Troubleshooting QX6700

[laserdemon]

Just wanted to get you guys to double check my troubleshooting before I ship this processor back to be replaced.

I came home from a weekend of being out of town to my system blue screened. Out of habit I just rebooted instead of writing down the error. After the reboot, it loaded to the windows xp splash screen then rebooted again. Did it a few more times and it kept rebooting. I then grabbed my Ubuntu 7.04 disk, booted to it. Told it to start and after about 10 second of loading it rebooted also.

System Specs
Intel QX6700
Total of 4gig of Corsair Dominator (only 2 gig installed since before the problem started, long story)
EVGA 680i motherboard
8800gtx x2
WD Raptor 150gig
Thermaltake 1200w power supply

First thing I thought was possible memory, so I swapped out the 2 gig for the other set of 2 gig I had, issue remains.

Removed one of my video cards, no go, swapped out the video cards, no go.

Removed my Hard drive, booted from Ubuntu, same issue. Put my HDD back in, started a Windows XP install, deleted all partitions recreated, formatted, it copied files, after the reboot, issue returned.

RESEATED EVERY CABLE AND PART IN THE SYSTEM. No go

Rest the bios, no go. Started disabling things in the bios, ide controllers and such, nothing

Disabled the 3 other cores on the processor and the damn thing started booting. It loaded windows and such.

Tonight when I get home, Ill start trying to narrow it down to a specific core.

Did I miss anything, any other suggestions?

BTW, thanks for anything.

 

[mogman42]

So, I hear the Apple Stores are hiring....
*obligatory RL friend flame*


Seriously though, it sounds like you've covered all the bases. However, here are a few additional things to check.

1) Power Supply - voltages all in spec? Running exceptionally hot? Have a spare supply you can run the bare system with 1 vid card to test?

2) Also, are there any excess/unused power connectors that might be somehow shorting/grounding out on the chassis or mobo/cards?

2) Bios updates?

3) Motherboard mounted properly? Grounding out on case, etc.

4) Verified all 4 sticks of memory seperately with Memtest86+ for 1+ hours each?

5) Heatsink seated securely with paste on CPU? Temps ok? Any excess compound maybe leak down onto the socket/pins?

6) Errata list from Intel on your CPU? Any bugs or showstoppers?

7) Did you let Ciscokid touch your system when you weren't looking?

That's all I can think of atm.....

 

[Tytalus]

Just wanted to get you guys to double check my troubleshooting before I ship this processor back to be replaced.

I came home from a weekend of being out of town to my system blue screened. Out of habit I just rebooted instead of writing down the error. After the reboot, it loaded to the windows xp splash screen then rebooted again. Did it a few more times and it kept rebooting. I then grabbed my Ubuntu 7.04 disk, booted to it. Told it to start and after about 10 second of loading it rebooted also.

System Specs
Intel QX6700
Total of 4gig of Corsair Dominator (only 2 gig installed since before the problem started, long story)
EVGA 680i motherboard
8800gtx x2
WD Raptor 150gig
Thermaltake 1200w power supply

First thing I thought was possible memory, so I swapped out the 2 gig for the other set of 2 gig I had, issue remains.

Removed one of my video cards, no go, swapped out the video cards, no go.

Removed my Hard drive, booted from Ubuntu, same issue. Put my HDD back in, started a Windows XP install, deleted all partitions recreated, formatted, it copied files, after the reboot, issue returned.

RESEATED EVERY CABLE AND PART IN THE SYSTEM. No go

Rest the bios, no go. Started disabling things in the bios, ide controllers and such, nothing

Disabled the 3 other cores on the processor and the damn thing started booting. It loaded windows and such.

Tonight when I get home, Ill start trying to narrow it down to a specific core.

Did I miss anything, any other suggestions?

BTW, thanks for anything.

The ONLY thing that makes sense here is your heat sink isn't anchored properly, or you used too little thermal paste. I've heard the Tuniq Tower can be slightly concave (or is it convex?), requiring a bit more than the bare minimum for thermal paste. Also, make sure those anchors are down.

Bottom line: You need to boot and get in that BIOS fast, and get to the CPU temperature monitor in the BIOS. I bet it is reading 90C or higher, which is completely unacceptable. If the temp in there is spiking harshly you need to shut down the PC ASAP and re-seat the heat sink.

 

[laserdemon]

I did reseat that, its not the problem, the machine stays around 60c or 144f. Well withing acceptable ranges.

Last night i started running memtest86+ and found one stick of bad memory. 90+ errors before starting the 4th test.

Issue remained after removing the bad stick and the matching stick, leaving 2 1gig sticks in, problem remained.

I steped through disabling cores in the bios. you cant disable core 0 so i disabled the rest, system works fine. rebooted, enabled core 1, system works fine with 0 and 1 enabled, disabled ore 1 and enabled core 2, so thats 0 and 2 running, system fails. disabled core 2 enabled core 3, so 0 and 3 running, system fails.

So it looks like the second half of the processor has issues. so, im going to rma the processor and the one stick of bad corsair.

Thoughts before i do so?