed a new bracket for my old NZXT Kraken M22 back into my system. I removed the previous one (Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black), cleaned the CPU paste, let it dry for about an hour, and then installed the new bracket. When I powered it on, the American Megatrends screen said no CPU fan was detected. That was easy—just connected it to cpu_opt. I swapped the fans and now my boot LED shows orange/yellow, which I think indicates DRAM. I haven’t touched the memory yet, but I’m guessing I might have misplaced something during cleaning. I still don’t see any post after trying all RAM setups, even though I remain convinced it’s not the problem. The fans are running at full speed continuously. It worked fine with the old cooler in place. I’m concerned that my CPU might have been damaged while cleaning the paste, despite my careful approach. Here are the details: CPU: Ryzen 5 3600, Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F, GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, Case: NZXT H500, Cooler: NZXT Kraken M22, RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB 2x8GB, OS: Windows 10 Home x64, BIOS updated within the last four months (can’t check now). Note: all case fans connect to an NZXT hub, but I’m not sure that’s the cause.