Is this Athlon XP burnt?

[alta]

I received this AXDA2800DKV4D Barton core Athlon XP installed in an AU31 motherboard. The heatsink looks adequate for the cpu, but a generic thermal pad was used.

The board didn't boot. I removed the cpu and it appears to have discoloration around 3/4 of the main chip. Is it probably smoked? I read in the archives that this cpu can produce significant heat.

Second question, are these AU31 boards junk? and should I install a different cpu, or just scrap the board? I have a few of these AU31's. thanks

[alta]

Does the (darker) discoloration mean heat damage? Several of my Athlon's have it.

[CPUShack]

looks fine to me, the darker portion above the die in your pic is just the glue that bonds the die to the substrate

[Tetrium]

I don't like the way those 2 x 5 rectangular resistors look though, with that 'area' around them. The black spacer thingies might indicate the cpu has run hot in the past.
But I agree with cpushack, the glue looks pretty normal to me, and the die is not cracked.

Just fyi, I'm not an expert at these things

[Chiefish]

The black spacer thingys are exactly that, just spacers so that when you tighten down the heatsink you dont crack the die. Has nothing to do with how hot or cool it runs.

[Neon]

The cpu in the photo looks normal.

A socket A chip with organic packaging that overheats may have a scorch mark on the reverse side, directly below the die. So you can look for discoloration there.

The FIC AU31 boards were not liked by enthusiasts because they offered no overclocking features in BIOS. However, FIC makes solid boards, and the nForce 2 chipset had the best performance for socket A.

[alta]

Thanks everyone, for the info.

In your (anyone's) experience, does it affect the cpu's integrity when a motherboard has been running with bad capacitors (eventually to the point of failure)?

[CPUShack]

it can damage the CPU, but the one way to be sure is to try it in a new working board.