Well, i've broken *something*, quite what it is i do not know.
its taken me a while as i decided to overhaul my watercooling and slap a Danger Den A8N-SLi Chipset cooler on as well since my chipset fan died shortly after i got it, but i got it all working yesterday after running the loop for nearly 2 days pretty much just to get all the air out, there were no leakages (UV light and reactive dye tested (becouse i can)) but it crashed a couple of minutes later and now it wont boot.
It doesnt make any beeps, the monitor light doesnt even flash green, that made me think graphics card, but i tried switching them over to no effect. so i'm pretty sure my Alienware warrenty is out (it was a present, hence the butchery), but i dont see what the point of it was in the first place after seeing their workmanship, only half the IHS had TIM on it, the power supply was overloaded by 15watts, auxillary PCI-E power cable had nearly worn through against a sharp edge and there was no airflow for the harddrives whatsoever
anyway, de-shimming an FX-55 is easy, just get an old school thin double sided razor blade and plit it lengthways in two, then break off the end bit of metal thats not sharp so you have a flat end, stick it in the gap on one edge of the cpu by about 1/4" and run it around the edge as close to the Integrated Heat Spreader (metal bit) as you can and once you are all the way round twist it a little way back and forth to free it from the thermal interface material, pretty much whats in TerraMex link now its decided to load after i typed all that out bah.
anyway, merry x-mas all. heres a tip, dont get drunk and phuck with your computer at 3 in the morning, its never a good thing.