I think my E4300 is dead

S

skudmunky

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 1, 2005
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A few days ago my system shorted out on a few molex pins, but it seemed to work fine. Then one day, after shutting it down for a restart it started freezing on the POST screen, and eventually not displaying anything at all. After a while of restarting and CMOS clearing I got it back up, got through a cmos checksum error, and happily used it for the entire day, even playing through 5 hours of Bioshock on it. Then, the next day, it wouldn't turn on at all, and even stopped displaying anything. (my E4300 was overclocked to 3.06 ghz, 340 fsb, 9x multi, 1.36 vcore in bios)

So far I have tried 4 sticks of DDR2, 4 different graphics cards, a 650 and a 400 watt PSU, and 2 different motherboards (my DS3 and a new P35C DS3R that I bought yesterday, since I thought the motherboard was dead). The new motherboard exhibits the exact same symptoms as the old motherboard, it displayed for the first few post attemps but now doesn't display anything at all.

Since the only thing left to try is a new CPU, that's what I'm going to do. Annoyingly enough Boston got a foot of snow last night, so everything is closed today.

When I get the new CPU should I try it in the old motherboard first? It's possible that the old motherboard also might have been damaged by the power short, could the new cpu be damaged by a faulty motherboard?

any ideas / suggestions are appreciated.
 
You tried latest bios?
I wouldn't try old mobo unless you intend to sell it or want to return the new mobo.
I would try a new chip in the new mobo first if anything. I hope you are using a new psu?
 
get a really cheap cpu I think the 775 celeons are really cheap. Test it with that then sell it.
 
Glow said:
You tried latest bios?
I wouldn't try old mobo unless you intend to sell it or want to return the new mobo.
I would try a new chip in the new mobo first if anything. I hope you are using a new psu?
Click to expand...

one of the last things i did before the system shorted and stopped booting was update my bios actually, but that was a full week before.

I'm going to be buying an E6750 from newegg, and possibly a new motherboard also. Trying to decide whether to keep the DS3R I got from microcenter or get the P5K-E
 
FULL STOP.

Have you tried REPLACING *ALL* the cabling for every single component first?
This includes all HDD cables, all USB/mouse/keyboard cables, basically, everythinig that can possibly plug into the computer? I understand that jumper (hdd/psu/reset, etc) cables are virtually impossible to replace without a new case, but at least do the cheap stuff first. If that fails, then you can try a new chip. It IS very possible that the chip got a HUGE temporary vcore burst maybe something like 3v+ or something), but this would cause immediate failure, not a degrading failure.

I -have- seen broken cabling cause a system to fail to POST/freezing at POST screens.
I hope that is the case, but it still -could- be the CPU. Let's hope it isn't though.

Good luck.

BTW, what do you mean by you shorted a molex? What molex? The system was on ?
 
I actually unplugged everything, all my HDD, DVD drives, keyboard, mice, etc so that the only thing plugged in was a video card, ram, and the cpu, and I tried different cables. I even pulled my mobo out of the case and to see if it was possibly shorting on the case.


and by shorted I mean somehow some 4 pin molex power pins touched the metal of my case while my computer was on, causing it to instantly lose power.

One thing I noticed while my computer was still 'working' after the short - I was trying to up my overclock a bit more and even a 1 FSB increase (my previously stable 340 fsb to 341 fsb) was unstable before 5 minutes of Orthos had passed. I didn't run orthos long at 340 FSB however, so there's no base line really/
 
well, I dropped the E6750 into my new mobo and everything works now, so I guess my old CPU was the culprit. Time to start RMAing things.(woo newegg, free shipping got it to me less than 24 hours after I ordered it :D)

wonder what cause the old CPU to fry, and what should I do with it now? keychain maybe?
 
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