Two dead DOAs in a row? That doesn't sound right.

[psycho sonic]

I recently replaced my brother's e5200 with another e5200. The comp froze on the bios screen that lists parts. I put the original cpu in and it worked, so I RMA'd the new one. The replacement e5200 just came in, and it's doing the exact same thing as the one we RMA'd it for. Is this one DOA too?

Also, the reason we replaced it was because he was getting low framerates. We knew it was the cpu because a few months back it was overheating for several weeks before he got me to fix it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[geofelt]

Is it possible that the motherboard requires a bios update?
Perhaps the new E5200's have a revision that the motherboard does not handle.

 

[psycho sonic]

It's already updated. We also reapplied the thermal paste, no change. Do we just have really bad luck?

 

[megamanx00]

After you updated the BIOS did you load the setup defaults? Just one of those steps people sometimes forget . Anyway, could be your board just doesn't like 45nm CPUs for whatever reason.

 

[fatkid35]

the instances of cpus being doa are few and far between. it's got to be something else. try exchanging other components like ram and psu. or try the cpu in another board. something sounds fishy. a hot cpu will shut down the whole computer before it hurts itself. i missed two push pins on a intel cooler once and thats what it did. just started to boot and stopped. you'll brick a motherboard before a cpu most the time, unless your like toms and overvolt the crap out of an I5! haha.

 

[geofelt]

At this point, I would suspect the motherboard not the cpu. Which one are we talking about?

 

[psycho sonic]

The motherboard's a crappy ECS Elitegroup M2-G33T. I don't understand though, why would the motherboard be at fault when the exact same model of cpu doesn't work?

And I can't try the parts in another comp, the other one in the house is one from the 90's.

 

[B-Unit]

If the original one still works, why are you replacing it again? Your not going to see any FPS gains by replacing it with an identical CPU.

 

[psycho sonic]

If the original one still works, why are you replacing it again? Your not going to see any FPS gains by replacing it with an identical CPU.

Also, the reason we replaced it was because he was getting low framerates. We knew it was the cpu because a few months back it was overheating for several weeks before he got me to fix it.

The fps just started dropping out of nowhere, and it was mainly in Source games, which are heavily based on cpu-usage.

 

[B-Unit]

Is the original failing prime95 or some kind of stress test? Just because it got hot doesnt mean its broken. As mentioned, the motherboard is far more likely to have been damaged, particularly a bargin bin mobo like an ECS.

 

[psycho sonic]

Is the original failing prime95 or some kind of stress test? Just because it got hot doesnt mean its broken.

Didn't run those, i will next time I see him. And it didn't get hot, the temp's normal. And I still don't understand, why would a replacement of the same model not work while the original does?

 

[B-Unit]

Didn't run those, i will next time I see him. And it didn't get hot, the temp's normal. ...

Also, the reason we replaced it was because he was getting low framerates. We knew it was the cpu because a few months back it was overheating for several weeks before he got me to fix it.

As to your followup question, flaky motherboard is flaky.

 

[psycho sonic]

No, the importance of it overheating a few months ago is the severity and for how long. It was at temps of ~90c for a month or two straight while idling. He didn't tell me for a while, and I fixed it when he did. We figured that:
a)Source games are the main games that are slowing down in the last several weeks.
b)It was overheating like hell consistently for a long time. We figured this would shorten the lifespan if it wasn't already damaged.

 

[B-Unit]

While your reasoning is OK, keep in mind that the other components near the CPU would have also been heated by this, so that places RAM, chipset, and depending on how the ventilation was, the video card, at risk.

 

[psycho sonic]

Ah. Well, we did memtest and reseated the ram, no change. Also ran gpu tests and nothing seemed to go wrong. I've already had him RMA this second cpu, so if the next one's DOA then I guess we'll know.

And for his wallet's sake, I'm hoping it's the cpu. Newegg doesn't refund them.

 

[psycho sonic]

Well, he just got it in.

...and it didn't work. Awesome.

I'll take your word for it that it's the mobo and tell him about some decent ones.

Can someone tell me why his cpu works, but not the new one, even though they're identical models?