Ever had a processor die on you?

slag

Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
10,473
81
101
I have. I had a 650 mhz socket a thunderbird die. I had a 500 mhz slot A athlon die on me when I thought I could run it for a split second to see if it booted up without a heatsink.

I had a pentium 4 2.4 ghz processor die on me in that the l2 cache refused to work. I could run the chip with the l2 turned off, but it was SLOW....

I bought a processor from someone on this forum that died on me when I was testing it out. We split the cost on that one. It worked intermittantly and then refused to work at all.

 

brxndxn

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2001
8,475
0
76
IMO, processors are the most reliable part of computer equipment aside from the case. I worked at a computer store, a computer 'dot com' retailer, and now an engineering firm.. and I've built hundreds of computers and fixed maybe a thousand (who knows?)..

I've never once had a processor fail. I've overclocked the hell out of them too. I've seen the fan die on them..

The only time a friend of mine had a processor fail was when he kept running it after the heatsink fell off.. But even when just the fan dies and the heatsink is still on, I doubt most processors fail.

IMO, the reason anyone would have more than 1 or 2 fail in a lifetime is USER ERROR.
 

slag

Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
10,473
81
101
My bios had a setting.. it might have been l1.. i dont remember. It was years ago..

Anyway, I was able to turn it off. The symptoms I had were crashing as soon as windows would load. It would crash at random times right as it booted into windows. Disabling the crash made it load much much much slower, but it made it stable also.

 

slag

Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
10,473
81
101
Originally posted by: brxndxn
IMO, processors are the most reliable part of computer equipment aside from the case. I worked at a computer store, a computer 'dot com' retailer, and now an engineering firm.. and I've built hundreds of computers and fixed maybe a thousand (who knows?)..

I've never once had a processor fail. I've overclocked the hell out of them too. I've seen the fan die on them..

The only time a friend of mine had a processor fail was when he kept running it after the heatsink fell off.. But even when just the fan dies and the heatsink is still on, I doubt most processors fail.

IMO, the reason anyone would have more than 1 or 2 fail in a lifetime is USER ERROR.

Could be. The 650 Tbrd was a weird case. I bought it knowing it would only clock to 816 mhz, not a mhz more. It ran that way great for months. One day, it wouldnt run stable. I had to clock it down to 7xx. Then i had to drop it back to 650.. then it wouldn't run stable at all to the point I couldn't use it, even overvolted, because it just wasnt stable.

Slot A--definitely my fault. My wife was pissed i threw away all that money.

The pentium 2.4 was not my fault.. it just flaked out. The last one i listed--no idea what was wrong there..
 

Rottie

Diamond Member
Feb 10, 2002
4,795
2
81
my beloved Athlon XP 2400+ died due to overheat and or not enough thermal paste.
 

3chordcharlie

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2004
9,859
1
81
Originally posted by: xtknight
How would you disable the L2 cache?

Some motherboards allow this, it's less common than it used to be, I think.

I killed an AXP by not installing the hsf properly. I just kind of held it there while i booted it up to make sure it posted. It did, but I didn't have the pads compressed enough for actual contact with the core, and post once is all it ever did:(

I killed another AXP because I was too lazy to take out the psu when removing the heatink, and as a result chipped the core. I later learned that I had also damaged the motherboard (that was an expensive slip of the screwdriver!)
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
Nope.

Had pretty much everything else die at one point or another though.
 
Jan 27, 2007
52
0
0
i had a barton die during one drunken overclocking session two winters ago when a friend of mine droped the heatsink just as he was taking it off, small nic in the procs pcb and next time we turned it on it released blue smoke and the small nic became larger. Oh well, at least it was a good excuse to finaly move to s939
 

stevty2889

Diamond Member
Dec 13, 2003
7,036
8
81
I had one core of a pentium-D 920 die on me..but I also had taken a soldering iron to it, attempting to do a BSEL mod for 1066mhz FSB since my motherboard sucked for overclocking. It's still running with the second core disabled however.