Suspected bad i7-950

[Guest]

Hello Toms,

I recently have been noticing random lockups and slowdowns on my PC.

This recently happened to my other gaming PC, and it turned out to be a dying HDD. Since replacing the HDD no issues have shown their face.

Now the reason I am suspecting CPU in this case is I ran Prime95 the other day, and it said something along the lines of it couldn't distinguish logical cores / physical cores or something like that. Almost like it was saying one of the virtual cores was not being read. And when i ran it later it said something about core 0 and 1 are logical or soemthing. I should have taken a screenshot. This chip has Hyper Threading, so 4 real cores, and 4 more virtual ones for 8 threads, etc.

I have yet to run a memtest as I have been away on work, and I had my brother run the western digital lifeguard utility to about 50% completion with no errors. Per an Intel rep i used their CPU utility and it passed. The temps are normal, peaks at 50C in prime/under extreme stress, idles around 32C. I did have it overclocked for a while, but reset to stock as the games I was playing didn't give a huge increase for the added heat and stress to my CPU.

Hopefully this weekend I can run through all the tests to rule out other components. Does anyone have any ideas or insight to this?

Thanks

 

[rds1220]

Hello Toms,

I recently have been noticing random lockups and slowdowns on my PC.

This recently happened to my other gaming PC, and it turned out to be a dying HDD. Since replacing the HDD no issues have shown their face.

Now the reason I am suspecting CPU in this case is I ran Prime95 the other day, and it said something along the lines of it couldn't distinguish logical cores / physical cores or something like that. Almost like it was saying one of the virtual cores was not being read. And when i ran it later it said something about core 0 and 1 are logical or soemthing. I should have taken a screenshot. This chip has Hyper Threading, so 4 real cores, and 4 more virtual ones for 8 threads, etc.

I have yet to run a memtest as I have been away on work, and I had my brother run the western digital lifeguard utility to about 50% completion with no errors. Per an Intel rep i used their CPU utility and it passed. The temps are normal, peaks at 50C in prime/under extreme stress, idles around 32C. I did have it overclocked for a while, but reset to stock as the games I was playing didn't give a huge increase for the added heat and stress to my CPU.

Hopefully this weekend I can run through all the tests to rule out other components. Does anyone have any ideas or insight to this?

Thanks

I really doubt it is the CPU. CPU's are the most reliable piece of hardware in a computer and it rarely if ever breaks unless you fry it with high voltages when overclocking. I would Memtest 86+ and HDD SMART test. I would also look in the BIOS to make sure all cores are enabled and hyper threading is enabled. If all else fails it could be a Windows problem and you can try re-instaling Windows and see if starting over fixes the problem.

 

[Guest]

I really doubt it is the CPU. CPU's are the most reliable piece of hardware in a computer and it rarely if ever breaks unless you fry it with high voltages when overclocking. I would Memtest 86+ and HDD SMART test. I would also look in the BIOS to make sure all cores are enabled and hyper threading is enabled. If all else fails it could be a Windows problem and you can try re-instaling Windows and see if starting over fixes the problem.

I will run memtest and a HDD check when I get home after new years.

The prime95 errors and logs kind of made me think it was the CPU.

Like i stated the system randomly locks up (which was a sign of a bad HDD on my other system) so hopefully its just a simple fix.

Ill let everyone know my findings shortly.

Thanks