Processor overheated

I had a Athlon XP 2400+ in a computer that I've had for about 7 years and I downloaded a hardware monitor and noticed that the processor was running at about 60 degrees celsius so I took off the processor fan to clean it and the heatsink off and when I turned the computer back on, the processor was running at about 68 degrees celsius. Then I bought some thermal paste and cleaned off the old and applied the new and then when I turned it back on it was about 90 degrees celsius and now its dead. After that I took it to the local computer shop and they told me I had the heatsink seated correctly and I used instructions so I applied the correct amount of thermal paste. Do you think applying too much pressure to the heatsink could have caused this too happen?

 

Well if you apply too much pressure to open CPU's that is CPU's without a heatspreader such as the older XP series you can damage the CPU,the most common problem is a chipped corner when too much pressure on one corner has snapped or crushed it.

You do have to be careful with older CPU's due to them being open and having much less thermal and voltage overload protection,modern CPU's are very robust in comparison they will shut down way before any damage is done.

At a guess I would say you've installed the heatsink improperly meaning the heatsink wasn't absorbing the heat from the CPU,as simple as that.

It would be highly unlikely in my humble opinion that you physically damaged the CPU with pressure just enough to cause it to overheat but not enough to stop it from booting and taking temp reading.

Welcome to the forum

 

It was a pain getting the heatsink off and I did have to apply some pressure to get it off but not any more than was necessary. When I was cleaning the processor off I did notice there was a very small part chipped off at the side but it wasn't at a corner of the processor chip and the guy at the computer shop told me I installed the heatsink correctly. Do you think that small chip could have caused it? Also, I used the BIOS to find out what the temperature was, it didn't boot in to Windows. Once I saw the temperature was at 90 degrees I turned it off.

 

May well of,if the small chip got underneath the CPU and heatsink it would stop thermal contact between the CPU and heatsink.

If it were a part of the motherboard or CPU that has become damaged during the the heatsink re-install that could have also caused it to overheat,without visually examining the chip and/or the CPU and surrounding infrastructure it would be impossible for us to say what it was or what it did,we'd just be guessing.