What are the chances?... Dead 5960x

About 2 weeks ago, my system died. I figured it was the motherboard, even though it was showing a POST code of "00" on the debug LED and the red CPU LED was staying lit. After basic troubleshooting, I contacted ASUS for an RMA. They were, and have been, useless of course. The customer service stories you've read are true, folks. They haven't followed up with me a single time, and after being fed more BS when I called in today about them not having any stock to replace my board for the 3rd time (WTF kind of operation are they running?) I decided to go out and buy another motherboard to use in the mean time.

Fast forward a bit and I'm in my local PC hardware store. I pick up another RVE since that's the only high end board they have in, and explain that it's basically a rental. I'll be bringing it back in once my RMA gets solved, and I'll gladly pay the 10% restocking fee. Get home, swap the board in... Greeted with "00" and a red CPU LED.

What led me to believe it was the motherboard, was that fact that I'd been having some strange issues. When rebooting, 50% of the time the board would refuse to post, and display "00" on the debug LED. I never noticed, but I assume the CPU LED was lit too. Powering off and back on with the power button wouldn't solve the problem, only cutting the power with the PSU switch and turning it back on would do the trick.. Until it didn't anymore, 2 weeks ago.

I've had all sorts of hardware die on my before, but never a CPU. I've abused my fair share, but they've never even blinked.

Some of you may have read my posts about having had a terrible luck of the draw with this CPU, with it refusing to do anything more than 4.2GHz. That's what it has been set to for the past 3 months, at 1.3v. Hardly something I'd consider to be extreme or CPU threatening?

I'm open to any suggestions, but I'm pretty certain I've tried everything except running the system out of case to rule out a grounding issue, but I'm sure there isn't one. Guess I'll give that a shot now.

Well, as I suspected, it isn't a grounding issue. My CPU is dead.

I'm going to pick up a 5820k so I can get up and running while I set up an RMA with Intel. Now I need to figure out if my original RVE is dead too, don't want to fry a second CPU if it's defective. Guess the only thing I can check without putting a new CPU in is removing the heatsinks and checking the power section for damage.

I have an RVE with a 5960x doing the same thing, figured it was the RVE but now I'm wondering.

Hopefully your CPU doesn't suffer the same fate as mine. What BIOS version are you running? I was using shamino's 0802.

New board is working great with the temporary 5820k I picked up. I don't trust the old board, so I'm not trying it out. Will RMA it and sell it when it gets back.

Christ these motherboards are pure garbage.

Never again, ASUS, never again. MSI/Gigabyte, here I come.

Wish I would have stuck with my X79 build.

I know this is old but I just had the same issue with a new x99 asus sabertooth, it gave me overvolt and overtemp error on post, entered bios and had the cpu at 1.85-1.90v even though manually set to 1.312, then after like 2 seconds it went back to 1.312 like it was set. Needless to say I reflashed the original bios (was on 1702 newest one), well after the bios flash it never even posted, stuck on the cpu led light error. Put the cpu in another x99 sabertooth and same error. Sending mobo and cpu back for replacement.

After some bad experiences with Asus customer support, wonky Gigabyte bioses, and MSI boards with serious hardware issues right out of the box, I have been more consistently pleased with ASRock motherboards and customer support. ASRock has been getting more of my business lately.

trents said:

After some bad experiences with Asus customer support, wonky Gigabyte bioses, and MSI boards with serious hardware issues right out of the box, I have been more consistently pleased with ASRock motherboards and customer support. ASRock has been getting more of my business lately.

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Yeah this year I have been using asrock a lot more too, their board designs have come a long way and their bios reminds me of asus. I still like using asus on the higher end stuff but this is a serious bug (well appears to be a bug), I may not use them on another x99 until I see some sort of bios or revision that fixes this.

ASUS RVE is perfect for me but my RMA took 5 weeks ( while fixing the board took 1 day ). ASRock Z97 OCF is so far great too. Actually all ASRock boards lately were great and I was selling them for other reasons ( like lack of some features but not manufacturer's fault ).
The only issue I found in some ASRock boards ( the same as in most other brands ) is that you can corrupt BIOS while pushing the board too hard ( or kill BIOS chip ). It happened to me on Z87M OCF but fixed it and on FM2 Extreme6+ board but in this case ASRock disabled recovery so I couldn't fix it but I got instant replacement from the store.
On MSI and Gigabyte BIOSes were dying too. I have no idea why it's happening so often on new boards ( especially on MSI ). If you have ASUS then you can force flash it but on most other boards not.