I5/TH55XE borked after one month?

[mountainnick]

Hello,
I am a moderately experienced amateur system builder (6 builds over last several years), and I recently updated my chip to an i5 mounted on a Biostar TH55XE mobo with 2x2gb of Ripjaw memory. Everything worked great for close to a month until yesterday.

I had WoW running pretty much idle and stepped away for a few minutes. When I returned my screens were blank and the cpu fan was running much faster than usual. Only hard power reset would restart machine. I never even see a post screen. The cpu fan just rips along (where normally it falls to a low speed within seconds after initial power up). I swapped out video cards and tried simpler monitor configs to no avail. This suggests that the chip or mobo is at fault. There are two LED mobo status indicator lights. Neither one comes on which according to the manual means "Abnormal: CPU/Chipset error".

Has anyone seen similar. Should I just RMA the chip to the Egg or is there another way to troubleshoot when I can't even get to a post screen?

Thanks for your help!

 

[mountainnick]

If it helps at all. It is an i5-750 with a Cooler Mater GeminII S cooler. PSU is OCZ Fata1ty 550W. MSI Hawk 5770 video card.

I have also reseated memory sticks and tried single stick at a time. Same results.

 

[ordcestus]

Yeah i'd RMA both the motherboard and the CPU. Its likely the motherboard, perhaps a bad capacitor or a short somewhere. but since there is a possibility of the CPU being damaged due to this go ahead and RMa it. Good luck i hope it works out

 

[mountainnick]

Better result! After a painless RMA initiation from Newegg (CPU) and a kiss-off response from another e-tailer that rhymes with "Cry's" (mobo). I kept messing with things. After a complete disassemble and reinstall of my old board/chip, same result. The stupid PSU went bad but would still spin up all the fans including video card. Popped my old Corsair PSU in and everything is working great. Good temps, good voltages. Wewt. Problem solved.

 

[ordcestus]

yeah the PSU problem makes sense. i should have thought of that before telling you to send the motherboard off. Glad everything worked out