Do I have a faulty CPU?

[shiftlocked]

Its help a mate time. One of the poeple i built a rig for sent me this mail. Im not hot on this at all so....

"

I think I have a faulty CPU. I have tested my meory with Gold Mem, the graphics cards with 3DMark, the hard drives with Seatools and my copy of windows is all spot on.

Even on idle it seems that things just go awry but it benchies fine

If you could direct me to a program to test the CPU then I'd be grateful.

As for the problem suffice to say that the PC crashes any time inbetween just before the post to in the middle of an operation. I believe the error may only be on one core as it crashes more if I attempt to do two things at once. As I have said I cannot be certain about the location of the error as I have nothing to directly test the cpu itself.

"

Now my thinking is that it could be voltages? Ill get him to let me know what motherboard he did and such. If you go from a single core to a dual core do you have to re install windows?

 

[JN]

No reinstall of Windows is required, but it's good practice to perform a reinstall after changing items such as the motherboard (processor alone should be fine).

My initial thought is a problem with the motherboard or a BIOS configuration issue (voltages etc) as it is extremely rare for a CPU to be faulty.

Get some more info from the guy (system specs etc), and maybe something will become more apparent.

 

[browney]

You can go from a single to dual and a new mother/b and ram and you still won’t need to reinstall windows

(although i would do a clean install)

It sounds like he has been overclocking too much to me

Get him to send you some CPUz screenshots and run superPI

 

[Ty07allstar]

It sounds like he overclocked a little too much. Tell him to set the speeds back to stock and then tell you if it still crashes.

 

[shiftlocked]

System specs :

M/B Asus A8N SLI Premium

2x 75Gb Seagate 7200.8 SATA Drives

1x Corsair VS1GB400CL3 (I think that's the right model number)

2x Unbranded 512Mb CL3 T2 Modules

2x Asus EN7600GT

Windows XP Home / Windows XP x64 Pro (both installed a number of times [enough

to get friendly with the microsoft telephone staff ] )

" have returned the motherboard to the shop where I bought it from thinking

that it was the source of the problem. They tested it with the same CPU model as this one and with corsair memory and it worked fine. Now I've had it backit still does not work.

Seatools checks all the drives as fine and GoldMem has checked the memory as fine but Seatools repeatedly finds problems with the file structure despite the partition having been recreated repeatedly and reformatted both by windows setup and through norton partition magic.

I'm getting problems with generally installing and runnign things on this

computer. As Seatools and Gold Mem both run fine in DOS for ages that the

basic hardware functions are okay. The PC even runs most windows based stuff without too many crashes (it still does but way less). The main problems

seem to come in trying to instal programs and running things which demand

more punch from the system.

Basically I'm stuck. My motherboard is brand new as are the graphics cards.

I have tested and restested those components I can using 3DMark05 & 06, Gold Mem, SiS Sandra, SeaTools & Norton Systemworks. So far everything checks out but I was wondering if there was a DOS based utility or some program you could suggest to check this CPU."

Interesting response there from my mate Cant work out the common thread between the issues. That being said ive just woke up with a hangover that only god himself can cure.

 

[Ham]

norton partition magic.

Theres your problem.

 

[shiftlocked]

Cpuz creenie attached. Looks fairly stock to me but the voltage could do with being upped?

 

[FarFarAway]

No I think Rev F are 1.35v (or 1.4)- CPU-Z always reports a bit below the actual voltage

 

[shiftlocked]

Just tried to run the computer with only the Corsair in slot B1 (as specified in manual) but it seems to make no difference on the crashing.

the computer seems to crash more with more voltage but began to be stable again at 3.5V. Anyhow I installed BF2 it started first time. Set the graphics to supercool and it asked to restat the game. did so. Crashed. Has crashed about 4 times since with the last one ending in bsod reading:-

MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION

0x0000009C (0x0000004, 0x8054D5F0, 0xB2000000, 0x00070F0F)

 

[FarFarAway]

What the HELL is at 3.5v????

 

[JN]

What the HELL is at 3.5v????

Just what i was thinking

Thats high even for BH5 DDR

 

[NickS]

Not really

What kind of PSU are you running? Enermax noisetaker... what? I had a 420w that was good until I upgraded my video card to an X800GTO, and had 3 HDD's goin. I see you're running SLi, so I'm hoping you have the 485w +.

 

[JN]

Not really

Considering most motherboards draw vdimm from the +3.3v rail, 3.5v IS pretty high for any type of memory by all accounts.

Unless you are talking the NF4 where people tend to fry their BH5 at 4.0v.

 

[NickS]

Yeah.. good point .

I doubt he's put 3.5v through anything then, as most people wouldn't know what to do with that jumper.