Confirmation on dead CPU?

[nhananthony]

Apologies in advance if this is not the right thread to ask or someone already gone through this or I just literally answered my own question.
TL;DR question at bottom.

My build is:
Asus Z270H motherboard
i7 7700K
GTX 1080 Strix 8GB
Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 C16 2x8GB
EVGA 550 Gold (am aware that I should go for higher watt because of GPU)


In addition, the CPU was running overlocked via stock Asus BIOS option (which is maybe not a good idea but the system still ran fine).

After 3 month of use, I got the first bsod with the error message CLOCK_WATCHDOG TIMEOUT.
While so, Windows indicated that it is 20% done with its business or whatnot. Then after a while it was still stuck on 20% in which I had to use the hard reset switch out of suspicion which maybe was not ideal. I also have a sneaking suspicion that it might be the force Windows update from yesterday, but is maybe not the case.

Like many previous users that posted this issue, my PC no longer post. Any attempts will result in brief red CPU LED to yellow DRAM LED from the motherboard.

It will not go beyond DRAM yellow LED no matter what.
I tried doing the following steps from many different online threads:
- positioning all memory in different ways including using a completely different memory stick as well (a stock OEM 8GB from lenovo).
- resetting CMOS including removing battery and replacing
- switching between the Z270H back to the B250F board
- tinkering with any external connection such as USB along with tinkering SATA SSD and harddrive
- checking any bent pins on both mentioned motherboard which are still fine
- swapping PSU
- disconnected the GPU


All those mentioned steps shows no changes.
The only option left was to swap CPU.
To test my theory, I placed the i7 to a Lenovo board from a Y520 mid-tower desktop.
The booting shows no success either. I then decided to switch it with an i5 7600 to see if it post, which to my surprise it did along with mentioned Corsair 16GB sticks working.

As frustrated and worried as I am, I need from experienced users input.
So after CLOCK_WATCHDOG TIMEOUT crash and everything but the CPU posts.
Is my i7 CPU basically dead?

Again I apologize in advance if I just answered my own question which makes this post pointless.

 

[Barty1884]

The CLOCK_WATCHDOG TIMEOUT would suggest looking towards the CPU, or memory.

Now typically, CPU's don't "fail"..... They're typically DOA, opposed to failing. BUT, that goes out of the window when they're over-volted for sustained periods (or potentially overheated, consistently, I guess).

Do you have an information on the OC you were running? What kind of voltage?

While the i7 on the Lenovo board can't necessarily be definitive - the fact everything posts as expected with the i5-7600 is a pretty good sign you have an issue with the CPU.

 

[nhananthony]

The CLOCK_WATCHDOG TIMEOUT would suggest looking towards the CPU, or memory.

Now typically, CPU's don't "fail"..... They're typically DOA, opposed to failing. BUT, that goes out of the window when they're over-volted for sustained periods (or potentially overheated, consistently, I guess).

Do you have an information on the OC you were running? What kind of voltage?

While the i7 on the Lenovo board can't necessarily be definitive - the fact everything posts as expected with the i5-7600 is a pretty good sign you have an issue with the CPU.

I overlocked the CPU to 5.0 Ghz via Asus' BIOS profile option (which was dumb of me on my part). I unfortunetaly don't recall the voltage (I can't exactly remember accurately but somewhere like 1.23v, then again I used Asus option feature).
Additionally I did notice after taking off my watercooling block, the thermal paste "dry out" in a sense which was odd because I used watercooling.