CPU gone bad or MB gone bad?

[imported_TimBob]

I have the following:

e8400 on an Asus Rampage Formula. Been running at 4.05 on 1.42v for several months now. The other day my PC completely shut down during a Warhammer online session. Wouldn't turn on at all for a few minutes. Stuck on CPU Init.

After turning the power off and resetting the CMOS a few times I finally got it to boot at default settings. This was followed by my system freezing up a short time later while doing pretty much nothing.

To make a long story shorter, ever since that initial crash, my PC is either completely unstable or won't even boot up at all. Bootup will stall at CPU init, DET RAM, USB Final and sometimes gets past all that only to tell me my disk does not have an OS installed. Other times I get into Windows just fine but crash within 30 minutes.

Did I push my CPU too much or is it time to RMA my motherboard? Or is it something else?I do have a q6600 I could try but would rather not go through the hassle of removing it from my other PC if it's clearly my motherboard.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[hclarkjr]

need a little bit of info on what you have in your system, such as power supply, memory and stuff like that

 

[imported_TimBob]

e8400 on Asus Rampage Formula
8GB DDR2-1000 g.skill ram (tried swapping these around and currently only using 4GB)
2 74gb Raptors
2 VisionTek 4870s
750w PC Power & cooling PSU

CPU is watercooled with D-Tek Fusion, MCR320

Think that's it. All temps for CPU, NB and SB look good.

 

[betasub]

Motherboard is the most likely candidate, considering the sort of power it is having to regulate. However I'd first check your memory DIMMs individually, one-by-one, in different slots if possible, using a bootdisk version of memtest.

 

[badnewcastle]

Can the new 45 nm chips do 1.42v? I thought we were supposed to keep them under 1.35v.

I would try the q6600 or you could be looking at memory as betasub mentioned. Usually memory goes first then mobo and cpu. If I had access to some other dimm's I'd start there.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: TimBob
e8400 on Asus Rampage Formula
8GB DDR2-1000 g.skill ram (tried swapping these around and currently only using 4GB)
2 74gb Raptors
2 VisionTek 4870s
750w PC Power & cooling PSU

CPU is watercooled with D-Tek Fusion, MCR320

Think that's it. All temps for CPU, NB and SB look good.

That system is a gaming monster, man!!!

Do memtest, the ram could be the culprit and it would be the cheapest problem to solve.

 

[imported_TimBob]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: TimBob
e8400 on Asus Rampage Formula
8GB DDR2-1000 g.skill ram (tried swapping these around and currently only using 4GB)
2 74gb Raptors
2 VisionTek 4870s
750w PC Power & cooling PSU

CPU is watercooled with D-Tek Fusion, MCR320

Think that's it. All temps for CPU, NB and SB look good.

That system is a gaming monster, man!!!

Do memtest, the ram could be the culprit and it would be the cheapest problem to solve.

It was a gaming monster up until a few days ago.

I know I was supposed to keep it under 1.35v, but I just couldn't get it to 4ghz with anything less. Also, I only have it on when I'm gaming to keep the wear and tear down (and power usage).

I guess I'll run memtest and take apart my other PC for the q6600. I'd like to see how that runs anyways since I've heard Warhammer online does make use of 4 cores.

 

[Denithor]

I'll second error8's suggest of testing memory sticks one by one to make sure that's not the problem. If you get errors with one switch it to a different socket and retest to make sure it's not the socket itself (I've seen this happen before).

If that all looks good, next up is swapping the two processors. Test the Q6600 on the Rampage board first. If that works fine it's probably your e8400, which you can confirm by testing it in the rig where your Q6600 currently resides. Since you have a complete second system you can actually figure out which part is really bad before going through the RMA process.