Have you ever had a processor fail on you?

[thelastjuju]

Just curious here.. No doubt other system builders have experienced motherboards, hard drives, and PSU's that failed.. but has anyone actually had a PROCESSOR die on them?

I feel like its relatively unheard of, and I'm thinking that the processor might just have the lowest chance of failing than any other component.

Obviously excluding those who bent pins, overclocked too high, or spilled water on their PC's or something..

What do you think?

 

[Ferzerp]

Nope. I even chipped an exposed die on a celeron 2 once with no ill effects (amusing if you are following the discussion in the other thread about heat spreaders).


edit: Now, in my line of work, I've seen one or two fail though. I even saw a dual proc system that had one socket with a heatsink on a bare socket. That was more a case of a missing processor than a broken one though

 

[pauldun170]

AMD3800+
Changed cooler on it...
PC stopped working

Toss in spare AMD3200+
PC start working.

Examine AMD3800+ then put AMD3800+ back in
PC Stop working

Put AMD3200+ on shelf
Put AMD3800+ on shelf
One less old crapo PC to bother with

 

[BrightCandle]

I have cut a heat spreader off, I've lapped a die until it was within in a millimeter of destruction and I've drawn on a chip with a pencil to unlock it and all the while I've been pumping the max safe voltage through every one of them for 12 years and running them well above their spec. Not once have I killed a chip through all the madness.

 

[offandon]

Nope. Every CPU I have gotten in working condition has continued to work until I retired the PC.

I did get a OEM Pentium 120 that was bad, but it never worked so I would not say it failed on me.

 

[slag]

Yes, two times.

I was going to buy a cpu from karaktu? I booted it up and it ran. Was using it and the computer stopped working. Let it sit for awhile and it fired up and then died during boot up. Never worked after that. Was probably something I did, but I always used thermal goop and everything. He was very nice about it and we split the cost iirc. He didn't have to do that though since I was the one who killed it but I think it was already dying, neither of us knew it though.

Also had an intel processor that the cache died on. Turn on cache, it won't boot into windows. Turn off cache, it booted, albeit very very slowly. RMA'd that one since it was nothing I had done.

 

[nardz84]

One, an old AMD Duron chip, I think it was after a power surge though. Killed its original motherboard and it also managed to fry the 2nd board I bought to try and test it. Fortunately I just claimed the Mobo was DOA and returned it

 

[dma0991]

A Core i7 2600 belonging to a friend of mine just died I assume as there is a red light on the Asus P8P67 Pro indicating there is an issue with the CPU. PC will turn on but there is no display, nothing to indicate that the CPU is in working order.

Not quite sure why it died since it is obviously not overclocked but I might attribute the cause to my friend who isn't the kind who would take good care of their stuff, if you know what I mean. Currently in the process of RMA-ing the CPU.

 

[Arkaign]

I overvolted a PD 805 once well after it was no longer used, got it well past 4ghz before it cooked, lol. So that was intentional. I ran it at close to 4ghz for a long time as my desktop chip (back when Athlon X2s were $300+, I got the 805 for about $100, and after overclocking it did quite well).

I had an Athlon 1400 (not 1400+, not XP, just Athlon 1400), it was NEVER stable at stock speeds, even with a gigantic solid copper heatsink and Delta fan that sounded like an F14 taking off from a carrier. Setting the FSB at 100 from 133 worked, but then it was a paltry 1050mhz. I hated that chip with a passion. It was also insanely hot running. I've also seen dozens of dead socket A chips in my time, mostly earlier athlon and durons, the later AXPs seemed a bit better made. I still hated that packaging though, so damned flimsy. I remember the first AMD chip I saw that had a real IHS, the Opteron 142 or something, I was soooo happy.

 

[Ferzerp]

Oh, I have had chips that after a few years degraded where they required more voltage to sustain the same overclock, or had to be clocked down, but that's not a chip failure in my eyes as they still functioned perfectly well at stock, and I had purposefully run them out of spec.

 

[Elixer]

Sadly, yes, recently, I lost a opteron 165. (It was o/ced, and it ran great & rock stable for many years, but one day, I went to turn it on, and I heard BIOS POST beep errors.)
Popped in another CPU and that board boots up fine.

 

[Martimus]

I had a 233MHz K6 that I ran at 250MHz for a couple years. I became unstable after a while, and I had to reduce the speed to 210MHz to make it completely stable after that time. It didnt die, but wouldn't run in spec.

I did lose a whole system to a Antec Trupower PSU about 10 years ago. They used to use low quality primary caps and the one I had blew up. The magic black smoke destroyed most of the components in my computer.

 

[Mir96TA]

Massive failure I has with Cyrix CPU
52 CPU were bad out of 60. All of them had
bad internal cache.
I had AMD K6 2 failed on me
P4 3.4 went bad (Intel took care of it; Yea FedEx air next day)
and Bad AMD Mathco for good ol 386DX.

 

[Hubb1e]

I've never had the processor fail, but I did ruin an Athlon X2 4800+ when trying to replace the CPU cooler, the thermal paste was so sticky that I pulled the CPU out of the socket and bent the pins. Bending them back didn't seem to fix it.

 

[LoneNinja]

Never killed a CPU or had one randomly die or arrive DOA. I did kill my AM2+ board overclocking a Phenom 9850, processor survived the board cooking itself.

I've had dead video cards, hard drives, dvd drives, fans, power supplies, motherboards, but have never seen a dead CPU or RAM yet. I've been building for about 6 years now.

 

[Piano Man]

Nope.

 

[Rvenger]

2 AMD A6-3650s

 

[Xed]

Athlon x2 4400+ that AMD replaced.

 

[soccerballtux]

bulldozer failed on me. Failed on all of us.

 

[IGemini]

A core on an old Conroe E6600 no longer recognized 23 as a prime number. That was after over five years of heavy OC, crunching and server use.

 

[FordGT]

Nope.

 

[OCGuy]

bulldozer failed on me. Failed on all of us.

I laughed.

 

[superccs]

Not one. been building my own machines for 15 years and not one CPU has died on me, even overclocked ones... The motheboards go out or just get too obsolete first.

 

[Concillian]

I had an athlon XP fail on me after I accidentally powered it up with no heatsink on it.

Does that count?

 

[LCTSI]

yes, just sparc chips

in all fairness they did spend a few days running without any air conditioning, and got hot enough to pop the epoxied heatsink right off the chips.

dead netras everywhere!