My very first dead Intel CPU ever

Stoly

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So for about a month my son told me the PC wouldn't start and make beeping sounds.

I figured it was the ram, so I reseated it and it worked. It would run fine for a couple of days and then it happened again, I cleaned the sticks and memory slots and again it ran fine, except that on power up or reboot no matter what it would beep, reseat sticks, rinse and repeat it worked again, this has been going on for weeks, I ended up puting it to sleep instead of power off, as I really didn't have the time to troubleshoot and the PC was completely stable.

I knew for sure the problem was not the ram as I tried several sticks on other PC so I figured it should be the motherboard as in my 30+ years experience its NEVER the CPU.

But as every rule there's always an exception. Today the PC wouldn't turn on, the PSU is like 3 months old but I still tried another, same result, the leds on the MB would light on, but upon pressing the power buttoin it would turn off in a fraction of a second. No beeps, nada.

So I removed the MB for closer inspection, removed the CPU and behold...

You can look at what seems like a stain on the top left rows, I don't think that's the cause but never the less I cleaned it and tried it on another MB. Same results.

I've built countless systems for my self, family and customers. This is the first time ever that I've seen a dead intel CPU. I mean I even have some old celeron and P4 that work to this day. I always thought intel CPUs would last forever.

BTW no overclocking as its a Core i5 3330.

Sorry by the bad pic, got cheapo phone with sucky camera.



IMG_20210418_185301.jpg
 
It's bound to happen to everyone, and like you I went through the same diagnostic route. I've only had 2 dead CPUs in my lifetime. One was Intel (C2D E6600), and the other was an AMD X3 435.

I still to this day rule the CPU out as the problem, leaving it dead last on the list of things that could go wrong.
 
It doesn't happen often. I've only ever seen about a dozen defective Intel CPU's and even then, less than half those died on their own without the motherboard dying and taking the chip with it. I've worked with untold thousands of Intel CPU's and that's it for failed ones.
 
I've still got a dang Intel 4771 that's dead. Was working fine one day, and the system just shut down the next day.

As always, I ruled out ram, psu, motherboard, and anything else attached.

Put the chip in another board and it wouldn't boot.

Crazy to be honest. As most stated, it is a very rare problem.
 
During the AMD TB/barton era, I had my fair share of dead athlons/durons from customers. Mostly the blame was on the user. as putting the heatsink the wrong way could break the core. But also they lacked thermal protection, so lousy cooling also killed amd cpus.

I recall a celeron 300 cpu with a missing pin and it still worked. That's how good they are.

To be fair since athlon64, AMD cpus are about as good as Intel, regarding how much they last.
 
During the AMD TB/barton era, I had my fair share of dead athlons/durons from customers. Mostly the blame was on the user. as putting the heatsink the wrong way could break the core. But also they lacked thermal protection, so lousy cooling also killed amd cpus.

Oh man, I had a ton of them come into the shop dead. As you said, most users would crack the core. I was glad to see AMD start putting heat spreaders on the CPU's.
 
I haven't broken any CPUs lately, but Intel's LGA sockets?

Those can be a nightmare!

It's fair to say I see more of these than most people. I've reviewed about 200 motherboards and built or serviced countless more systems that use them. I've only ever damaged one and I was able to fix it.
 
It's fair to say I see more of these than most people. I've reviewed about 200 motherboards and built or serviced countless more systems that use them. I've only ever damaged one and I was able to fix it.
I'm able to make them work again... but have experienced various additional oddness. Granted, I attribute this entirely to my own lack of proper handling at the time, like trying to swap CPUs out with the case still fully plugged in (power off and disconnected, but otherwise), while it's on its side under the desk.

That was stupid.

Otherwise I don't think I've had problem with them.
 
My experience is considerably more limited but I've serviced somewhere in the vicinity of a 100 or so desktops with my other job. So far, no dead CPU's but I've seen PSUs go plenty of times. A motherboard here and there and a couple of bad SSDs and ram and a few NICs. Personally I've had one bad NVMe drive(Kingston), seen a few bad microSDs, and too many WD external drives go bad too soon to ever touch one again but like everyone said, CPUs are pretty rare.
 
My experience is considerably more limited but I've serviced somewhere in the vicinity of a 100 or so desktops with my other job. So far, no dead CPU's but I've seen PSUs go plenty of times. A motherboard here and there and a couple of bad SSDs and ram and a few NICs. Personally I've had one bad NVMe drive(Kingston), seen a few bad microSDs, and too many WD external drives go bad too soon to ever touch one again but like everyone said, CPUs are pretty rare.

I would put HDDs as the number 2 failure in PCs second only to PSUs. Specially since 1TB drives came out I recall in those years I swapped dozen of HDDs still under warranty.

A few years ago we handled warranties for DELL and we had a refinary as a client, since corrosion was really high, dead motherboards and HDDs were dime a dozen. We made quite a bit of money during that period. ;)
 
I would put HDDs as the number 2 failure in PCs second only to PSUs. Specially since 1TB drives came out I recall in those years I swapped dozen of HDDs still under warranty.
I've had more dead SSDs in the last decade than dead HDDs, personally- at work, well, whatever trash HP sells for 10K and 15K enterprise spinners have died at regular intervals on top of the controllers, occasional NIC failures, GBIC / SFP modules, fans occasionally...

Yeah. I've killed or damaged a few motherboards over the years mostly out of laziness, but I haven't really had any non-user-induced failures.

Also!

For 'caustic' environments, I'm at the point of recommending the fully fanless stuff that's available. Definitely fast enough for anything that doesn't need real 'grunt'.
 
I've had more dead SSDs in the last decade than dead HDDs, personally- at work, well, whatever trash HP sells for 10K and 15K enterprise spinners have died at regular intervals on top of the controllers, occasional NIC failures, GBIC / SFP modules, fans occasionally...

Yeah. I've killed or damaged a few motherboards over the years mostly out of laziness, but I haven't really had any non-user-induced failures.

Also!

For 'caustic' environments, I'm at the point of recommending the fully fanless stuff that's available. Definitely fast enough for anything that doesn't need real 'grunt'.
I only had one dead SSD so far still under warranty.

IME fans last quite a bit, and mostly die because of lack of maintenance.
 
fully fanless stuff that's available.
Yeah, we're entering a new era with lower TDP cpus that are still pretty powerful. I've noticed the gains in recent years. Granted they've been around forever but in the last 3-5 things have gone to another level.
 
Yeah, we're entering a new era with lower TDP cpus that are still pretty powerful. I've noticed the gains in recent years. Granted they've been around forever but in the last 3-5 things have gone to another level.
You can get an 8000-series quad-core in one; still Skylake, but that's seriously more horsepower than most desktop users need outright!
 
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