for testing if they are in working condition and how far they would be oc-able I used my only via-board that is left (after my mvp3g5 reached me doa and the dfi makes more trouble than fun using it), the shuttle hot 597.
the k6-3+450 works excellent and runs 600 at 2.05v.
the k6-3+500 did not make a peep at all. first I checked everything I could imagine, but nothing. so I pulled it out again, checked pins again, but again nothing. so I went back to the 450 model. nothing happened! did I short-circuited something while fiddling? I started to panic ...
then I did something more out convenience than because of reason. since the cooler I use has a very very tight fastener system which made every change of the cpu very time consuming and really took on my nerves because the case too leaves almost no room to move I decided not to apply the cooler as long as my system does not want to start at all.
and this made it happen, system went online as if nothing had ever happened. I was happy as you can imagine but surprised even more. so I mounted the cooler again and - nada. system dead. hell, what is going on!? I went back and forth multiple times, result was conistent: with cooler attached no go, without just ok.
I was very perplexed and then something came into my mind. what if the retention system puts that much pressure on the zif-socket that it twists it that much that some pin looses contact ....
I luckily found an old and rather small p1-cooler which hooks easily without any effort and voila - works!!
so the resume is that your system might just seems to be dead if you exchange cpus because the repeated applying of the cooler cracked the socket. to check whether this is the case just try to boot without cooler attached.
luckily that old and small cooler does its job fine, it still manages to allow the sytem to be run at 600 rock solidly.
