Is my CPU fried?

[Daemonus]

Hi,

Today I installed the nVidia perfermance utility and was mucking around with my cpu frequency. Now I had the slider sitting at 4GHZ and I accidentally clicked apply instead of cancel. My system instantly froze and when I restarted it would no longer boot. Post code is showing FF on the motherboard.

CPU: Intel E8500
MOBO: nVidia 790i Ultra SLI
RAM: 2GB Gskill 1333mhz DDR 3
VIDEO CARD: nVidia 9800GTX+
OS: Windows 7 Beta Build 7000

 

[LumberWagon]

Have you tried resetting your cmos jumper on the motherboard yet?

 

[Daemonus]

Forgot to add that ><

Removed CMOS battery and reset jumper, still failed to boot.
Removed CPU & reseated, still failed to boot.

The only thing that has me skeptical is the CPU looks no different to when it came out of the box 2 weeks ago which makes me think it might possibly not be fried (hoping like hell)

 

[mamw93]

For a CPU to be concidered "fried" it does not have to literally be physically transformed. It just has to be broke beyond repair. You probably did break your CPU by accidenatly ocerclocking it that high. You could try to put the CPU into a new motherboard if you have the means to do so but if not you could go into the BIOS and reset all the settings to default. I think that overclocking tools are actually resetting the BIOS in the background. Go back into the BIOS and reset the settings to default... if you have no default option go find the stock setting and use those instead. If this doesn't work you CPU has been fried like a piece of chicken.

 

[Daemonus]

I cant even get into the bios, im assuming that means ive fried it

 

[shiftstealth]

mamw he said he cant post.

 

[TheDraac]

For the heck of it..... try unplugging the power supply from ac power & remove CMOS battery & setting the CMOS clear/reset jumper. Leave this way for a minute or so and then reconnect everything.

Just a quick shot in the dark...

BTW... Who Makes your motherboard ???

 

[Daemonus]

XFX nVidia 790i Ultra SLI

Didnt realise id forgotten that

 

[sid_nag17]

feel sorry for you daemonus

hope ur rig starts working all da best!

 

[Daemonus]

Yeap well as far as I can tell its fried as fried can be ><

At least I have a little money saved away for a rainy day and I should be able to have it up and running again by the end of the week!

Thanks for the help everyone

 

[sid_nag17]

why dont u try getting it replaced??? give some bullshit story to ur dealer and demand that he replaces ur cpu. tru it if u think thats an option! all da best!

 

[mamw93]

Ya a new processor should work.

 

[TheDraac]

I've been doing some reading and from what I think I understand, the FF post code means it is going to boot. I gather it should read an FF code when everything is working normal. If that is the case, try another video card, even a pci card hopfully one you know is working.

I'de give that a try, I'm kinda skeptical that it's a bad CPU at this point. I'm thinking the MB might have gone belly up instead.

Please let us know what it was when you figure it out, to many posts that end with "Thanks, I fixed it" and no info as to what the fix was. Drives me crazy.....

 

[mamw93]

The CPU explains it all. He accidentaly overclocked his CPU to 4GHZ and it immediatly stopped working... how do you get video card out of that?????

 

[Jim_L9]

Before the code reads FF, does it cycle through other codes? IF so, I think the CPU is fine.

 

[TheDraac]

Ditto.... I'm darn sure if the post code makes it to FF "Boot"... the CPU must be working. Unfortunately, if you don't have a second CPU or MB to test with, it's kinda like fishing in the dark..... So ya gotta use dynamite...!!!! lol

 

[amdfangirl]

FF means it has passed every BIOS/board test.

 

[Daemonus]

Well at the moment the cpu is in transit back to intel so hopefully I comes back working or replaced

My motherboard has an onboard POST code display and as far as I can tell FF shows up both without a CPU in the motherboard (Have tested minus CPU before I blew it -.-) and also POST completed successfully. The other thing is all my fans run at full revs (this also happened without the CPU in before this incident) instead of dropping down.

I doubt it could be anything else as it froze the second I accidentally overclocked the CPU so thats the most likely, if Intel comes back and says the CPU is fine then I guess its the motherboard

 

[amdfangirl]

Well, you could not overclock...

 

[Daemonus]

Yeah true... but in this instance it was accidental

I mean you would have to be pretty stupid to intentionally overclock from 3.16 to 4ghz in 1 go

 

[amdfangirl]

hmm... last time I tried from 2.3Ghz to 3Ghz almost killed my motherboard. Just mildly OC it, a good margin between the maximum.

 

[pat mcgroin]

Something to consider when you get your CPU back would be to unplug the HDD
before booting.
If I remember correctly the Nvidia utility that you used is software based and writes a log.
When you boot it will read that log and try to implement the last settings thus trying to overclock to that level again.
I think booting to safe mode you should be able to stop the utility from starting but I can not test that theory because I dont have that utility on my system anymore.
Maybe someone who has it on their system can check that out and post back for you.

 

[amdfangirl]

Interesting...

 

[jv_acabal]

I think you killed your RAM and not your CPU. Try recalling your FSBRAM ratio. e.g. If you had it set to 1.20 or higher, then you have just forced it to 960MHz or just try to calculate (400Mhz x FSB-DRAM ratio). That could be your memory frequency when you clicked apply. I've lost several RAM modules before because of that. I hope this advice helps.

 

[jv_acabal]

A minor correction: after remembering that E8500 has 9.5x and not 10x, this means that your system ran at 421MHz FSB. In your case, I believe 1:1 is your FSBRAM ratio. Overclocking the FSB to 421MHz means that your RAM ran at 1684MHz! May it rest in peace.