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Northwood Burning Out?

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TC

Senior Seti Addict
Joined
Jan 15, 2001
Location
Denver, CO
I've got a system problem that I'm trying to nail down, and I'm worried that my cpu may be burning out from the voltage and overclock it's been handling. I've got a 2.2 and I've been running it at 129FSB for 2838MHz using approx 1.87-1.9 volts, cooled with a swiftech water block. My motherboard is an Abit TH7II. It has run this way for a couple of months. This morning I walked in the office to find it stuck on a BSOD. I figured maybe it was a hiccup so I reset it, and upon starting windows it gave it to me again - K mode exception not handled. So I reset and went into the bios and checked temps and voltages. All looked as usual. I suspected my ram could be going bad too, since I'm using a volt mod to run the rdram at 2.7 volts. I dropped it back to 3X so it was running below spec, and I still got the BSOD. Hmm, okay so it's not ram apparently. So I dropped the entire system back to default speed and it booted fine. I rebooted and tried to take it back up to 129 - no go. So from there I started dropping the FSB in 1MHz steps until I could boot windows. I ended up at 120. I suppose my power supply could be dying, or even something on the motherboard. I can't think of any great ways to test those possibilities. I don't have any extra parts. All I know is for 2 months it has been running along happily at 2838, and now I can't boot windows any faster than 2640. Maybe I should sell the chip on Ebay and pick up a new 2.4. If I still have problems I'll get a new PSU. If that fails I could get a new board. Any suggestions?
 
I think if it was your chip it would just die. Sounds like a PSU or MOBO problem.
 
All of the voltages look fine. No power drop under load, but as an old A+ tech I know that failing psu's can make a lot of other components look bad. I guess that's the cheapest thing to replace first.
 
I bought a 400 watt Antec PSU and swapped it out - didn't change a thing. I guess I'll order some ram and see if that's it. Trying to take the cheapest route to figure this out.
 
for what it is worth, i ran a 1gig T-Bird at 1.65ghz w/ 2.15v - water-cooled and it ran happy as a clam for 4-5 months, then one day it didn't boot and after a few freezes at POST it never breathed again.

your situation is obviously different, but high voltage CAN certainly croak a chip. you might be on borrowed time.
 
I vote for the mobo and here's why based on a recent experience. I put a 1.6A on an MSI 845 ultra aru and got to 2.4Ghz and 150fsb right off. This was great, just what I wanted. After about a week though, things got real flakey and no longer had stability. Over time I started backing down the fsb to find the point where I could be stable again and wound up about 136fsb. I know this could be called splitting hairs but this was not good enough as I also have a 1.8A @ 2.4Ghz on a P4B266-C. Up to this point I had tried many remedies including different voltages, cooling and memory configurations but to no avail.

In frustation I swapped the boards around and now everything is right again, the 1.6A running happily at 2.4Ghz on the P4B266-C and the 1.8A at 2.4Ghz on the MSI. The moral of the story is that for whatever reason the MSI got tired of running high fsb but is happy at 133. Fortunately I had another board to use because I was just about convinced it was the CPU after all the troubleshooting I had done. I had run into this once before a couple of years ago on a Soyo 6VCA where stability decreased over time but replacing the board solved the problem. Hope this helps a little, good luck.
 
S_Wilson said:
I vote for the mobo and here's why based on a recent experience.
I'm leaning in favor of your opinion as well. I've already swapped out for a new PSU. I did apply a volt mod to the rdram about 2 weeks ago, but I bumped it up only to 2.7 from 2.5 which seems pretty conservative to me. I don't think the ram is fried because the problem persists even after dropping the ram down to below its rated speed. It's not a peripheral problem because I've been running those items within spec, and those types of problems don't behave like this. I'm guessing perhaps the voltage reg circuit is flaky after the high voltage, or perhaps the northbridge is giving out. I did apply arctic silver to the heatsink, but it has no fan. I think if the chip were ruined it would be a lot more problematic than this, or just plain dead.
 
This is something I have been wondering for a while now. Heat isn't the only failure mode of the CPU. Assuming you can effectively cool the CPU now matter how many watts it is dissipatting there is bound to be a voltage potential that will kill it. After all it is a bunch of FETs on a silicon chip. There is a thin layer of oxide that insulates the gate from the channel, there is also a thin silicon channel from drain to source. How much voltage can the oxide take and for how long until it burns through? How much voltage does it take to force through the channel even if the gate is off?
 
the cpu clock speed doesnt' actually change, but the performance suffers a lot according to sisoft cpu benchmark. seems to be random, but usually after heavy usage on the CPU... around 50C
 
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