Ridiculous phenom 965 situation

[yoandylol]

Antec 902

Phenom 965 BE C3 /w Core-Contact Freezer TX 2

MSI AMD770-G45 motherboard

4gb G.skill DDR 3

300 GB WD Cavier

ULTRA LSP 750 Watt PSU

Windows 7

 

Sorry if this is atrocious to read.

 

Alright, this is a very confusing and frustrating situation. My computer has been running fine for a few months until I decided I wanted to OC my Phenom 965.

I bought an Antec 902 and a core-contact freezer after reading many reviews.

 

I wiped the thermal paste off my CPU with Alcohol 70% ( Potential first mistake ) and cotton swabs.

I applied thermal paste to cpu and attached new heatsink, no problems.

I easily overclock to 3.8 ghz with idle temps of 40ish.

 

My settings as I recall were: cpu volt: 1.4, multiplier 19, CPU-NB 1.3, HT at 2400 and everything else auto and this ran smooth and passed Prime95 tests for hours.

All games ran well, zero problems. Then I decided to be a cool kid and try to hit 4.0ghz since apparently it was easy and common among phenom 965 owners.

 

I went into BIOS changed the multiplier, increased CPU voltage to 1.48(max for cpu is 1.55 I believe?) left everything else the same.

Everything went swell, booted into windows ran prime 95 test and then I realized I probably wouldn't be able to pull it off with my current air cooled set up because I hit 58 C within 30 seconds.

I cancelled the prime 95 test and shut down my PC deciding to revert to my old settings. I load bios again, I revert the changes and load into windows.

 

I shut down my pc and that same night I tried to turn it on and I got no response at all. I reset the bios and eventually the pc turns on but I hear a loud pop from inside, unsure from where it was I didn't think much of it.

Windows loaded just fine at default speeds. I decide to reapply the 3.8ghz oc settings I had since they were fine and stable.

I do that and then the pc doesn't boot, the lights and fans turn on for 1 second and shut off.

 

I begin trouble shooting:

I reseat all my hardware and test PSU on another pc(it worked fine on the other pc). Nothing happens still.

In desperation, I take off heatsink and clean off thermal compound. I see 8 burn marks that resemble where my core-contact pipes would be, its just black marks, nothing insanely serious looking and I think nothing of it but while cleaning off thermal compound, I realized I may have put too much as some of it slipped to the green part of the chip (not on the pins).

I couldn't reach it with the swabs since its in between the silver and green part of the processor and I heard that TX-2 wasn't electrically conductive so I left it there.

I put everything back together in place and the pc turns on! Once again i hear the super loud pop noise and there was a spark from the CPU area but my PC loads into windows normally and then....restarts.

I was furious and clueless. After much thought I looked at my motherboard and the Phase Control led lights only show 1 Core of the 4 on, I decide to mess around with bio settings and I disabled 3 cores and viola windows loaded and worked fine.

 

I go back to bios try to turn on the 2nd one and it works as well, including in games. I've been playing Starcraft 2, Battlefield 2 on these 2 cores. I try to turn on the third one and windows boots but crashes as soon as I open anything media related.

After that I tried all 4 cores and my pc restarts at windows booting screen. I have no idea what it could be, my friend suggests its my CPU.

 

This leads to my main question, could I have damaged 2 cores of my CPU?

I find it odd that I can do everything normal as long as I disable 2 of the cores. I also wonder how this could've happened? (Unless the thermal paste is to blame)

I never set my CPU voltage above 1.48, my temps were fine ALWAYS. I would check in the bios, on coretemp, on amd overdrive and on HW Monitor.

My cpu never had a dangerous temp. Right now at this moment I'm on 2 Cores at 38 idle. I took every precaution I could think of before handling equipment, I would touch case every time before I touched hardware. Oh and the motherboard appears fine, no bulging, leaking, exploded capacitors.

 

I guess one more thing that MAY have caused a problem? I foolishly had my PSU fan faced down in the case(at the bottom)and it may have overheated?

 

All suggestions and help will be greatly appreciated. I hope I can get to the bottom of this, Bad Company 2 is laggy on these 2 cores and I need to pwn some noobs bros.

Edited September 10, 2010 by Psywar
Making it so a wall of text does not just slap you in the face.

[Locutus]

Wow, that's a wall of text.

 

You should start out with the symptoms, then work your way into the story (in a separate paragraph)

[endorphiend]

I appreciate your proper punctuation and capitalization, but please update your post to include multiple paragraphs instead of one wall of text. I can read stuff in all lower case with obscene amounts of typos, but that just makes my eyes hurt.

[Psywar]

I edited your post gave it some spaces so it does not look like we got slapped in the face with a wall of text...

 

I kept everything you wrote but as Locutus said above you may want to re-edit this post and just give us what you did, what happened, and what it is doing now.

Some people may not have the ability or attention span to read all of this.

 

My biggest concern for you is the "Sparks" you had/seen/heard.

 

I would assume that this is your problem and you need to fix/find out whatever caused this spark. You also need to find out where it came from.

Is it still making a popping noise / causing a spark?

 

As for your CPU Issue the only thing I can think of to tell you with this is find another system to test your CPU in and see if it works on all 4 Cores.

 

You said you don't know what would have caused you to lose 2 of your Cores but you also said you seen sparks and heard popping from your CPU area (Multiple Times) whatever caused this may have fried up the CPU.

 

Thats just my guess though. Maybe someone else here can help you trouble shoot your CPU.

[saywhut]

You said you turned on the first 2 cores and it worked and after that the third one did not. Is there any way you can test the last core and not the third to see if that one is defective as well? And as Psywar said, only way to find out is to test your CPU on another system to see if it works on all the cores. Really, it sounds like a CPU problem to me and those 2 times you heard the "pop" may have been a core blowing off. Do you have another CPU to test in your system? Now, on the 8 burn marks you saw, where they like in the middle of the heat spreader or just to one side?

[yoandylol]

Sorry about the wall!

I do not have another system to test my CPU on. I tried reconfiguring the cores enabled/disabled.

 

Core 1 Enabled

Core 2 Enabled

Core 3 Disabled

Core 4 Disabled

Boots and functions

 

Core 1 Enabled

Core 2 Enabled

Core 3 Enabled

Core 4 Disabled

Boots and crashes

 

Core 1 Enabled

Core 2 Enabled

Core 3 Disabled

Core 4 Enabled

Restarts system at windows boot screen

 

All cores enabled restarts system at windows boot screen

 

As for the burn marks there are 4 at the end of the West and east sides. The north and south parts of the cpu have no marks. It seems the marks are where the end of the core-contact freezer heat pipes would be.

Edited September 10, 2010 by yoandylol

[SpeedCrazy]

On the burn marks, now this is just a guess but alcohol residue plus 58C and or the sparks might cause some burning.

No idea on the core thing.

Hope you get it fixed.

[slick2500]

I agree that the popping and sparks you saw/heard were the cores, I think you may have fubared your cpu.

[yoandylol]

My next biggest concern is what may have caused this, I would hate to buy another CPU and have the same thing occur.

[Drdeath]

These guys have no clue what they are talking about......Blown capacitors. RMA the motherboard. Do not use the motherboard. It will not get the proper power to the harware and you can F%^K somehting else up.

[yoandylol]

Hmmm I didn't see anything wrong with any of the capacitors and theres no visible damage on the motherboard but I'll have another look and maybe take pictures and post them here. Thanks for all the help!

[MrAlex]

These guys have no clue what they are talking about......Blown capacitors. RMA the motherboard. Do not use the motherboard. It will not get the proper power to the harware and you can F%^K somehting else up.

 

These guys happen to know what they're talking about, but YOU don't. Since when in the ENTIRE history of computers has a blown capacitor lead to burn marks on a CPU? Honestly...

 

Anyway, to the O.P contact your retailer and RMA it, they should be able to, just explain what happened. If they won't RMA it for you, then go to AMD and RMA directly with them. DO NOT TELL THEM ABOUT OVERCLOCKING, just that Cores 3 and 4 are not stable and won't boot when they're all disabled.

 

While your CPU is being RMA'd, try and find an AM3 CPU to try in your motherboard (WARNING: I fear the same thing will happen to the other AM3 CPU you put in, just read below to find out why), if it works fine, then it was your CPU and probably the alcohol as 70% alc will contain quite a bit of water, and I think the sparks would've been any condensation/water droplets hitting the socket or the pins. If it doesn't work, the of course RMA the motherboard as well. Unfortunately I doubt this is something that can be fixed by us consumers. RMA is currently the only viable option unless this has happened to someone else and they have another solution as to fix it.