Hi guys,
A long post coming up so please bear with me.
I built my current system back in 2014 (specs in sig) and had no problems until the November of 2016. Before that I had overclocked my cpu to 4.6ghz, along with ram and gpu and had it on pretty much 10-15 hours a day that included sessions of gaming and occasional benchmarks to check for any abnormalities in temperatures or overheating issues. From memory, i cannot recall my cpu under 100% synthetic load exceeding 80 degrees C and the pc never locked up in any games i ever played.
All this changed in November 2016. Whenever i started the pc from a cold boot, the fans would spin and the pc will boot loop 3-4 times (no post to bios) before booting up and then it would function normally. I did not pay much attention and thought that it may be the motherboard doing its thing (like some are known to do).
Then in December 2016 the boot loop time went from 2-3 minutes to 20-30 minutes and then to 2-3 hours and then over 10 hours near the end of the year. At each point though the pc would eventually start up and have no issues whatsoever. The overclock was still working fine, temps ok, no crashes during gaming or benchmarks and I just could not get my head around this problem except that I dreaded restarting it because I knew the cycle will start again.
Now here I am 4 months in and the problem is still there. Boot loops every 2-3 seconds of powering up, does not post and it could go on for some minutes or hours and then it starts working as normal again.
The steps I have taken to resolve the issue:
1.Cleaned everything as much as I could.
2. Restored factory defaults on everything so no overclocking on any component since December 2016.
3. Tested each component on its own by removing everything else.
4.Memory tested multiple times through memtest and it comes out fine.
5. Breadboarded the setup to see if the problem is somewhere in the case.
6. Re-connected all the wires by removing psu.
7. Removed GPU and ran intel HD onboard graphics.
8. Removed hard drive one by one.
I am sure I am missing one or two more things I have done but you get the gist.
Last week, I decided to have it looked at by a “professional” at a shop and after 3 days and £25 later I was told that my cpu is dead and/or ¾ cores are not working. I was just lost for words at that point especially after telling them beforehand that all benchmarks I have carried out that include multicore stress checked out. Also, they said they took my CPU out and tested on another motherboard but I find it hard to believe since the pc looked fairly untouched.
I am bit strapped for cash currently so cannot really afford another “professional repair” (most are cons anyway) and spend on parts when I do not know where the problem is. Sadly, I do not know of anybody who would let me check some of my parts like cpu or psu.
I do not think it’s a software issue since the boot loop happens like within 2-3 seconds. I doubt hard drive even gets started at that point but I could be wrong.
What do you guys think? Anybody else ever had a similar problem.
A long post coming up so please bear with me.
I built my current system back in 2014 (specs in sig) and had no problems until the November of 2016. Before that I had overclocked my cpu to 4.6ghz, along with ram and gpu and had it on pretty much 10-15 hours a day that included sessions of gaming and occasional benchmarks to check for any abnormalities in temperatures or overheating issues. From memory, i cannot recall my cpu under 100% synthetic load exceeding 80 degrees C and the pc never locked up in any games i ever played.
All this changed in November 2016. Whenever i started the pc from a cold boot, the fans would spin and the pc will boot loop 3-4 times (no post to bios) before booting up and then it would function normally. I did not pay much attention and thought that it may be the motherboard doing its thing (like some are known to do).
Then in December 2016 the boot loop time went from 2-3 minutes to 20-30 minutes and then to 2-3 hours and then over 10 hours near the end of the year. At each point though the pc would eventually start up and have no issues whatsoever. The overclock was still working fine, temps ok, no crashes during gaming or benchmarks and I just could not get my head around this problem except that I dreaded restarting it because I knew the cycle will start again.
Now here I am 4 months in and the problem is still there. Boot loops every 2-3 seconds of powering up, does not post and it could go on for some minutes or hours and then it starts working as normal again.
The steps I have taken to resolve the issue:
1.Cleaned everything as much as I could.
2. Restored factory defaults on everything so no overclocking on any component since December 2016.
3. Tested each component on its own by removing everything else.
4.Memory tested multiple times through memtest and it comes out fine.
5. Breadboarded the setup to see if the problem is somewhere in the case.
6. Re-connected all the wires by removing psu.
7. Removed GPU and ran intel HD onboard graphics.
8. Removed hard drive one by one.
I am sure I am missing one or two more things I have done but you get the gist.
Last week, I decided to have it looked at by a “professional” at a shop and after 3 days and £25 later I was told that my cpu is dead and/or ¾ cores are not working. I was just lost for words at that point especially after telling them beforehand that all benchmarks I have carried out that include multicore stress checked out. Also, they said they took my CPU out and tested on another motherboard but I find it hard to believe since the pc looked fairly untouched.
I am bit strapped for cash currently so cannot really afford another “professional repair” (most are cons anyway) and spend on parts when I do not know where the problem is. Sadly, I do not know of anybody who would let me check some of my parts like cpu or psu.
I do not think it’s a software issue since the boot loop happens like within 2-3 seconds. I doubt hard drive even gets started at that point but I could be wrong.
What do you guys think? Anybody else ever had a similar problem.