PC does not boot when CPU is at normal speed

[luiz7578]

Sorry for the long post, but this is a weird problem.

I bought a Core 2 Quad Q9505 (i don't have a lot of money and it was pretty cheap) to use on my MSI motherboard (G31M3-L V2)

When I powered it on for the first time, it worked fine at 2.83GHz and I ran prime95 and it was rock solid.

But a week or 2 after that it started blue screening randomly.

After another week it wouldn't even power on.

Every blue screen displayed a different error including:

 

MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION (this is bad, right?)

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

 

(those are the ones I could remember)

 

I turned the CPU down to 2.5GHz and the PC booted again.

I ran memtest86 and the RAM showed no problems.

I checked for BIOS updates, and it was already up to date.

 

So I used it normally at 2.5GHz until recently it started crashing at that speed too.

I turned it down to 2.3GHz and now it works again.

 

Sorry for the lack of pictures and poor explaining, it's because I kept being... too lazy to actually take pictures and research why my PC was acting like this.

I also couldn't attach memory dumps from the crashes because I had to wipe my hard drive.

I hope it's enough info to at least get a guess about what is wrong with my computer.

And if my English is bad, sorry, I'm from Brazil.

 

The CPU was never overclocked.

 

I tried running the PC at normal speed using a Linux Live CD.

It kernel panicked, sometimes showing a MCE error.

 

I couldn't find any solutions on the internet, so I decided to post here.

 

My PC is: (don't laugh too hard guys)

Core 2 Quad Q9505

MSI G31M3-L V2

Generic DDR2 800 2x4GB

600W Satellite power supply (it does not say anything else)

Gigabyte R7 265

Kingston V300 60GB SSD

Seagate 1TB HDD

[OuchMyFaceyHole]

Sounds like a memory controller issue or its the Quad dieing.

[hata]

It's possible prime95 has damaged your cpu/motherboard in some way, if you have another cpu you can use you could see if that's stable.

[luiz7578]

It's possible prime95 has damaged your cpu/motherboard in some way, if you have another cpu you can use you could see if that's stable.

Well, I have the Core 2 Duo that came with the motherboard, a E7500, I can try running it tomorrow and see if it works.