Question Could my processor be broken just because it hasn't been used for long time ?

Aug 9, 2019
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I have been building my pc part by part for pretty long time and my first component bought was cpu. I bought it approximately 1 year ago and plugged it into my MoBo yesterday for first time but it seem like it's not working could the problem really be the that I haven't used it for so long ? No pins are bend and the cpu looks pretty fine but pc doesn't seem to get to POST. The CPU I'm using is AMD Athlon X4 870K and MoBo is Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM S1
 
Aug 9, 2019
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"could the problem really be the that I haven't used it for so long ? "
I seriously doubt it.
CPUs and in general....ICs last a LONG time just sitting.
I thought so but what can be the problem then ? Everything is running until I plug in 4 pin ATX 12V in the MoBo. When I try to run it with it plugged in it doesn't even start. And all symptoms are looking like it's faulty cpu.
 
I have been building my pc part by part for pretty long time and my first component bought was cpu. I bought it approximately 1 year ago and plugged it into my MoBo yesterday for first time but it seem like it's not working could the problem really be the that I haven't used it for so long ? No pins are bend and the cpu looks pretty fine but pc doesn't seem to get to POST. The CPU I'm using is AMD Athlon X4 870K and MoBo is Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM S1

Have you installed a graphics card?
 
Aug 9, 2019
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Have you installed a graphics card?
Everything is plugged in. Graphics card, CPU, HDD, PSU. But after turning on the pc it either doesn't start up at all (if ATX 12V is plugged in) or if it's not plugged in it starts up but monitor doesn't turn on and it doesn't get event to POST test so no beeping or anything that could indicate what's the problem
 
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Deleted member 14196

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you need to start the process of elimination. start with your power supply, does it work in another machine? etc..
 
Aug 9, 2019
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you need to start the process of elimination. start with your power supply, does it work in another machine? etc..
Yep PSU works perfectly fine in my other pc so does graphics card and both of my HDDs only two things I cannot test on my other machine are RAM and CPU and the RAM I bought them from my friend and on his pc it was working perfectly fine as well so I think the only problem could be the CPU but I've got no idea why tho
 
Aug 9, 2019
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Yep PSU works perfectly fine in my other pc so does graphics card and both of my HDDs only two things I cannot test on my other machine are RAM and CPU and the RAM I bought them from my friend and on his pc it was working perfectly fine as well so I think the only problem could be the CPU but I've got no idea why tho
or the MoBo could be faulty but I don't have any other CPU that I could try using on it
 
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Deleted member 14196

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did you breadboard it? just mobo, cpu, psu, gpu and one stick of ram? have you also cleared the CMOS?
 
Aug 9, 2019
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did you breadboard it? just mobo, cpu, psu, gpu and one stick of ram? have you also cleared the CMOS?
I will tell you everything I tried to do because I think I tried probably almost everything that has to do something with hardware.
My first problem with this PC was that it needed to be connected straight into the wall. after I did that, it at least turned on (thinking about it right now I think it wasn't problem with where it was connected, but still that ATX 12V thingy was plugged in and that seem to cause the most trouble) so now when I turn it on all fans are spinning but monitor is not turning on. So I tried to plug in the ATX 12V thing that turns out is the biggest problem because when it's plugged in the PC doesn't even turn on like if no power was in the MoBo so i googled that and found out it can be orientated wrongly so I tried to turn it around 180 degrees and still PC is completely numb. So I'am unable to turn the PC on when ATX 12V is plugged in I tried running my PC with only CPU, CPU cooler and PSU connected still when ATX 12V connected nothing happens. So I tried disconnecting it again and plugging the monitor straight into the MoBo while the ATX 12V disconnected everything started up and by everything I mean : CPU cooler, graphics card fan, PSU fan, some front panel LEDs and that's probably all (only visible things I'm not sure if the things itself work but in my other machine they worked just fine (except the CPU I couldn't test that 1 out )) but still monitor haven't got any input even tho it was connected straight into the graphics card. So I tried different monitor using HDMI instead of VGA still nothing so pretty sure the monitor is not faulty. Then I tried starting it up with connected only 1 stick of ram CPU and GPU still nothing. So next thing I tried was taking out speaker from different case (my didn't have one) so I could hear the beeps of POST tests then I figured out that after starting the PC it doesn't even get to POST tests so no beeps for me :( and that's where Im stuck right now. And the MoBo I've got is brand new so there shouldn't be any problem with BIOS I think but no I haven't tried to reset CMOS yet
 

VIVO-US

Honorable
Feb 1, 2017
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The ATX12V connector is keyed to prevent the cable from being plugged in backwards, but if the cable was somehow plugged in backwards, it very well could have blown out the CPU as well as the CPU circuit on the motherboard. Looking at the board you have, with the ports on the left and the RAM on the right, the yellow (+) wires for the ATX12V cable should be on the right, and the black wires (-) on the left.
 
Aug 9, 2019
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The ATX12V connector is keyed to prevent the cable from being plugged in backwards, but if the cable was somehow plugged in backwards, it very well could have blown out the CPU as well as the CPU circuit on the motherboard. Looking at the board you have, with the ports on the left and the RAM on the right, the yellow (+) wires for the ATX12V cable should be on the right, and the black wires (-) on the left.
Is there a way to find out if anything has blown out ? Or only thing I can try is buying a new CPU and hoping this one was faulty
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
Buying PC parts piecemeal is generally not a good idea for this very reason: should anything go wrong with any one part, most of your parts that couldn't be independently tested are now out of their return window. CPU-MoBo-RAM should be bought at about the same time to ensure they all work together or can be returned if they don't. One year is an extremely long time between buying a CPU and actually being able to (attempt to) put it to use.

As for how long components can sit before being "damaged by time", I have an old PC (200Mhz Pentium MMX) I hadn't turned on in ~10 years and wanted to test something on a few years ago. Its HDD's bearings had seized, gave it light sideways taps while it was trying to spin up, started turning after 3-4 attempts, was back to normal operation after a few minutes of warming up and had no problem booting into Windows 98. In general, I'd expect most PC components' shelf life to be around 20 years mainly due to flash memory leakage in subsystems' micro-controllers and configuration flash memory. Once the firmware gets corrupted by leakage, there is no recovering from it. Before that, it may be possible to reset the clock by updating firmware to refresh firmware memory.
 
Aug 9, 2019
12
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Buying PC parts piecemeal is generally not a good idea for this very reason: should anything go wrong with any one part, most of your parts that couldn't be independently tested are now out of their return window. CPU-MoBo-RAM should be bought at about the same time to ensure they all work together or can be returned if they don't. One year is an extremely long time between buying a CPU and actually being able to (attempt to) put it to use.

As for how long components can sit before being "damaged by time", I have an old PC (200Mhz Pentium MMX) I hadn't turned on in ~10 years and wanted to test something on a few years ago. Its HDD's bearings had seized, gave it light sideways taps while it was trying to spin up, started turning after 3-4 attempts, was back to normal operation after a few minutes of warming up and had no problem booting into Windows 98. In general, I'd expect most PC components' shelf life to be around 20 years mainly due to flash memory leakage in subsystems' micro-controllers and configuration flash memory. Once the firmware gets corrupted by leakage, there is no recovering from it. Before that, it may be possible to reset the clock by updating firmware to refresh firmware memory.

I know that buying it piece by piece isn't the best idea but at first I didn't know it will take so long to put all the parts together. And my old PC is probably like 10 y.o. as well but this CPU hasn't been used at all for year standing on my shelf in a box so idk. I know like while they are being used (the CPUs) they last pretty long but when this one hasn't been used I thought something might have gone wrong or I know that this will sound weird but "it got used to not being used or run" I know CPUs don't work like that but that's the reason why I posted this on here hoping someone could help and I got probably all the help I could so yep not gonna happen again.
 

CoDrift

Honorable
Jun 11, 2018
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1- Just check the RAM and GPU on a separate machine to rule those out.
2- You already checked the PSU, so I guess that's fine.
3- Remove the HDDs, SSDs and GPU and try running it to see if the BIOS screen pops up.
4- If there's no on-board graphics, plug in the "Tested" GPU. (Or an old working one)
5- Keep the HDDs and SSDs unplugged.
6- If it still wont post, that leaves only the CPU and the MOBO.
7- Now remove the CMOS battery and place it back after about 5 secs.
8- Plug in a USB light or a USB with an LED indicator and turn on the PC and see if the lights turn on for even a split second? (Worth a try)
9- If the lights turned on, the CPU or another component is interfering.
10 - See if the wires are properly connected
11- If not, I'd finally have it checked.