FX-8120 Overheat on Boot and Shut-down

[JoeDawg210]

Hello all, first post so be kind and patient!

New build that has burned-in for several weeks with no major issues. Recently disabled the on-board sound for an external Firewire sound card. Ran ~ 1-week fine with no issues. The system is on battery back-up / conditioning and if it is to be down for several days I power-down the back-up as well. To the beef...

Powered-down on Thursday, no issues and everything running as expected. Returned on Monday and attempted to fire-up. System begins boot and then abruptly shuts-down immediately as the bios splash screen flashes.

Opened the case and monitored the onboard LEDs during another boot attempt, all leds lit as the on-board check-out proceeded and then the CPU LED flashed again and the system went down. Happened to touch one of the cooling lines from the CPU and noted that it was very warm.

Pulled the cooling block off the cpu and as expected the CPU was hot. Allowed the cpu to cool and with the power supply off cooled-down the cpu further with an inverted can of dusting air. Once the frost has dissipated from the CPU, powered-up the power supply and attempted to boot while monitoring the cpu temp (with my finger). The temp went from very cold to very hot to the touch and then immediate shutdown, elapsed time ~ 5 seconds.

At this point, I buttoned-up the system and here we are. I cannot get far enough into the boot process to perform any diags. One note however, the battery back-up indicated a large power surge during boot. This is something I had not monitored in the past so I am unsure whether this is a normal state during boot.

Only the Mouse and Keyboard were connected during the last 2 boot attempts. All advice and help is appreciated.

 

[RGone]

IF or since you do not have another cpu of any type that will fit the board and boot, then we are stuck at this situation. I am going to guess the cpu is shorted. The only thing beside another cpu that might tell us anything is to clear the CMOS and try to boot again. I think I would have the cpu heatsink mounted though as it has more mass to slow the overheat symptom. Clearing the CMOS should lower or return the CPU voltage to default/stock, if for some reason it has gotten raised out of range.

If it fails to boot after CMOS clearing, then it is time to substitute some parts.

EDIT:

Notice you have one of those closed loop cpu coolers. I think I would not REmount it for test of CPU after CmOs clearing but use the stock HSF that came with the retail cpu. There is not much mass to that Corsair thing and if its' pump is not running the testing could be skewed.

END EDIT.

 

[JoeDawg210]

The "Good" News

The CPU has not been overclocked and "should" be covered by warranty. Are we relatively certain that this is indeed a CPU issue.

I will reset the bios as I contact AMD.

 

[RGone]

Are we relatively certain that this is indeed a CPU issue. =
Well from a good 1,000 miles away, that is about a good a decision as can be made. You cannot boot at all it seems and you don't have a spare processor to test with...leaves us with little else to do.

 

[JoeDawg210]

Appreciate the reply and I will update the post with any new discoveries.

Regards

 

[Joffell]

Had the same problem after doing some cleaing on the inside
of the case - Forgot to plug the pump back in

Could be that your pump has failed as well. Trying the stock
cooler if you still have it would be the best option.

Lance

 

[trents]

Yeah, I would suspect either your pump has failed or you have air lock in the lines. Hopefully, it hasn't taken out your CPU. Do you have the OEM hetasink or some other air cooler you could temporarily mount to test this theory?