Question An Unusual Troubleshooting - Intel i5 4460

[prabhav17]

This might be a little long, but it's technically interesting and challenging for those interested.

So I had been using the intel i5 4460 with a Asrock Z87M Pro4 motherboard for a little over 3 years, when out of the blue the display output went blank. On troubleshooting I got it down to a dead motherboard, so I promptly searched around my area for an LGA 1150 board which would fit my needs and settled on an H97 chipset board from Gigabyte, the GA-H97-D3H to be exact.

On installing my CPU in the new gigabyte motherboard, there was no boot, no post code via the speaker. After power on the fans would spin for like 3~5 seconds and then stop momentarily before starting again, this continues indefinitely . Power On->FanSpin->Fanstop->Fanspin all this while as mentioned before, no display output, no post codes via the speaker.

Puzzled I figured that my CPU also went kaput, as I had checked all other components like the RAM and PSU with another AMD FX system. Before giving up on the processor I reached out to a friend who's PC I build and his config is very similar to mine. On installing my Processor in his system (GA-B85M-D3H Motherboard) voila it booted, and his processor ( which is the same as mine i5-4460) in the new motherboard that I purchased (GA-H97-D3H) also works perfectly in my rig.

So my processor in his system as is and his processor in my system as is works perfectly. I subjected both systems to stress tests(Prime 95,AIADA 64, Cinebench) and they held up perfectly. Great thermals, no throttling were turboing up correctly.

Now my question is why is my i5 4460 not working with the H97 Gigabyte board and why does his?
His processor was bought some 8 months after mine and the manufacturing is also in different locations(mine was made in Malaya , his in Vietnam) if that could make a difference?

Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

P.S: The old Asrock board has been confirmed dead by the Asrock RMA center , as the board is out of warranty they can't do much.

 

[UsandThem]

I tried using that Gigabyte board for a build, I even sent it back to be replaced with a new one, and the whole build was never stable until I went with an Asus board instead. I literally replaced every component on that board trying to isolate the issue (I keep spare parts / have working parts in other PCs here), and after doing that, it still wasn't stable.

After Googling, I found a lot of people have had bad luck with that Gigabyte board.......even several builders over the TonyMacX86 forums gave up on using that board after having constant problems. I chose it because it was so cheap, but looking back, I understand why retailers were trying to get rid of it.

Outside of my last Abit motherboard back in 2000, that is by the worst motherboard I've used in any build. Just one of those components where there is some type of design / manufacturing flaw.

 

[Ketchup]

The only thing I might suggest is upping the BIOS to the F7 version with his CPU in there, and see if it accepts your CPU. As far as the why part, I can't think of anything right off.