Is my Q6600 damaged?

[s116262]

At full load, my computer crashes after about 5 minutes. This happens especially with rendering video which is one of the only apps that pegs the CPU at 100%, but it also happens while playing Farcry2.

Is there a way that I can isolate the CPU as the problem as opposed to the memory or mobo? Any utilities that you can recommend for diagnosing such problems?

BTW, the temp stays at 60-61 while at 100%, and there is no overclocking being done.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Zecow]

You can test it with prime95 or orthos (orthos you will need to run 2 instances simutaneously as well as setting the affinity - a bit too troublesome). Just run prime95 and see if any core fails.

 

[mi1ez]

And you can check your memory with memtest86.

 

[s116262]

prime95 bluscreens my machine in a couple of minutes. Even just running the "benchmark" test makes it crash (which I think is only a CPU based test.

I am going to run memtest86 to check my RAM, but it is looking like my CPU is fried. What causes this? It was overheating before I put on my Cooler Master Hyper TX2. It would get up to 70c and shut off. Now it shuts down even though it is not overheating.

In your opinion, should I buy a new CPU?

 

[Qwakrz]

Sounds like you have other problems.

What PSU do you have?
Have you double checked the CPU power plug recently, it may be loose or burnt if it was loose.
What temp does Core-Temp report. 70C is very low for the chip to shut down as I have had my B3 chip up to well over 80C when the fan failed on it and thats without a single crash.

 

[spathotan]

CPU's are very rarely "bad", very rare. More likely culprits are power and memory.

 

[s116262]

OK, I am narraowing down the possibilities... I ran memtest86, and it found no problems with my RAM.

My PSU is an Aerocool Zerodba-S620

I checked the power plugs to the motherboard, and they all seem ok and not loose.

What is the next thing I can check to diagnose the cuase of the problem?

Thanks for your help!

 

[s116262]

I found a setting in the BIOS for the voltage settings. It was set to "manual". When I set it to "auto", the problem is now gone! I am now able to run prime95 with no crashes, and I am rendering video again!

Here is my simplistic analysis of what happened: voltage settings were set to "manual" to allow software to control that setting, but the software was not running. When the CPU needed more voltage to continue running at 100%, it was stuck at a lower setting causing it to crash.

What do you guys think?