Question It's dying!! Asus X99-A and a 5930k, overclocked and ran well for 6 years...

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MonsterMaxx

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I have a machine that was formerly my CAD station - fast as you could go in 2015. It's now becoming my daily driver. Overclocked and ran stabile for 6 years. Not a hiccup.
After a case swap...long story...my CPU cooler quit, an H100i. Things got pretty hot and hit thermal barriers >95°C and who knows what was protected or not.

Replaced said H100i and now it's cool, but now it has RAM issues. I played musical RAM w/ Memtest86 but got no failures. But with two sticks out (incompleting both channels) it ran, and ran fine. Win10, all working good. I suspected a bad stick and got the RMA going on that.

This morning dead again.

I've slowed everything way down in bios. Booted optimal, no help.
I've played musical video card and no change.
I've tried w/o the m.2 card and drive, no change.

Playing musical ram again with memtest, no errors yet. But with the ch1s populated it'll post and run to memtest86, but with the 2s populated it won't post - this is expected behavior, right? W/ all populated it won't post at all either. Only with RAM in ch1 will it post and try to get into windoze, but it locks up about half way.

I'm thinking the Memory is fine and it's
Powersupply
Motherboard
or the CPU
One of these is bad and I'm trying to determine which.
My vote is on CPU since it's the one that got really hot

Specs:
Mboard: Asus X99-A
CPU: Intel 5930k
Ram HyperX Predator DDR$ 3000mhz
Vid: MSI RTX 2080 Super
PS: Cooler Master V1000



If anyone has any pointers on this I'd sure appreciate the advice. Thanks in advance.
 
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MonsterMaxx

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What on earth hardware would allow a computer to run for a little bit into windoze, and then crash??

I've underclocked the cpu to 20x in hopes that would help. Nada, still crashes.

Now I'm leaning towards the motherboard.
 
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logainofhades

logainofhades

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That would be a better quality PSU, by far. How many sticks of ram, and how much total ram, are you using now? To be perfectly honest, unless you are still doing high end cad work, with said machine, 32gb is plenty, with 64 being the absolute max I would go, if wanting to fill out all the slots. 128gb is overkill for 99.99% of systems. (as is 64gb, imo.)
 
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MonsterMaxx

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You don't like the Cooler Master PSU? I always thought they made good stuff.

Anyway, I've memtested 4 stick sets in the 1ch bank, I can't get anything to happen good in the 2ch bank. I did it twice, 4 and 4 and they passed. I think we've ruled out the RAM. Should have done this earlier.

I'm headed up to Best Buy as soon as they open and try the $150 PSU. I suppose worst case it's not too bad having a spare PSU around.

I still think it's the motherboard...Something in the memory controller or power delivery.

Thing is, I can get a new CPU for $400, but a mainboard of that era...nothing new and I don't think I can bring myself to buying a 5yr old used motherboard for $400.

A PSU is this system's last hope, if that's not it, I think I'll be going new 10900K system. $1750. Ouch.


Memory capacity, I keep my machines a long time, eventually that ridiculous amount you put in when you built it will not be enough. Like this machine here, who ever thought of needing 32GB of ram in 2015, unheard of. But as a daily, that's barely enough and if I were doing CAD & FEA (which I do) it would not be enough today. 32GB would have been plenty for a daily driver for a while, but my old one had 32GB too and I was hitting the ceiling at times.
 
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MonsterMaxx

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Welp, my wife and I just had a fight over a new comp. She wants me to drop this pos off at the Geek Squad.

Fine. Let them waste their time on it. This is a disaster in the making. And they don't start on it until next tuesday.

It's OK, we wont' do any work for a week or 6 while BB has it. It's just the machine I do all my work on. Doesn't matter to her
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Nobody knows the lifespan of a cpu, even an overclocked cpu. My overclocked Pentium II 350MHz was still kicking as always when I sold it last year.

So physically your cpu could be good or bad, there's simply no way to tell without testing on a known working system. But chances are decent that that isn't the issue.

Motherboards contain 1000's of tiny components. Everything from diodes to capacitors, resistors to thermistors, mosfets to chipsets. Some of which are more vital than others. So all it takes is one small component to fail, and that can easily destroy the integrity of the board.

So choose. Try and salvage the old core components by buying replacements and hoping that you get it right before you've replaced everything, or replace everything new, warranted, stronger, faster, and save money on the long run

BB is going to come back with a toasted motherboard, would be my guess.
 
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MonsterMaxx

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I found a used MB, an X99-A II on feebay for $200, worth a shot anyway. Downside is that it won't be here until Mar 1st. :( I guess I'm down until then.

fyi: put it all back together for it's trip to BB and ran memtest86 overnight on the full mem bank. No errors on 4 passes. WTF? This thing is crazy. So I booted it to windoze and it booted, logged in, sat there for about 2 min happy as could be and crashed.
 
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MonsterMaxx

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OK, to update this.
Used Motherboard arrived Saturday. Bust Buy sent me a notif to meet them today.
BB found that it is either the Motherboard, CPU or the RAM that's bad.

I'm like 'dude, I told you that' and I was pretty sure it wasn't RAM.

So I paid my bill and took it home, swapped in the new motherboard and flashed to the latest bios. Still crashing. It'll sit in bios all day long, but soon as you put a load on it, it dies.
I now have 1 stick of ram and have swapped all 8 and it still crashes. Yes, I looked up the manual on which slot to put the RAM in. Makes me doubt it's RAM.

What we have learned in a week and $325 is that
a. BestBuy, not so great. Oh, they returned it with no cards screwed down and the RAM was in a plastic baggie.
b. Probably not the motherboard, but since it's used, who knows
c. IDK

I wonder how much money is going to go into this RAT HOLE before I chuck it and buy new parts.


Can a CPU run flakey?
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Yes. Electromigration caused by excessive heat and voltage under loads.

Think florescent light tube. It'll run for years just fine, but eventually the ends of that tube start to turn purple. And then you have to flick the switch and hope you get lucky and the tube will light up. Until one day, no amount of messing will get that sucker lit.

Nobody knows the physical lifespan of a cpu. Can't even guess. I had a Genuine Intel Pentium II 350MHz OC'd to 400MHz that still worked perfectly when I sold it, 22 years after purchase. I've had cpus croak in less than a year, and seen cpus die from overvolting (early Ryzens) in a month.
 
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MonsterMaxx

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is it possible to blow all 8 ram chips at once? and have them still pass memtest86?

It behaves like bad RAM.

Or maybe the memory controller in the CPU? Is this even possible?


Recap:
So far we
  1. replaced the cooler with a brand new H100i
  2. replaced the powersupply w/ a new Corsair 850x, no change. All new cables too.
  3. swapped other video cards in, no change
  4. swapped the ram all over (slot insertion per the manual), this has an effect, but it never really gets stabile
  5. swapped the motherboard, flashed it w/ the latest bios and a new battery
  6. I've tried hitting the ram w/ a little more voltage, I've played around w/ OC the ram (XMP) and no change.
  7. Pulled the other PCI cards out (10GB Nic and the riser card for the m.2)
I bought a I7-6850k on feebay last night for $150, throw more money at this turd.

It'd be nice if I could replace the ram but Kingston is being anything but helpful. It's now been more than two weeks on RMA and I still haven't gotten them to send an advanced replacement. Grr. Now they don't answer their phones. I suspect Kingston is going under.
 
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