Bad mobo?

[Junfoo]

Hey all, 

 

I have a Ryzen 5600x that I purchased used about 1.5 months ago that has been working like a dream but now under load gets pegged to 14% utilization at 0.5ghz. rewind to last week when I finally decided to check on my temps while playing starfield and was really surprised to see it at 95 degrees. I was just using the stock cooler, but I picked up a Noctua NH-L9x65 since I have an ITX case and it looked like a good upgrade.

 

The Noctua came in yesterday so after getting home from thanksgiving with my wife's family I was too eager and got right into the swap. 

 

I'm not sure which one of these 2 things I did may have broke things but here's the rub;

1. while pulling my old heat sink off the CPU came off with it. It took some work to get the 2 separated but I got it done, and the locking mechanism is now very loose

2. I had a small bit of thermal paste make it's way onto the CPU socket that I attempted to clean with some isopropyl alcohol (which I later realized was only a 50% dilution) but I may have just spread contaminates into the socket unknowingly... 

 

I've already tried 

1. resetting the bios

2. reinstalling the bios 

3. resetting the CMOS

4. windows safe mode

5. linux off a bootable USB and usage was the same as windows

6. getting 91% isopropyl alcohol and kinda flushing it out with a qtip, but letting it dry and using a blow dryer to ensure nothing would pool up

 

I'm at a loss fellas, any suggestions would be appreciated!!!

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Junfoo
I was corrected on how to properly read usage graph, attached relevant photo

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, Junfoo said:

now stays pegged at 100% utilization at 0.5ghz.

It's not though, it's at 2% usage in that screenshot. That 100% you circled is saying that's the range of the graph, the bottom is 0% (hence the 0 in the bottom corner) and the 100% is the maximum. The height of that blue line determines the usage, or the utilization number directly next to "speed"

 

As for why it's at 0.5GHz, it's because it's not doing anything. Run a benchmark or something and it should go up to somewhere north of 4GHz. 

[Junfoo]

19 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's not though, it's at 2% usage in that screenshot. That 100% you circled is saying that's the range of the graph, the bottom is 0% (hence the 0 in the bottom corner) and the 100% is the maximum. The height of that blue line determines the usage, or the utilization number directly next to "speed"

 

As for why it's at 0.5GHz, it's because it's not doing anything. Run a benchmark or something and it should go up to somewhere north of 4GHz. 

CPUZ bench score for single core is 44, multi is 207. it never crossed 14% utilization