Is My CPU Dying?!?

[gabri3l]

Hey guys, I'm probably having a cpu issue, and it would be awesome if people who have more experience than me could give some advice. So about a month ago, I heard a clicking noise coming from my pc, I was pretty sure it was my pc fan, so I replaced the stock cooler with a 212 evo. I kept hearing a click from the same part of my pc, and I realized that it was definitely my psu, so I replaced my 5+ year old 430w Thermaltake with a new 550w bronze from Corsair. Also, shortly after installing a new cooler, my system started randomly crashing. I checked my thermals, and even under a full load it wouldn't hit 40c, so I decided that it was definitely not the cooler. After both these replacements, my computer would not even boot. My hard drive was overvolting, and shutting down every system it was put in, so I bought a WD ssd. Then, my system would boot about once every ten tries. I forgot to mention, I looked up symptoms of dying ram, and I'm pretty sure that's not it, my system never slows down, only freezes and gets the bsod. And it can't be my gpu, because even without it, my system acts the same. I then replaced the motherboard, thinking I might have fried it with the dying power supply or the overvolting hdd. Now, it freezes and crashes less, but still way to often to be usable. So, all that leads me to believe that probably my cpu is dying, it's an old Haswell Pentium, so I wouldn't be surprised. Thoughts? Thanks!

[AskTJ]

Normally, CPU's are the last component to die in a computer build. You could have a bad motherboard or CPU. If you have ruled out the motherboard, I suggest looking for another CPU in your case.

[DocSwag]

full specs?

[gabri3l]

Just now, DocSwag said:

full specs?

Sure, let me run speccy, it's quicker than typing it all out.

[gabri3l]

Just now, DocSwag said:

full specs?

   Windows 10 Pro
   Intel Pentium G3220 @ 3.00GHz    31 °C
   16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 
   Asus H81M-A (SOCKET 1150)
   2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (MSI) 
  232GB Western Digital WDC

[DocSwag]

15 minutes ago, gabri3l said:

   Windows 10 Pro
   Intel Pentium G3220 @ 3.00GHz    31 °C
   16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 
   Asus H81M-A (SOCKET 1150)
   2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (MSI) 
  232GB Western Digital WDC

If you have a hunch that it's the CPU, try running a stress test. If it consistently makes it crash, that's possible.

 

You might also want to try something like memtest86 to make sure it's not RAM.

[gbergeron]

34 minutes ago, gabri3l said:

Hey guys, I'm probably having a cpu issue, and it would be awesome if people who have more experience than me could give some advice. So about a month ago, I heard a clicking noise coming from my pc, I was pretty sure it was my pc fan, so I replaced the stock cooler with a 212 evo. I kept hearing a click from the same part of my pc, and I realized that it was definitely my psu, so I replaced my 5+ year old 430w Thermaltake with a new 550w bronze from Corsair. Also, shortly after installing a new cooler, my system started randomly crashing. I checked my thermals, and even under a full load it wouldn't hit 40c, so I decided that it was definitely not the cooler. After both these replacements, my computer would not even boot. My hard drive was overvolting, and shutting down every system it was put in, so I bought a WD ssd. Then, my system would boot about once every ten tries. I forgot to mention, I looked up symptoms of dying ram, and I'm pretty sure that's not it, my system never slows down, only freezes and gets the bsod. And it can't be my gpu, because even without it, my system acts the same. I then replaced the motherboard, thinking I might have fried it with the dying power supply or the overvolting hdd. Now, it freezes and crashes less, but still way to often to be usable. So, all that leads me to believe that probably my cpu is dying, it's an old Haswell Pentium, so I wouldn't be surprised. Thoughts? Thanks!

I bet 20$ you put that cpu in another system and it runs perfect  

[gabri3l]

Just now, gbergeron said:

I bet 20$ you put that cpu in another system and it runs perfect  

I don't have any other Haswell systems to test it on, I'm swapping out the ram tomorrow to see if that is the point of failure. If it's 100% not ram, I'll probably be buying a new cpu 

[Blebekblebek]

That clicking sound is probably your hard drive, considering it's the only thing that's quite older than the rest, and also could make a tick sound, and ofcourse most of the time will crash the system if it's failing.

[gbergeron]

Confirming that clicking sound is HDD and never CPU,

 

Also you run on HDD ? buy SSD test again on fresh install run cpu and ram stock... if needed use default bios

[gbergeron]

Any Human who has a bit of love for his PC feeds it with an SSD, and throw away the HDD

 

[gabri3l]

Just now, gbergeron said:

Any Human who has a bit of love for his PC feeds it with an SSD, and throw away the HDD

 

 

Just now, gbergeron said:

Confirming that clicking sound is HDD and never CPU,

 

Also you run on HDD ? buy SSD test again on fresh install run cpu and ram stock... if needed use default bios

 

Just now, gbergeron said:

Any Human who has a bit of love for his PC feeds it with an SSD, and throw away the HDD

 

 

Just now, Blebekblebek said:

That clicking sound is probably your hard drive, considering it's the only thing that's quite older than the rest, and also could make a tick sound, and ofcourse most of the time will crash the system if it's failing.

Nope, the hdd is long gone, I replaced it with a WD Blue 250gb ssd. The hard drive was overvolting so I got rid of it.

[gbergeron]

Just now, gabri3l said:

 

 

 

Nope, the hdd is long gone, I replaced it with a WD Blue 250gb ssd. The hard drive was overvolting so I got rid of it.

Damn buddy I guess it's possible to have defect cpu but I would still guess on the ram at that point I mean having a bad cpu is the worse since its pretty pain in the ass to isolate as the issue,

 

GL testing

 

you should run memtest86 to see if ram is ok

 

I have built/modify/tested over 1000+pcs and most of them old hardware like 10yo+ and never saw a faulty cpu ! but doesnt mean its impossible...

[gabri3l]

Just now, gbergeron said:

Damn buddy I guess it's possible to have defect cpu but I would still guess on the ram at that point I mean having a bad cpu is the worse since its pretty pain in the ass to isolate as the issue,

 

GL testing

 

you should run memtest86 to see if ram is ok

 

I have built/modify/tested over 1000+pcs and most of them old hardware like 10yo+ and never saw a faulty cpu ! but doesnt mean its impossible...

I'm praying that it's the ram, ddr3 isn't too expensive these days.

[GrockleTD]

1 hour ago, gabri3l said:

I'm praying that it's the ram, ddr3 isn't too expensive these days.

with an architecture that old, you could probably make a significant upgrade for not that much

[gabri3l]

Just now, Grockle88 said:

with an architecture that old, you could probably make a significant upgrade for not that much

That's true, but that would mean new ram, cpu, and mobo. I'm honestly thinking of just picking up a 4790k.

[GrockleTD]

1 hour ago, gabri3l said:

That's true, but that would mean new ram, cpu, and mobo. I'm honestly thinking of just picking up a 4790k.

i had meant within the same architecture.

[gabri3l]

Just now, Grockle88 said:

i had meant within the same architecture.

Oh! That makes sense lol

[gbergeron]

21 hours ago, gabri3l said:

That's true, but that would mean new ram, cpu, and mobo. I'm honestly thinking of just picking up a 4790k.

that cpu should do perfectly fine for a while btw my real first name is Gabriel  

[AvocadosGuac]

Im gonna take a shot in the dark,

 

Reseat your CPU, if you nudged it while installing the cooler, it could cause one of the pins to not be making good contact.

[gabri3l]

On 5/15/2018 at 7:35 PM, gbergeron said:

that cpu should do perfectly fine for a while btw my real first name is Gabriel  

Nice, me too 

[gabri3l]

On 5/15/2018 at 8:15 PM, Jrock said:

Im gonna take a shot in the dark,

 

Reseat your CPU, if you nudged it while installing the cooler, it could cause one of the pins to not be making good contact.

Sadly, I replaced the motherboard, and it still has issues. I just pulled out a stick of ram, because I haven't ran a memtest yet and that's the only thing I have not replaced besides the cpu. It's been about four hours so far, and I haven't had a single crash. An 8gb stick of ram is so much cheaper than an i7, so I'm hoping that my problem is solved.

[AvocadosGuac]

11 hours ago, gabri3l said:

Sadly, I replaced the motherboard, and it still has issues. I just pulled out a stick of ram, because I haven't ran a memtest yet and that's the only thing I have not replaced besides the cpu. It's been about four hours so far, and I haven't had a single crash. An 8gb stick of ram is so much cheaper than an i7, so I'm hoping that my problem is solved.

Put the ram back in and test, sometimes reseating can help.

[KarathKasun]

Try both sticks individually before buying anything.  Would hate for it to be the memory controller in the CPU that has a dead channel rather than the RAM actually being bad.

 

I see chips from that generation on e-bay with "memory channel A/B defective" on their listings quite often.  The PSU may have been delivering voltage spikes causing damage to multiple parts, likely including the HDD, MB, and CPU.  The memory itself is pretty tough when it comes to voltage spikes compared to those parts.