[SOLVED] Proccessor speed at over 20 MILLION ghz on 'refurbished' ebay computer with i5-2500s - Fake CPU?

[crimson_sun]

First post here. Thank you in advance. Have not found a single other instance of this issue!

My friend at work bought her son a refurbished pc from ebay (you know the ones with the nice new rgb case but a motherboard from an old optiplex).
It has (apparently) an i5-2500s @ 2.7ghz,
and (confirmed) 4gb RAM (4x2gb 1rx8 pc3 - 12800u), 250gb SSD and gt1080 2gb
The motherboard is a ECS Q67H2-AM V1.1 DDR3 LGA1155 Micro ATX

She brought it in for me to look at as it was having 'Kmode exception not handled' BSOD error every 10-20 minutes without fail (no specified driver mentioned in error code). The ebay seller said that it was after 30 days so could do nothing - the usual.

I swapped the RAM around for some brand new sticks and disabled fast startup, neither of which fixed the issue.

I then noticed that the CPU was constantly at 100% usage even after 10 minutes of up time.
The apps using most of the CPU just happened to be what was the last thing opened which for me was the task manager itself (65%) and 'system interrupts' (20%).
I have turned off all other startup items like skype etc.
I then saw the processor speed was over 20 Million GHz!

I also saw that the CPU thread breakdown in resource monitor were all black squares.

System bios is . P01A2C0b build date 7/20/2011. Would a new bios be likely to fix it or make it worse? CPU shows up in bios as i5-2500s.

I am about to reinstall windows - but I doubt it will fix the issue.

Has anyone ever seen an issue like this before? Fake / dying processor? Motherboard issue?

Can a dodgy processor cause a Kmode exception not handled error? What should she do next - buy a new processor? new motherboard? I don't have any lga1155 motherboards or processors to troubleshoot further.

Thanks a million for any help on this!

Let me know if you need any more info.

 

[boju]

That's a world record for sure!

Yes, do reinstall Windows from scratch and go from there. Just to rule out corrupt Windows which is most likely the case here if bought this machine with Windows already on it.

 

[Math Geek]

that's where i'd start as well. totally fresh install and see what happens from there.

get all new drivers from manufacturer site if possible after windows update gets what it can.

 

[crimson_sun]

Thank you both for your quick replies. I have installed windows 10 onto a fresh SSD but can still confirm the BSOD for 'Kmode exception not handled' every 10 minutes. The CPU still displaying Kardashev Type II civilization levels of ghz even with a fresh install.

If I were to recommend my colleague buying a used motherboard & CPU are there any particularly cheap and reliable DDR3 ones that you would recommend?

 

[geofelt]

I think the i5-2500s is legit.
It is hard to fake L1/2/3 cache sizes.
That processor needs a motherboard bios update level 10/30/2013
coy-Z will tell you your current bios.
You can download the bios here:

ECS ELITEGROUP

Founded in 1987, ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems, is a top-notch manufacturer and supplier of several families of computer products in the industry. With almost 30 years of experience, ECS not only produces high-quality products such as motherboards, desktops PC, notebook , Mini PC and semi...

www.ecs.com.tw

 

[spentshells]

That entire system looks and sounds like a real nightmare. For cpu's of that age, look to ali express, it does take a while to show up though. x79 with ecc ddr3 ram is really cheap with the E5 v2 series xeons. Even with modern games they do quite well.

 

[crimson_sun]

Thank you very much for the bios link and recommendations. Will give the bios a go tomorrow and update one way or the other.