Testing a CPU?

[Dougster]

I'm trying to do up an old system at the moment for use as an internet gateway. I've just purchased a second hand P233MMX to go in it.

Now I have no idea if this PC was stable or not to begin with (although I presume it was) but I'm having some problems now with freezes and random restarts. I know it's not a heat issue... the cpu and fan I have on at the moment are an overkill if anything, and I'm using thermal grease etc.

Is there any handy way out there of testing to see if there are any issues with this processor? I have to admit I know very little about them. A friend of mine said that if the computer works there's nothing wrong with the CPU itself, because if anything goes wrong with a CPU they're dead, they don't show "intermittent faults". Is he right?

Many thanks if anyone can advise or give me more info.

 

[Dougster]

^^Bump^^

 

[smp]

I'm in the camp that thinks that if a processor ain't working .. it won't work period. But then, I think somone like wingnutz or PM would be able to explain that a bit better than me, I could be wrong. I don't think it is the CPU in your case, because like you said, it's an old system, the ram could be flakey, the mobo might be crapping out .. it could be a number of things. It might even be the hard drive. Is this a fresh install of whatever OS you're running? What OS are you running?
What other hardware is in the machine?
When do the lock ups happen?

more info

 

[Trader05]

For some reason when i was messing around with an older system (p166), i freshly installed windows and whenever the screensaver is on for more than like 10 mins the computer would freeze. I was thinking it was the video card, swapped out, nope. Thought it was the cpu, swapped with a 133, nope. Then i swapped out the PSU, nope. Found out, i replaced the ram and it was fine. I think when a cpu is dying or dead it won't work, or fail to boot.

 

[Dougster]

Well I managed to get hold of another Socket 7 computer, and the CPU runs fine... next to test, the RAM. Thanks for input guys.