Processor or Power Supply. (Help!)

[Madison2G]

So to quickly sum up what happened with my main PC:

Over the past few days my processor had been acting up, the fan was getting slow and fast and the processor was getting absurdly hot.

Next day I decided to play Overwatch which I normally always run at 65 FPS. But this time the game was running around 8 FPS. The fan to my processor stopped, so I closed the game and not long after my computer turned itself off.

When I tried to start it up again, everything turned on but it turned off again in the middle of start up.

Now i'm 99% sure it's my processor that needs to be replaced, but could it have been my power supply that !@#$ed with it?

[iXenite]

How old is your PSU? What brand is it? If you think there is any chance it is your PSU you could just go ahead and change it. It's a fairly affordable upgrade in comparison to a new CPU - and it also is better to be safe when dealing with potential PSU issues. If changing the PSU doesn't change anything, then you may want to check and see if you need to reapply thermal paste to your CPU and maybe check and see if your heatsink is messed up. Also, what CPU are you using and how is it? Just curious.

[Madison2G]

The power supply I can't recall the model but I do believe it was somewhere around 600-800 watts.

 

The CPU is very old, and the only part of my system I have yet to upgrade, its AMD FX 6300. I'm almost fairly sure this is the reason.

[KunoMochi]

When's the last time you cleaned your system of dust? :P Could be shutting down due to overheating, which is a fairly common failsafe in CPUs and GPUs nowadays.

[Yumasi]

Like KunoMochi said, beware of dust ! Clean the cpu fan and heatsink, maybe with a can of pressurized air if there is a lot of dust.

 

The lack of performance followed by the computer shutdown you observed might be simply caused by overheating. Generally, if a processor gets too hot, it will throttle its frequency down, hence the bad performance in game.

 

The automatic shutdown, is probably a failsafe occuring when the CPU is getting too hot in order to prevent its destruction.

[Erik005]

It is very rare that a CPU goes bad after a while, Power supply's are filled with components that can go bad after a while.

 

So try and clean your system of dust and maybe check the airflow in your case. If you still have the same problems after that I would suspect your power supply.

[FMod]

CPU failures in the absence of hard o/c are rare (but not unheard of). CPU failures also tend to be abrupt, it won't even begin to start. Motherboards and PSU have a limited lifespan and fail "when", not "if". Normal use overheating wouldn't cause startup failures.

 

Your case sounds like a short circuit on the motherboard or something connected to it. It also might be an unseated CPU, and a PSU issue is fairly likely as well.

 

Start by taking your PC apart, cleaning it, putting it back together. Include removing the CPU, cleaning off the thermal grease, reapplying it (a small amount). Needless to say, disconnect everything you don't need to start. You actually don't need any of the fans.