My Main PC Died Last Night - trauma inside

[Iron Woode]

I was processing some video last and all of a sudden I got a BSOD in Win 10. It went to reboot and it froze on the detecting hardware part.

Yikes!

After trying several times to get it to boot I was forced to disassemble.

I broke out my trusty backup board (GA-78LMT-USB3) and reassembled the system. I hit the power button and nothing.

Upon closer examination I discovered that both the old board and the cpu were shot. It seems a cpu pin melted into the motherboard.

I am running my backup athlon II x3 455 with the 4th core enabled to replace my now dead Phenom II x4 965.

hopefully everything works better now.

 

[lyssword]

A+ story! did the fan fail or something?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

F'ING AMD and their crap partners who make crap. I built an AMD system last year to save a few dollars.....what a mistake. Two mother board failure and one mother board dead out of the box. Finally changed to ASUS the on board video is S Video at best, no HDMI or DVI. Yes I should have checked but I assumed all modern systems would have DVI. Bought a cheap video card and bent a CPU pin installing it on the new mother board.
Any money I saved has been erased over going Intel.

Not trying to flame I'm just pissed at AMD's partner for producing crap.

 

[brianmanahan]

i had an AMD cpu/mobo burn out years ago

after that i switched to intel as the C2Ds were coming out, and have never had any problems again

 

[Iron Woode]

A+ story! did the fan fail or something?

no, the fan works great. An Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 or something like that.

F'ING AMD and their crap partners who make crap. I built an AMD system last year to save a few dollars.....what a mistake. Two mother board failure and one mother board dead out of the box. Finally changed to ASUS the on board video is S Video at best, no HDMI or DVI. Yes I should have checked but I assumed all modern systems would have DVI. Bought a cheap video card and bent a CPU pin installing it on the new mother board.
Any money I saved has been erased over going Intel.

Not trying to flame I'm just pissed at AMD's partner for producing crap.

I understand.

My board was a gigabyte AM3 770. The system was built in 2010. It was a solid system.

i had an AMD cpu/mobo burn out years ago

after that i switched to intel as the C2Ds were coming out, and have never had any problems again

sounds like an old athlon XP set-up or maybe a first gen phenom.

 

[brianmanahan]

sounds like an old athlon XP set-up or maybe a first gen phenom.

yeah i think it was an XP1800

 

[PottedMeat]

RIP Phenom II, amd's last great chip

 

[ForumMaster]

sounds like the time is ripe for an upgrade... that saying, i'm still running a C2D E6300...

although now with skylake out, i may finally bite the bullet...

 

[OverVolt]

I had problems with P4's burning out, AMD's have always been rock stable for me. Kind of the opposite.

My C2D motherboard burned out its sound permanently so I never use that computer.

 

[smitbret]

Been using AMD since 2000. Never had a bad board or CPU and that's using refurb motherboards 80% of the time.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I used to fear the cheap free ECS motherboards that came with C2D/C2Q stuff from Frys.

Of course the oddest issues came out of a G33 based ECS that housed a Q6600.I oced it to 3ghz on stock voltages then the trouble began.PS/2 ports went out,then slowly but surely all the USB ports quit working.

I went on after that only buying Asus till i got bold and went MSI and Gigabyte. MSI made garbage for quite some time.

 

[Fayd]

been using AMD since 2006.

had a couple boards fail, but i can't attribute a board failure to AMD.

had a bulldozer CPU fail after 1-2 years. RMAed to AMD, they replaced with a better Bulldozer CPU (same series, faster clock).

so no complaints here.

 

[Kaido]

Yeah, I have a Kangaroo & Backblaze for emergencies:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883722001

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

$99 basic computer (comes with Win10) & unlimited online backup ($5/mo). You never know when computer gremlins are going to hit...

 

[Leyawiin]

If I still used my Phenom II X4 980 BE and it died I'd be dancing around at the opportunity to go shopping for a new Intel system.

 

[Hugo Drax]

Wow, I wonder what happened. I always keep 1 complete build as spare. never had to use it so far in the years I have been building my own systems (since 1992)

 

[Lean L]

I had to double check the thread date to make sure that this wasn't a necro from 5 years ago haha. A few people talking about amd chips from a while back. Nothing wrong with that.

I still have a thuban running in my virtualization server. A little confused as to why OP's processor melted. That heatsink should have kept the cpu at reasonable temps unless he was encoding video for hours on end with a broken fan and a few inches of dust inside his case.

edit: Processor should have throttled long before getting to plastic melting temps.

 

[xxxkaliboyxxx]

Good excuse to upgrade =)

 

[Iron Woode]

I had to double check the thread date to make sure that this wasn't a necro from 5 years ago haha. A few people talking about amd chips from a while back. Nothing wrong with that.

I still have a thuban running in my virtualization server. A little confused as to why OP's processor melted. That heatsink should have kept the cpu at reasonable temps unless he was encoding video for hours on end with a broken fan and a few inches of dust inside his case.

edit: Processor should have throttled long before getting to plastic melting temps.

I have no idea myself.

temps at idle were in 38 -41C zone and maxed out hit around 57-60C.

I have never seen a cpu die quite like that. At first I couldn't tell there was something wrong with the cpu. When I tried another cpu in the board and it wouldn't fit in, it was then I realized something was damaged.

stuff does happen.

I will weigh my upgrade options over the next month or so.

 

[cronos]

You may have lost your Windows 10 license there, too (assuming you took a free upgrade). If you were able to install (freely upgraded) Windows 10 again on a new motherboard without buying a different license, please tell us how.

 

[Herr Kutz]

Sorry for your loss.

 

[zinfamous]

RIP Phenom II, amd's last great chip

this. I've never had an issue with AMD, but I also stumbled upon their best chips within my regular upgrade path. the PII 965 was my latest, and only replaced about 7 months ago with my first Intel in...20 some years?

No real reason other than upgrade bug as it worked fine, also with the same Gigabyte mobo for about 6 flawless years.

I'll pour one out for your 965 this evening.

 

[Captante]

You may have lost your Windows 10 license there, too (assuming you took a free upgrade). If you were able to install (freely upgraded) Windows 10 again on a new motherboard without buying a different license, please tell us how.

From what I understand this is determined by the type of license you used to obtain the Win 10 upgrade. If OEM then its tied to the hardware although in the case of a failure like the OP's my guess is he would be allowed to re-activate. If retail however there should be no issue upgrading to a new system.


And I've had multiple Intel and AMD motherboards experience hardware failure with no obvious cause. In fact if anything I've had more problems with older Intel stuff.

 

[cronos]

From what I understand this is determined by the type of license you used to obtain the Win 10 upgrade . If OEM then its tied to the hardware although in the case of a failure like the OP's my guess is he would be allowed to re-activate. If retail however there should be no issue upgrading to a new system.

As far as I understand it, even if you started with a retail version of Windows 7 or 8, if you take a free Windows 10 upgrade then your windows license will be converted (and the previous license is nullified) and then tied to your motherboard, making it essentially OEM. This is why I'm curious what the solution is when the motherboard died after you took a free upgrade and you have to replace it.

There are plenty of discussion regarding this out there. Most of them confirming my understanding. I would be happy if someone could prove that I'm wrong.

 

[Captante]

As far as I understand it, even if you started with a retail version of Windows 7 or 8, if you take a free Windows 10 upgrade then your windows license will be converted (and the previous license is nullified) and then tied to your motherboard, making it essentially OEM. This is why I'm curious what the solution is when the motherboard died after you took a free upgrade and you have to replace it.

There are plenty of discussion regarding this out there. Most of them confirming my understanding. I would be happy if someone could prove that I'm wrong.

Too tired to go digging for the thread/link right now but the info I posted came straight from a mod on the MS/Windows 10 forum. I don't know with 100% certainty that its correct but considering the source I would be comfortable with 90 or so.

Also note that the part about your previous Windows license being nullified is def not correct. You can bail on Windows 10 and re-install 7 or 8/8.1 anytime you feel like it although you will most likely have to activate it by phone.

 

[mikeymikec]

Upon closer examination I discovered that both the old board and the cpu were shot. It seems a cpu pin melted into the motherboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Pz5KsyfN0