Question Is my CPU dead ?

AForceGaming

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Recap : Before all of this, my PC wouldn't POST and I accidentally switched the red switch from 230V to 115V and the PSU exploded, so i replaced the PSU with a cheap 500 Watts one just to test if one of the components died and everything turned fine except for a stick of RAM which was already dead before all of this and it was one of the 2 reasons my PC wouldn't POST, keep reading to understand, here's the PSU thread :
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/should-i-replace-my-psu.3756392/#post-22649205


Hi, a month ago i took my pc to the repair shop because it wouldn't POST, and I got it fixed by replacing a dead stick of RAM and guy also said that the CPU had some kind of moist or oxid problem ( I didn't understand what be said).


Anyways, I got the PC home and booted it up only to notice that it was running like cr*p ; The temperature was high (75° for CPU) , Windows 10 was very slow and games were stuttering during gameplay.


So, I opened the rig, applied some thermal paste, loaded optimized bios settings ,enabled Thermal Throttling, Ran defrag tool on my HDD ,applied many Windows optimization and turned off many settings (Gamebar + unnecessary startup services ect...).

The PC became smooth and ran games well and everything was fine (CPU temp dropped to 45° - 35°), but I wanted to take it a step further and overclock the CPU from the stock 2.33Ghz to 2.80Ghz, did it with a help of a YouTube video (I'll link it if needed), so I opened the bios and set the speed from the default 333 to a 400 and Windows showed "2.33Ghz 2.80Ghz" in the about PC section, NOTE THAT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN THE 10 YEARS LIFESPAN OF THE PC THAT I DID THIS, I never overclocked the CPU before.

Everything was fine for a couple of days until one day the PC started acting weird: one night I put the PC in hibernation as I always did, but in the morning as soon as I woke up my PC started on its own and the PSU made a grinding noise it never did before so I unplugged the power cable and I rebooted it and the noise disappeared. Next day it DID THE SAME THING AS SOON AS I WOKE UP IT STARTED ON ITS OWN, I was speechless like WTF is my PC possessed or something ??? It wakes up with me !! I swear !! That was weird AF... It never did it again after these 2 days tho.

Skipping a couple of days and this is when the incident happened; I was playing CS:S which I rarely play and it runs so fine with over 200 FPS and during gameplay two big stutters happened, the game freezed for a couple of seconds + screen went black then it resumed like nothing happened but after a couple of minutes the PC immediately shuts down, i tought that the power went off but it did not, the power was working fine, so i carefully inspected the mobo and the components were hot but touchable, so I pressed the power button but nothing happens only motherboard LED is on + power button LED turns on for a second and never turns on again after pressing it (i'll send video demonstration if needed).

I have two conclusions:
A. The PSU is cr*p (which it is because it was like a placeholder) and the signs are the grinding noises that it makes, and during the gameplay it overheated and gone bad. But what makes this conclusion a little bit false are the LED lights on the mobo.

B.The CPU died and I shouldn't have overclocked it, what supports this is the PC running for a nanosecond then turning off.

C. There was a short from the power extension that I use, what supports this is that I had a laptop dying the same way when I was also playing CS:S , although that laptop was trash and old and I didn't mind.

I'm going to get the PC to the same technician again soon and I'll keep you updated on the situation..
Here's my setup, I replaced a stick of RAM and the PSU:
PSU:
Hipro HP-D3057F3R 300W(old)
Enter-500W (new)

CPU:
Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8200
CPU Cooler:
Intel® Stock Cooler (LGA 755)
Motherboard:
ASRock g31m-s 2.0
Ram:
TwinMOS DDR2-667 2GB U-DIMM
TXRUI DDR2 800 CL11/2GB DIMM PC2- 6400 (new)

HDDs:
Samsung HD502HJ 500GB (using)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB (not using)

GPU:
NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 1 GB
Chassis:
Unknown ( I couldn't find it anywhere )
OS:
Windows 10 Pro x64
Monitor:
Samsung SyncMaster P2350 60Hrz

I hope it's the PSU and not the CPU or the mobo and if it was one of them then goodbye PC you served me well for over 10 years and I'm going to buy a new one :'(
 

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@AForceGaming

you could try getting a new psu, not a cheap one this time.
even if the cpu died, it's cheap to get a new one for your board in chinese stores at Aliexpress - the Q9500 of my backup pc came from there, and it still works fine to this day.
but if it's your board that died, then there's nothing that can be done anymore.

the question is, is your old mobo still enough for your needs? If you want to play newer games without lag at 1080p, then you should get a stronger pc.
 
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AForceGaming

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@AForceGaming

you could try getting a new psu, not a cheap one this time.
even if the cpu died, it's cheap to get a new one for your board in chinese stores at Aliexpress - the Q9500 of my backup pc came from there, and it still works fine to this day.
but if it's your board that died, then there's nothing that can be done anymore.

the question is, is your old mobo still enough for your needs? If you want to play newer games without lag at 1080p, then you should get a stronger pc.
Thanks for commenting,
I bought the PC from 2011 and it was powerful for the games in that era, but now I only use it to play CS:GO, L4D2,Minecraft and some other games all on medium resolutions and I that's all I want to play I don't nees any powerful games even if I get a new PC I would mostly still play these, for FPS they run pretty well.
For the mobo then no, it's mostly not upgradable and it has 2 slots of DDR2 RAM I only found the 2 GB versions of these sticks I'm unsire if DDR2 4GB existsing the Cuz the mobo can support 8 GB of RAM.
The GPU is upgradable but at a cost of bottlenecking the CPU since Graphics Carr slot has 16x PCI Express but the CPU is an LGA 775 and any modern Graphics Card would likely bottleneck it.
 

AForceGaming

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@AForceGaming

you could try getting a new psu, not a cheap one this time.
even if the cpu died, it's cheap to get a new one for your board in chinese stores at Aliexpress - the Q9500 of my backup pc came from there, and it still works fine to this day.
but if it's your board that died, then there's nothing that can be done anymore.

the question is, is your old mobo still enough for your needs? If you want to play newer games without lag at 1080p, then you should get a stronger pc.
Also can a dead PSU still light up the mobo's LED lights ?
 

AForceGaming

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Feb 5, 2022
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@AForceGaming

you could try getting a new psu, not a cheap one this time.
even if the cpu died, it's cheap to get a new one for your board in chinese stores at Aliexpress - the Q9500 of my backup pc came from there, and it still works fine to this day.
but if it's your board that died, then there's nothing that can be done anymore.

the question is, is your old mobo still enough for your needs? If you want to play newer games without lag at 1080p, then you should get a stronger pc.
Can u name cheap and reliable LGA 775 CPU ?
 
Can u name cheap and reliable LGA 775 CPU ?

LGA 775 is (AFAIK) out of production. That means: you'll pay a price based on availability in your region and which may not be anything close to original MSRP. You're likely to find that "cheap" ones are used. Properly installed, any one is most likely equally reliable as any other WHEN NEW. When used it's a gamble but the models that are not overclockable are least likely to have been abused.

Last: which are appropriate for you depends entirely on your motherboard's compatibility and BIOS revision level. Check the manufacturer's support site for that information.
 
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Can u name cheap and reliable LGA 775 CPU ?

if your cpu is broken, then I suggest just buying the same cpu to replace it. A q8200 is only 6 dollars on Aliexpress, and it's probably priced similarly on other sites if you don't want to buy from ali. This should allow you to keep enjoy playing the games that you have. :)

now.. if the reason you are asking for a cpu suggestion is to get more performance. I assume you are looking for more performance, because you overlocked your cpu (unfortunately, with disastrous results). Sorry to say, lga 775 is really weak by today's standards, and you're just setting yourself up for a disappointment if more performance is what you're after. Yes, my Q9500 also sits on an lga 775 board, but it's main purpose is more of a backup data storage than for gaming. I gave it a GTX 1650, so it could (to a certain degree) run Genshin Impact, because I want to be able to play Genshin whatever pc in the house I'm using - but it cannot do much gaming beyond that.
 
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AForceGaming

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just one more advice on game. When possible, I disable anti-aliasing and vsync in games on my lga 775 board, and the game does feel smoother to play + less lag. Not sure if it will work for you, but something you could try.
After the diagnosis, it turns out that the mobo died ... And it took the graphics card with it
So this has nothing to do with the CPU.
So what do you guys advice me to do ?
Replace the mobo and get a graphics card and keep it going OR straight up buy a new PC ?
 

Tac 25

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sorry to hear the gpu went toast, the GTX 950 is still decent for budget gaming even today.

advice is get an entirely new pc.

if you can't afford a brand new pc that uses a 10th gen and above cpu... another option is a low priced second hand Dell pc that has an i5-2500k or an i7-2600k = these cpu's are also quite old, but they are a lot better than your Q8200.

i5-2500k vs Q8200


https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q8200-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500K/m3754vs619
 
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