Did I kill my i7 4770k :(?

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rehabveteran

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Feb 28, 2012
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Is my cpu dead or damaged if I can do the following: go into my bios off a cold boot and see that temps (and other information) are being recorded, and if windows 10 finishes its repair diagnosis (if I don't go into my bios), I am able to get to the login screen where it tells me windows had issues with shutting down previously (I turn off the pc at this point, see below).

Read below if you would like to know why this happened:

Long story short I took off my NH-D15 to fit my new graphics card on my micro atx board, and turned on my computer and tried to run it for as long as I could. Yes I know what I did was unbelievably dumb, I was ignorant of what I was doing since my pc was built for me and since then I've learnt a lot of what I should not have done.

Anyway to sum things up, at first my computer got slower and slower, and then eventually froze and crashed. I kept trying to turn it on (yes I am this dumb) but each time I had less time to move about on the desktop before it crashed. This went on for like 30 minutes, until I eventually got into my bios and my cpu temps were reading 90 degrees Celsius. I figured things out pretty quickly from there.

So I gave my computer 24 hours to rest (because I had believed I had completely killed my cpu at this point) so I could test if it still worked or not, and you can read the first paragraph to see what my results were.

Sorry for the long thread, any much thanks in advance for any help I receive.

*Update*: So I installed a Hyper Evo 212 and did a prime 95 blend test for 5 minutes, cpu seems to be okay. Thanks for everyones help, hope my mistake can help someone in the future.
 
Solution
utroz
If the PC turning on at all then you probably didn't kill the cpu. Cpu's have pretty good thermal protection and will throttle and shutdown if need be, but yes it is still a really bad idea to run without a heatsink. Make sure the fan is plugged in and working, also make sure you used thermal paste (never reuse old thermal paste on a cpu or heatsink) when you re installed your heatsink. Windows just didn't like the fact that it got basically a power outage however many times it thermally just killed the power from overheating.. You might have to reinstall windows if it was doing something important when it killed the power to the cpu to save it from frying.. So if you haven't already put the heatsink back on the cpu and remove the video...
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Crazysealions

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Feb 3, 2015
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Obviously it was an awful idea, but right now are you able to login to windows? From what I read you get to the login screen and you just shut down? Anyways if you can get that far and it is you initiating the shutdown/restart then obviously your CPU isnt dead... if it were dead you would have no display... or post... I think it`s fine if I understood properly... as far as it being damaged, You could always run a stress test and see what happens... (Prime 95)
 
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theunliked

theunliked

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Dec 3, 2014
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Definitely no. If you damaged your cpu, getting into bios would be impossible, much less get to the login screen.
Did you apply thermal paste when you put on your cpu cooler?

by the way, in the meantime, don't try to turn on the pc.
 
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utroz

utroz

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Nov 9, 2010
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If the PC turning on at all then you probably didn't kill the cpu. Cpu's have pretty good thermal protection and will throttle and shutdown if need be, but yes it is still a really bad idea to run without a heatsink. Make sure the fan is plugged in and working, also make sure you used thermal paste (never reuse old thermal paste on a cpu or heatsink) when you re installed your heatsink. Windows just didn't like the fact that it got basically a power outage however many times it thermally just killed the power from overheating.. You might have to reinstall windows if it was doing something important when it killed the power to the cpu to save it from frying.. So if you haven't already put the heatsink back on the cpu and remove the video card till such a time as you have a cpu heatsink that will allow the graphics card to fit.
 
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Solution
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rehabveteran

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Feb 28, 2012
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Thanks everyone for your replies, not sure who to pick as the solution lol. I'm off right now to my local computer hardware store to pick up a new heatsink/CPU cooler and give that a go.

And to answer some of your questions based on your feedback, I don't think my CPU is dead because I'm able to get to the windows login screen, and then I turned off the PC myself. Now I just need to determine if there is any damage, so I'll run prime 95 thanks to Crazysealions suggestions.

Again, thanks guys for the help. I'll report back with an update later.
 
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DJDeCiBeL

DJDeCiBeL

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Dec 3, 2010
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That's not to say that it didn't cause any longer term longevity issues, but yeah, newer CPU's and mobos have too much thermal protection built in so a CPU won't fry itself like that. Thankfully, we're a long way from the P4/Athlon XP era, lol.
 
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rehabveteran

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Feb 28, 2012
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I'll definitely report back after a Prime 95 to see if any damage was caused, but I have no doubt the length of its life span was shortened. The chip was pushed to its limits for sure because every time I booted back into the desktop I had 5-15 seconds less time before it got slower and slower and eventually windows froze/crashed. And I kept doing that even after I couldn't make it back to the desktop, thinking I was somehow going to be able to troubleshoot the issue from a software perspective haha.

Probably longer than 30 minutes actually since I rebooted at least anywhere from 15-20 times.

Clearly I didn't know what I was doing. I'm just thankful I'll have a chance to remedy things.
 
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utroz

utroz

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Toms actually did a video of what happens with an Athlon Thunderbird and a P4 have the heat sink removed. It was very informative. This was a long time ago but I had already been reading Toms for since the super socket 7 days.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0VuRG7MN4
 
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GhislainG

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Jul 16, 2008
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You can't do that with newer processors, including AMD that also protect themselves. It may be possible with a custom BIOS that disables all protection, but I'm not sure it would work. I remember viewing the video of that Athlon XP going up in smoke.
 
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utroz

utroz

Splendid
Nov 9, 2010
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Oh I know basically all cpu's have thermal protection now but it is nice to watch and see how much safer hardware is now compared to back in the day. Back then if you messed up things could fry quickly.
 
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