Question Did brown out kill my CPU?

[brianz]

Just had a quick flash brown out during storm. My otherwise perfect PC of just over a year, running an i9 chip on Asus ROG Maximus XII, seems instantly damaged. Still running with RAM RGB lights and fans, and I hear normal drive sounds during boot, but motherboard is giving me error 7F ("reserved for future use" per manual) which then changes to "Check CPU". Meanwhile, monitor display is blank, no signal. How do I even begin to troubleshoot this, short of swapping out the CPU?? Please help! I've done cold reboots to no avail, same result. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[jay32267]

When you have a brown out....it is common to also have damaging voltage spikes....which can damage the power supply.
If a brownout damaged anything....I would suspect the power supply would get damaged ....as opposed to the motherboard of the CPU.

 

[brianz]

Well I did a cold reboot again, this time with a full unplugging of PSU from wall, along with physically switching it off. Then replugged, re-switched to on, and did boot process... and it worked!! Almost had a heart attack. Doesn't look like any damage occurred, but it still seems like odd behavior for the PSU. I guess I should get a better surge protector.

 

[jay32267]

It's possible there were caps that needed to be drained in the PSU....due to odd things that may have happened during the brownout.
I would just keep an eye on it.
If you want....you can check your voltages with HWInfo....or many times you can also check them in the BIOS.
They main voltages.....12,5 and 3.3.......should be within 5% of those values.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...I guess I should get a better surge protector.

If this is a common occurrence (the brownouts) you should replace your surge protector regularly. Most surge protection devices are only good for a limited number of 'hits' and give no indication when protection is gone.