Since they share the same socket, you're looking at the same heatsink—so no need to stress there. Just drop a tiny grain of rice right in the center of the CPU and press the heatsink down. Of course, make sure you've wiped both the processor and the heatsink down with some isopropyl alcohol first, since it evaporates much faster than water. To be absolutely sure everything is seated properly, take a peek at the back of the motherboard to check if those four plastic clips are fully extended. If they are, you're good to go..
So, just to be clear—when you boot up the computer, are you getting absolutely nothing on the screen? Like, it’s just totally black the whole time? Does your monitor have both VGA and DVI ports, or just one? I ask because on my setup, if I manually set the input to VGA through the monitor's menu while I'm actually plugged in via DVI, I won't see anything at all. I have to manually switch it back to DVI so the monitor detects the signal and finally shows an image. Maybe give that a shot first.
Another possibility—and this might sound a bit technical—is that the PCI-e x16 slot isn't enabled in your BIOS settings. If that's disabled, it would prevent the graphics card from working entirely.
And a third thing to consider: you might have just received a faulty graphics card, or perhaps the adapter itself is a dud. 🤷 It's hard to say for sure without testing, though. If you can, maybe try swapping in a different card just to see if that changes things...
Either your hard drive is starting to fail, or you’ve got some nasty malware digging into your system. If things are looking as chaotic as you're describing—honestly, it might be easiest to just format the partition and start fresh—assuming, of course, you don't have any important docs, photos, or music sitting on there. Otherwise, you could try downloading a toolkit—maybe grab Malwarebytes, ComboFix, Hitman Pro, and AdwCleaner—and burn them onto a USB drive or even a blank CD. Then, boot up in Safe Mode, install those tools, and run a full scan to see if they can sniff out whatever junk is messing with your computer.
If you want us to actually be able to help you out, go ahead and drop your full system specs here. Also—just a quick question—are you plugging that DVI cable directly into the motherboard or into the graphics card (assuming you've got one installed)?
System Restore tends to eat up a ton of hard drive space if it's enabled—and it really all comes down to how much you've allocated for it. Once you've cleared out those old restore points, you can easily grab CCleaner to sweep up any leftover junk and free up some extra room.
Finally, here’s that highly anticipated GTX 960 everyone’s been asking about. (Just a heads-up for anyone who hasn't heard the news that it's hitting the shelves here in the States very soon)
Look, man, I’m just saying—it’s always better to have the cash ready before you start making big recommendations. Since you mentioned you’re getting some extra money coming in next week, that’s why I brought it up. It wouldn't make much sense to put a build together right now if you're going to be short on funds by next week, right? Nothing personal at all, just thinking out loud.
Yep. Once you pop that DVD into your computer, you’ll see a prompt along the lines of "press any key to start installation"—just hit Enter on your keyboard when that pops up, and the macOS setup process will kick in and get the ball rolling.
It’s a bit of a tricky situation here—since that socket 1150 motherboard you're using doesn't really play nice with Windows XP. I mean, there just aren't any drivers available for such an old operating system anymore. If you tried popping in an XP disc, you'd most likely run straight into a BSOD, and you wouldn't even get past the installation process. You'd basically have to manually integrate a ton of files into the installer just to get it to boot up. Like I said, it's a pretty complicated mess.
Do you happen to have a friend or maybe a neighbor nearby who has a Windows 7 DVD lying around?
I honestly don't get how they didn't mention at the shop—or the repair center, for that matter—that you'd have to handle the Windows installation yourself.
From what I can tell, you're working with a relatively new machine—even if you didn't specify the motherboard manufacturer or model, I can see from the processor that it's an LGA 1150 socket. Anyway, I don't want to make this more complicated than it needs to be, but you should be able to install Windows XP on that computer without having to mess with any custom modifications—like manually injecting those hard drive chipset drivers into the installation media—but it seems like you might be a bit out of your depth here. Honestly? The easiest path is just to grab Windows 7 or maybe Windows 8/8.1. Just find a friend or a neighbor who knows their way around a PC, offer them a beer, and you'll have the whole thing sorted out in no time.