new CPU failing Prime 95

[severedsolo]

Hiya guys, would like to pick your brains if I may.

As some of you may or may not know, I recently built my new rig (specs in profile). Now last night, I was running Prime95 to get an idea of my stock temps, and Core 3 failed (expected x, returned y). Fearing the worst, I reran it, and it again failed, but on a different core.

Just to eliminate any RAM issues, I did a couple of passes with Memtest, and seems to be alright there.

So, opinions? I'm thinking possibly the board, as if it was the CPU, would it not fail on the same Core each time? Any idea of what I can change/tweak to troubleshoot?

Novatech have offered to take the Mobo and CPU back for testing, but I would really rather check it's not something I can fix myself first.

 

[badger906]

try underclocking the cpu and see if it works.

sometimes you jsut get faulty chips, but the only way to tell if its mobo would be to try another cpu. and i guess most people dont have more than one 1055 chip laying around.

 

[TVeblen]

Very often that error comes from RAM issues. Memtest is a very good diagnostic tool, but it only performs a limited test of memory registers.

To test, run Prime95 with only one stick of RAM in the first RAM slot. Then try each stick individually. Then test them in pairs. You are trying to find the bad stick or the non cooperating pair.

If you want to test the CPU you could try Prime95's "Small FFT" test. That may be able to tell you if there is an issue on the processor's cache.

Quote :

The "Small FFTs" test uses relatively small FFTs which can fit into the CPU cache. As a result, the small FFT test is the one which accesses your main memory the least but it still makes some memory accesses. Prime95 automatically creates a FFT size range which will fit into the L2 cache of your CPU.

The "In-place large FFTs" test uses relatively large FFTs which cannot fit into the CPU cache so this test accesses main memory a lot. It only accesses a relatively small amount of main memory because it runs the FFTs in-place so it accesses the same RAM over and over.
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You are running the rig at stock (default) BIOS settings for CPU and RAM?

Try those tests and let us know what you find.

 

[severedsolo]

THanks guys, I'm beginning to think it is probably RAM, I tried the small FTT test, and it went for about 6 hours no problems. I'll do a proper Memtest later on and post back.

 

[severedsolo]

Alright I'm fairly certain I have found the problem. One of the sticks had died, it is failing Prime and memtest in all 4 slots, the others seem to be alright, but am now doing another Prime test with all 3 in to be sure. Thanks for the help guys, I'll update if anything changes.

Edit: Just spoken to Novatech, they are rushing me out a new stick of RAM, should be here tomorrow, no questions asked really, just said "got a broken stick of RAM" and they said they'd send a new one