Problem with my CPU when starting my pc

[sertyuio]

Hello
I am having an issue with my PC showing a CPU error when i turn it on after power failure in the power grid( I am having solar panels if that is of any help to the thread).
So this is the sequence of events leading to my problem:
-power failure from the inverter, i am guessing when this happens, some strange voltage is going through the power grid because it only happens after this
-i try to turn on my PC and the motherboard CPU LED is on( i only have white color on the motherboard for the LEDs)
-only solution I found was to remount the CPU( which I would rather not do two times a week, since i don t have the money to spent on kg of thermal paste )

Things I have tried before reseating the CPU:
-reseat RAM
-clear CMOS (with a 20 mins down time just to be sure power is lost)
-plug/unplug CPU connector and motherboard connector
-finally reseated the CPU, which fixed the problem ( which is weird, power loss should not have impact on the CPU position)

If anyone has an idea about this issue, please help!

Some more info about the solar system:
-we bought a few solar panels recently and they were too much for the controller we had, so we changed to another controller that works at 14.4V instead of 13.8V
-I think the inverter was not set up for 14.4V input and it shut down (after this, motherboard has CPU error)

 

[Ruru]

My MSI B450M Mortar Max had similar problems (with R5 3600). Usually it helped if I had the power cord unplugged for a while. Never actually managed to find out the reason behind that, I just got a new board (as I've damaged the B450M's USB3 header so no RMA'ing it). I'll send this to my buddy and he can figure it out better than I could.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Having to remount the CPU to clear this issue makes no sense. I suspect that "appears" to work because (I hope and assume) you are completely removing power (unplugging from the wall) before pulling the CPU and that is what is actually working here.

You need to verify your wall outlet is wired correctly. Every home and every computer user should have access to a AC Outlet Tester to ensure the wall outlet is properly wired and grounded to Earth ground. I recommend one with a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupt) indicator as it can be used to test bathroom and kitchen outlets (outlets near water) too. These testers can be found for your type and voltage outlet, foreign or domestic, (like this one for the UK) at most home improvement stores, or even the electrical department at Wal-Mart. Use it to test all the outlets in the home and if a fault is shown, have it fixed by a qualified electrician.

You also need to try a different power supply. If the 2nd power supply does not clear your problem, then sadly, it is likely your motherboard.

 

[sertyuio]

I guess for now I should unplug my PC and try see if tomorrow everything will be fine.

Having to remount the CPU to clear this issue makes no sense. I suspect that "appears" to work because (I hope and assume) you are completely removing power (unplugging from the wall) before pulling the CPU and that is what is actually working here.

You need to verify your wall outlet is wired correctly. Every home and every computer user should have access to a AC Outlet Tester to ensure the wall outlet is properly wired and grounded to Earth ground. I recommend one with a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupt) indicator as it can be used to test bathroom and kitchen outlets (outlets near water) too. These testers can be found for your type and voltage outlet, foreign or domestic, (like this one for the UK) at most home improvement stores, or even the electrical department at Wal-Mart. Use it to test all the outlets in the home and if a fault is shown, have it fixed by a qualified electrician.

You also need to try a different power supply. If the 2nd power supply does not clear your problem, then sadly, it is likely your motherboard.

As for this, kinda hard in the current situation. Covid and lack of money make things a bit hard, especially on my side. Still, I found it strange myself that reseating the CPU fixed the problem. It should be the PSU. Since the PC was turned off and something bad happened when the inverter had the power cut from and might have send some weird voltage in the power grid. That spike should have been intercepted by the PSU. Will come back with more info sometimes soon!

 

[Bill_Bright]

I understand the strains COVID and financial situations affect things. And yes, for power anomalies that are not suppressed before hitting the power supply, we can only hope the power supply itself is able to tolerate without issues. But that always depends on the severity of the anomaly. Even the best supplies can only handle so much and the best we can hope for is the supply will simply shutdown before any damage to the supply occurs, or worse, before the destructive voltage is passed along to the connected components.

I recommend at the very least you make sure you have a current backup of any data you don't want lost.

 

[sertyuio]

I understand the strains COVID and financial situations affect things. And yes, for power anomalies that are not suppressed before hitting the power supply, we can only hope the power supply itself is able to tolerate without issues. But that always depends on the severity of the anomaly. Even the best supplies can only handle so much and the best we can hope for is the supply will simply shutdown before any damage to the supply occurs, or worse, before the destructive voltage is passed along to the connected components.

I recommend at the very least you make sure you have a current backup of any data you don't want lost.

Yes, I am using an external SSD for any regular work, and I did disconnect the HDDs from my PC so I can test if the CPU will work, since i read HDD s might get damaged when turning of the pc from the button. I came here because it is an extreme situation I did not find a normal fix for!

 

[Bill_Bright]

since i read HDD s might get damaged when turning of the pc from the button.

I don't understand what you mean here. Hard drives cannot be damaged this way. However, if Windows is not properly shut down first before turning off power, the data on the hard drive may become corrupt. But again, that would not damage the drive itself.

 

[sertyuio]

I don't understand what you mean here. Hard drives cannot be damaged this way. However, if Windows is not properly shut down first before turning off power, the data on the hard drive may become corrupt. But again, that would not damage the drive itself.

You are right, my bad! I mistook power failure with power down from the button. Both can cause data corruption, only one can damage the HDD read/write heads! It did happen to me once and lost a 2TB HDD. The heads were not parked correctly and ended up literally soldered to the platters.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Both can cause data corruption, only one can damage the HDD read/write heads!

I am afraid you are still confused. A sudden loss of power, regardless how that happens, will not damage a hard drive (or its R/W heads). That is, if you hit the power button, yank the power cord out of the wall, or if Mother Nature kills your neighborhood transformer and knocks out the power on your power grid, that will NOT damage the hard drive. It just stops working.

However, that sudden loss of power can corrupt data on the drive "IF" there were still open files on the disk. So the data may be damaged/corrupt, the hard drive will remain unharmed.

What sometimes happens, though is when power is restored from a power outage, it does not always come back in a clean manner. Some times, it comes back with excessive surges or spike (occasionally seen as flickers in the lights). And it is those excessive power anomalies that can cause actual damage to the drive itself. Just another reason all computers should be protected by a "good" UPS with AVR.

As far as your heads getting soldered to the platters, that cannot happen when the power is removed. But if excessive voltages are applied, then it might. In any case, if that is what happened to your 2TB, it was your power supply that ultimately caused that sort of damage.

And for the record, the reason why drives "park" the R/W head over a designated "landing zone" is to prevent damage to platters caused by the R/W arm bouncing up and down during rough handling. So this typically would never be an issue with "stationary" PCs, except during transport. But it is a common/constant concern with hard drives installed in "mobile" computers (laptops) and external enclosures.

 

[Ruru]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that a thing that a drive can get damaged in the 80s if the heads weren't parked?

 

[Bill_Bright]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that a thing that a drive can get damaged in the 80s if the heads weren't parked?

Not just in the 80s. Since hard drives first appeared in mobile devices all the way up to and including today. In the beginning, they didn't know why early laptop drives were failing so often. At first, they thought it was heat related, due to the inherent poor cooling in tiny laptop cases. But drive makers started analyzing those broken drives and discovered the physical damage to the platters and R/W heads, and figured out it was because the laptops were getting bounced and jostled about in taxis, airports, hotels, etc. by the business road warriors on the move. So automatic parking was coded into the disks firmware.

 

[sertyuio]

I come back with inconclusive data, but here it is:

-I reseated the CPU and the PC was working perfectly fine
-I did some work on it (not gaming, not using it to full specs either), just moving files here and there and opening some programs
-I did a few restarts on it and a few shut downs, everything worked fine
-Went outside for 10 minutes, PC turned off, plugged into the power socket with the switch off (basically no power), came back, switched the power on, started pc, CPU error

I did some more testing without reseating CPU, plugging stuff in and out, no combination of stuff worked (found another thread that said GPU was not working properly, changed that too, still no luck)
I am guessing I will have to wait for the vaccine, then start going places. I did fix the power issue in the meantime, though I guess that was not the issue...

 

[Bill_Bright]

I would start by borrowing a known good PSU from another computer and swapping that in to see what happens. Since everything inside the case depends on good, clean, stable power, it is always good troubleshooting to start by verifying you are supplying it.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

sounds like improper contact between processor pins and socket on the motherboard.....each time you reseat the processor, proper contact is maintained for a short while...and then lost..
i had a system that would fail to boot up in the mornings...the problem was that cold air from the ac would blow on the case and the ram would work loose from the ram slot..do you have a similar situation?
is there any history of damage to the processor socket?

 

[Ruru]

Damage on the socket sounds more or less weird on a PGA (AM4) socket, damaging a socket is more a LGA thing..

On my case it was simply something wrong with the motherboard as the same CPU works flawlessly on this newer board.

 

[sertyuio]

sounds like improper contact between processor pins and socket on the motherboard.....each time you reseat the processor, proper contact is maintained for a short while...and then lost..
i had a system that would fail to boot up in the mornings...the problem was that cold air from the ac would blow on the case and the ram would work loose from the ram slot..do you have a similar situation?
is there any history of damage to the processor socket?

Nothing changed. It just did not work anymore a few days ago! No change in temperature, no change in position, no socket damage as far as I know. The PC worked for quite some time without me changing the thermal paste or reseating CPU.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

is there dust/dirt on the processor socket?..is it clean?..

 

[Bill_Bright]

Is it true that all hard drives have enough residual energy to park the heads in the case of a power cut? Landing the heads on the platters is not a great idea.

No. But they are programmed in the drive's firmware to return the R/W head to the landing zone after each read or write. So if the drive is not actually reading or writing at the moment power is lost, the R/W should be parked.

 

[Ruru]

is there dust/dirt on the processor socket?..is it clean?..

I doubt that. On my similar case, I could have my PC running for days without any problems, but even a reboot could result in a similar hang just like the OP has.

 

[sertyuio]

is there dust/dirt on the processor socket?..is it clean?..

Yes, it is clean!

 

[Caring1]

I'd say since it fails to start once power is drained that the Motherboard is suspect, possibly a capacitor somewhere.

 

[Shrek]

No. But they are programmed in the drive's firmware to return the R/W head to the landing zone after each read or write. So if the drive is not actually reading or writing at the moment power is lost, the R/W should be parked.

I seem to recall reading someplace that the spinning disks might be able to generate enough power to park the heads if there is a power cut.

 

[95Viper]

Read the guidelines/rules:

All posts and private messages have a "report post" button on the bottom of the post, click it when you feel something is inappropriate. Do not use your report as a "wild card invitation" to go back and add to the drama and therefore become part of the problem.

Thank You, and, have a good day.

EDIT: Also, stay on topic.

 

[sertyuio]

Good news! I fixed the problem! As you can see in the attached image, some pins have a darker color at their base. That is thermal paste from when I build my pc first time (few years ago). I have tested it in multiple ways, no problems. Cleaned between the pins with a needle

is there dust/dirt on the processor socket?..is it clean?..

Still got a lot to learn.... I checked only the socket, not the pins... Just thought of looking at the pins too the last time I pulled out the CPU and voila

 

[Shrek]

An old toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol should get it real clean.