How to tell if the processor is damaged: possible problems and tips

Have you noticed that your PC does weird things like reboots, failed startups and very poor performance? In this article we will see how to know if the processor is damaged or has poor cooling. Avoid problems on your PC by properly maintaining the entire equipment, and above all, watch your CPU eventually to see if everything is going well.

Index of contents

The processor is the heart of our PC, a tiny silicon tablet that has millions of transistors inside it capable of carrying out the operations and instructions that programs and tasks ask it to do so that the PC is capable of working.

What problems can appear in a processor

This will be the first point of interest that we must know to know how to detect that our processor is damaged. And the truth is that the problems that can appear in a damaged processor are quite few, and all of them with fatal consequences.

• Damage to the internal structure: we refer to damage to the physical electronic components, which on the other hand is the most common of all and in which other problems arise that we will see below. How to identify it? Directly the PC will not give an image signal, it will reboot or it will not start directly. Overheating: The second most common problem is overheating due to improper heatsink placement, problems with the encapsulation of the CPU itself, or dirt accumulation. How to identify it? We will notice that the fans are at maximum (if they work) and the computer will go very slow and may even restart.

And certainly there are no more problems that can affect the physical structure of the CPU, it is not something as variable as a motherboard, with a physical failure, the CPU will break and will have to be changed.

Check CPU performance and temperature

We are going to focus first on the second problem that we have exposed, which is having poor performance due to poor cooling. If you are lucky, this will be the most common problem that can happen to you

The symptoms are very clear, slow performance, fans at maximum for no apparent reason and even reboots on older computers that do not have a Thermal Throttling system.

What is Thermal Throttling and what is it for?

Well, we are going to start our computer normally and we are going to run some programs to check if everything is working correctly.

• The first of these will be a program that is capable of measuring temperature, for example, HWiNFO, Open Hardware Monitor, Speccy or HWMonitor. We recommend the first one, since it is capable of giving us the temperature of all the cores as well as indicating that if it is producing Throttling. The second program (optional) will be to subject our processor to intense stress. We recommend using Prime 95, which is free software and very easy to use. The third program is already included in Windows and is simply the task manager. With it we will look at how our processor works, because it is possible that some task is consuming more than it should and the problem is software and not hardware

How to know PC temperature in Windows 10: Recommended programs

Step 1: look at stock temperature and task manager

Before using anything to stress our equipment, it is advisable that we look at the temperature in the idle state, because this way we can detect possible refrigeration faults. A CPU should never exceed 50 degrees without a heavy process load. Neither the 75 degrees being subjected to you.

In this sense, laptops are different, because their limited cooling systems make them rise in temperature, even up to 95 degrees.

Processor temperature: What are Tj Max, Tcase and Tunion?

We are going to start HWiNFO and locate ourselves in the CPU section, to see the different temperatures of the " Core " and " CPU Package " which are what will interest us. Then we will start the task manager, go to the " Performance " section and then click on " Performance Monitor ", an option located in the lower area.

At a glance we can see the temperatures and the CPU load. In our example we are using a laptop, and it is normal that they are high, but 61 ^o C of stock for a desktop is a fairly high temperature.

What should we look at here? Well, in addition to temperatures, if any process has 100% processor cores. It should not be like this, because we are not doing anything, so perhaps your problem is that you have a virus that forces the processor and therefore it slows you down, or some program that malfunctions. Then check your operating system and software.

Step 2: stress the CPU and see how the PC responds

Be careful, we are not saying that it is mandatory, it is only optional. Stressing a team is not a priori dangerous, unless the cooling is very bad. We start Primer 95 and click on accept to start the test.

Just using minutes should suffice to see if the CPU at full load is responding well. If we see all the cores to the maximum and the temperature has not risen to values ​​close to the maximum admissible CPU, it is that everything is working correctly. In a laptop, high temperatures are normal, but if your PC is desktop, and you have more than 75 ^o C, you have to disassemble the chassis and see if it is very dirty or see if the heatsink or thermal paste are wrong.

Know normal processor temperature and how to lower CPU temperature

Know if the processor is damaged in its internal structure

This procedure is a little more complex to determine, since the failure may be caused by many other elements of our computer, for example, RAM, hard disk, graphics card, BIOS, etc. We are going to try to divide it into steps to keep an order of what we should do.

Step 1: Meaning of the motherboard beeps

As we know, our motherboard, specifically the BIOS, has a beeping system with a speaker installed, or with an LCD panel (Debug LED) through numbers. What do these beeps or numbers mean?

In the most widespread BIOS, which is American Megatrends we will have:

Beeps	Meaning
No sound	There is no current, the plate does not turn on. Possibly power failure
Continuous Beeps	Power failure. Maybe some misplaced cable and disconnected EPS cable
Short and steady beeps	Motherboard failure
1 short beep	Memory upgrade failure
1 long beep	Slot or RAM module failure (if it does not turn on) Everything correct (after lighting)
2 short beeps	Memory parity failure
2 long beeps	Low / null CPU fan speed
3 short beeps	Failure in first 64 KB of memory
4 short beeps	System Timer failure
5 short Beeps	Processor failure. The one that interests us
6 short beeps	Keyboard failure or connection to this
7 short beeps	Virtual Mode Processor, motherboard or processor failure
8 short Beeps	Memory read / write test failure
9 short beeps	BIOS ROM failure
10 short Beeps	CMOS write / read shutdown failure
11 short beeps	Processor cache failure
1 long beep + 2 short 2 long beeps + 1 short	Graphics card failure
1 long beep + 3 short	RAM memory test failure
2 Long Beeps

The most modern boards also have a two-digit LED panel that will show the status and error messages at startup, this panel is called Debug LED, and in all the user manuals of them will come the meaning of the messages. The good thing is that the codes will be the same, regardless of the manufacturer.

On the plates with Debug LED we will be interested in the following codes:

Code	Meaning
56	CPU type or invalid speed
57	CPU tuning failure
58	CPU cache failure
59	CPU micro-code fault
5A	Internal CPU failure
D0	CPU initialization failure

Knowing then the meaning of the codes, we can now better identify the problem we have on our PC.

Step 2: isolate or identify the component that is failing

If through the Beeps and LED codes you have detected that the CPU has an error, what you will have to do is disassemble the heatsink, remove the CPU and test it on another motherboard or test a different CPU on your motherboard. Of course it must be compatible with it.

Surely you don't have a spare CPU, but it is the only way to know if the fault is indeed in the CPU or on the motherboard.

On the other hand, you may not be sure of it, so it is advisable to remove hardware from the board to see if it can boot, for example, we remove the hard drive, keyboard, mouse in the first instance. Then we continue with the RAM, if we have several modules we will try to remove them or put one in different DIMM slots, doing this with both.

Step 3: check the socket contacts

It is possible that the fault is not in the processor, but in the socket itself. It is quite rare for a processor to simply break, as they have sophisticated protection systems against static electricity discharges, short circuits and overloads.

In this case, we are going to remove the CPU from the socket and we are going to look very carefully so that all the contact rows of the socket (if it is LGA) or the processor (if it is PGA), are perfectly aligned. We will repeat the process at all possible angles in order to detect possible deviations.

If any one is bent, sunken and hopefully not broken, we will try to fix them very carefully and put it back in its place. Next, we will place the CPU with care not to mess it up again and test if it works.

How to straighten the pins of a processor or motherboard

Step 4 (extra): perform a BIOS reset (CLRTC)

In all current BIOSes there are a series of pins or Jumpers that are used to perform a physical reset of the BIOS on the board. The name of this process is Clear CMOS. And on the plate it will be represented as CLRTC. The process consists of placing a jumper between two pins that will be indicated in the manual to reset the BIOS.

At this point, it will be best to go to the motherboard manual to see how to carry out the process, since 100% of them will come with this useful information.

Sometimes the simple failure of our computer not to start is a bad BIOS configuration, and with this process we will restore the configuration and it is possible that everything will return to normal.

Conclusion on how to know if the processor is damaged

Slowly and with good handwriting, so how should we face these problems. We must always go step by step, removing hardware and repositioning until we find the problem we have in our computer.

The CPU is an element that, if it fails, does it definitively, and the solution in 99% of occasions is to change it for a new one. But first, we should try testing it on another board, or testing another CPU on our board, to find the source of the problems. Similarly, it is also worth testing the rest of the components on another board and see if any of them is the source of the problem.

Now we leave you with a few interesting articles and some hardware guides in case you have to buy new components:

We hope this article has been useful to you, or at least to learn something you did not know yet. For anything, we are almost always available in the comment box and on the hardware forum.