There are times when, for various reasons, you may think that your processor is damaged . Actually, it’s a pretty complicated thing to happen unless you’ve physically tampered with it, but in this article we’re going to show you how to detect when your PC’s problems are caused by a damaged processor, and what you can do about it.
Choosing the right processor for your PC is essential, especially if we talk about compatibility, so in this article we are not going to discuss whether a processor gives you problems because it is or is not compatible with the rest of the system, but rather we are going to focus in the problems that can occur when the processor does not work properly, but before it did.
How to know if the processor is damaged?
If the processor is damaged but still working (i.e. the PC is able to boot), the most common symptom you will see is that you are getting blue screens (BSOD) almost constantly, as a damaged but still working processor will make a lot of errors. calculation, and the consequence is precisely that, blue screens. However, be careful with this because the symptom is exactly the same if errors occur in RAM memory .
In fact, the most normal thing is that if the processor is having problems, the PC does not start up (not so when the problem is in the RAM, which will start up in most cases), and the following symptoms may occur.
- Blue screen loop when turning on the PC (by loop we mean that after showing the BSOD, the PC restarts and does the same thing again).
- POST error, and the PC does not even boot, usually indicating that an error has occurred in the boot sequence.
- The PC boots up, but the moment you try to start a game or program, it freezes or shows BSOD.
- The PC does not boot at all; you press the power button, lights and fans turn on but after a few seconds it turns off.
As we said at the beginning, it is quite complicated for a processor to break down like this because, even if it has been subjected to high temperatures, it has protection mechanisms that will turn off the equipment before the damage is irreparable. Therefore, in most cases, if the processor has been damaged, it has been due to poor handling, for example cleaning the inside of the PC, installing a new heatsink, or even changing the processor.
Is there any solution?
For this reason, if you think that your processor may be damaged, the first thing you should do is turn off the PC and disconnect it from the power supply, remove the heatsink and physically remove the processor from the socket on the motherboard to examine the contact pins ; in the case of Intel processors, the pins are on the motherboard socket, and in the case of AMD, they are on the processor itself (except on the new AM5 platform, which are also on the motherboard).
If you find that there is a bent pin, you can try to straighten it with some pliers and be very careful, although we already warn you that it is quite likely that you will not be able to leave it in good working order (if the bent pin is in an AMD processor, there are more chances that you will be able to fix it since these pins are less delicate than the ones on the motherboard socket).
In any case, when the processor has been damaged to the point that you have the symptoms that we have described above, it is most likely that you should start thinking that it is time to change the processor and/or motherboard, and it is Bad handling can unfortunately cause irreversible damage.