I'd like to announce the passing of my Athlon64 3700+. While it's not been mangled to death like one poor Socket A chip back in the day, my main box's brain has keeled over. Well, that's what it looks like at this point. I won't know until I get my new Socket 939 chip in later this week. It's that or the motherboard, and I'm not having trouble with the motherboard as of yet. I'll probably have an Athlon64 3700+ keychain in the near future.
i was about to post "envy"... but i don't want to tempt fate what did it have to put up with in its lifespan?
Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I was getting major instability at stock speeds. I'd turned down my OC earlier from 2.64GHz to 2.6, and then just to the stock 2.2, because of BSOD's. I'd checked the files with a debugger and found that the ntoskrnl.exe was a problem, so I replaced it with one from my backup box. However, I continued to get BSOD's. Multiple, different BSOD's. I was pretty well convinced it wasn't Windows when I was getting a BSOD in attempt to use the XP disc to do a repair install, and it blue screened as it was loading the initial set of files into RAM. If it's the same one, it's software, but when you get 4 or 5 different ones popping up, it's indicative of a hardware failure somewhere. I did try disabling the L1 and L2 cache to see if that would do anything...nope. Memtest: passed with flying colors. Seagate Seatools was what made me suspicious. All my hard drives were coming up with critical failures. The odds of that happening are pretty low. Not to say it couldn't happen, but that's way too coincidental. Well, I needed to check the CPU, even though I'd made my order for an X2 3800+ by this point. I downloaded an ISO of the Ultimate Boot CD and burned it to disc. Went over to the Prime testing module and started it. Instant failure. I upgraded to this a little while back, and it's less than a year old. Typically, if something fails, it's early on because of something from manufacturing, or at the end of it's life due to age. My guess is that this would've happened anyway, but I doubt having it overclocked helped anything either. This has probably been the most frustrating bit I've had to deal with. But, I have learned that a defective CPU will power on. Maybe not all the time, typically when the processor is fried, but it's not impossible...and that really threw me.
thats crappy, i'll morn for your loss, and may your processors rest in peace. That said i've only lost mobo's and they weren't very close to me, so i can't really put myself exactly into your shoes, but all the same its a bad deal.
Well, basically, it's either the CPU or the motherboard. Had I had a spare Socket 939 chip handy, I'd have confirmed it for sure. However, if it's really bad, I'll just snag a new NF4 board...just so I don't have to deal with reinstalling Windows.
Hopefully UPS attempts delivery at the right address this time too. The last guy didn't know how to read, so I almost didn't get my DSL modem thanks to that ding-dong delivery driver.
lol, thats funny, they usually do really good around here, granted they probably have my address on a to do list because of all the shipments i get. And on that, if i lived closer (granted i have no idea where you live) i would have let you borrow mine.
Well, that was entertaining. Apparently my main drive had some conniption too. So, yeah, I just reinstalled Windows on the Seagate 160GB I got back from RMA. The CPU may be alright, but who knows. I'll keep it around instead of making it a keychain. I need a backup 939 chip just in case. Hmm...lately, I'm getting 0wned in life. C'est la vie.
Damn, I would be surprised if it was the CPU, mine has been going at 2.8ghz for well over a year now solid, could be the mobo I think, lets hope the 3800+ solves the problems
Well, I think it's the RAM. No memtest errors, but I've pulled my Ballistix and so far, no BSOD's with my PC2700. I'll keep it like this for a few days before running each stick individually. I bet it's the other stick in my original set that's going bad, but who knows. I don't even remember which stick was with the original set...oh, well.
