Damaged Q6600 ?

[chrisbard]

Today I went to visit my good friend Zoli and while drinking a coffee he says he has some bsod with his PC. While taking a look I see that CPU Usage Sidebar Tool shows only 3 CPU's. I went into BIOS to check the <Limit CPU to 3> option which was DISABLED. I decided to enable to check further and surprize now the PC only shows 2 cores. I set everything to default update bios to latest and same thing I only have 3 cores with his Q6600. I suspect a damaged core but I am not 100% sure of this. What you guys think?

Prior to this the CPU run just fine at 3,5 Ghz for about 6 months with a huge cooler on it and masive airflow. His mobo is newer than mine its a Gigabyte P35-DS4.

Chris

[MUff1N]

Because you are depending on the "System's" reporting software (bios) as to what is running & what isn't, this isn't 100% absoposilutely (made up word LOL) sure as this is assuming it does have physical damage to the processing chip & not just a reporting problem.

So, as you know Chris the only way to know for sure is to pull it out & install it on another quad compatible mobo & see if it's still 3 cores.

That's the basics of troubleshooting.

[ThunderRd]

Those 6600's are pretty tough, as close to bulletproof as I've seen in a CPU. Recently due to a malfunction my board was running 2V through my 6600 for god knows how long, (probably weeks) and it didn't even blink. I've had this one to uncanny clock speeds at far less voltage than that as well. IIRC, it got to 3.985MHz @ 1.7V and completed all benchmarks - I chickened out on the volts but I reckon it would have gone at least to 4G with a bump I wasn't willing to make. I'd be very surprised to hear that one would crap out under normal workloads.

I wouldn't guarantee it, but I think that I'd look elsewhere for the problem first. Try what Muffin says and see if the chip shows up correctly on a known good board.