It Finally Happened... Dead CPU

It's happened, happened in annoyingly mundane circumstances, but happened nonetheless... I've killed a CPU.

The first CPU I've ever ever killed, and I've toyed with and worked with CPU's since about 1994, juggling them and building systems, basically as soon as I was introduced to modular PC's at college I was playing about with them fitting parts and drives and replacing things in the great beige boxes.

So what was I doing to finally kill a CPU?

Well, before I explain, let us just lament the chip, it was my Core 2 Quad Q6600, a chip I paid release week prices for, which served me throughout my time playing Eve-Online and World of Warcraft, the chip on which so many gaming marathons in Day of Defeat was carried out and the first chip I really played about with understanding the out of order execution of the new Pentium architecture Intel had foisted upon us (and which I'd tried to ignore for many moons).

Late July 2006 it arrived, I installed a then whopping 1GB of RAM into it and Windows 98 was stuck on it until November when it received Windows Vista, and it worked a charm, equipped with a further 3GB of RAM to a total of 4GB.  Two GTX 8800 graphics cards in SLi it was a beast in it's day.

It led a long and fruitful life in gaming and productivity for me, and so last night 2nd May 2020, a full fourteen years of service later it has gone to silicon heaven.

How did it die?  Right, well, I've been setting up a CCTV system, the neighbours continue to be a source of perturbation for us.  So I had the Q6600 set up in a case with 4GB of RAM streaming to YouTube, however it ran so hot, like a really really hot.  So the plan was to take it out that cramped case, put it into a Bitfenix case with a large 775 cooler.

I get it on the bench, test boot, all fine, remove the ssd and stow it and get to work, all the power out and off, all the cables out the way, unscrew and lift the mobo out, I get my test bench PSU and test boot to the BIOS, all fine.  But I can hear a loud noise, like a whine... I figure it's the power supply, so swap to another power supply, and still hear the same noise... Ohhhhh... what the heck is that?

I reduce to the minimum RAM, and boot... Nothing, what happens is the fan spins a moment then off.... Spins, then off... Spins then off... Oh oh...

I changed the RAM, so change it back... same thing. spin, stop, spin stop... No post.

This whine is getting louder each time I turn on....

I have no idea what it is, I'm suspecting a capacitor or coin whine, I'm suspecting the power supply, not the board.

So, I remove the cooler, and swap a different socket 775 chip into the socket, boots to bios fine, no problem.... Oh oh.... I'm suspecting the CPU is bad.

A visual inspection, it looks fine... I trust the Q6600....

I put it back in, power on again and the whine reappears but instantly goes away, and I smell burning.

Power all off, pull the chip... and sure enough one of the underside surface mount components has gone, I can see its blistered and bubbled up... That CPU is dead, at least to me.

I have no idea what's cause this, I suspect it was age combined with being in this constrictive case and getting so very very hot.

I've decided to retire all my core 2 based machines, I have (well had) three... The Q6600, a X5472 and the wall mounted PC.... The wall mounted project is a little difficult to directly change, I may continue as it is, but the rest of them are to go, they're running too hot and too inefficiently, a now old sandybridge chip will be far more energy and performance efficient.