Ugh...bad 13900KS in a £6000 gaming rig

D

daglesj

Supreme [H]ardness
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May 7, 2005
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Had a doozy in this week. Guy bought a £6000 gaming rig (4090/7200MHz RAM/4TB NVMe a gogo) and its not worked right for over a year. He took it to two places to try to get it sorted, the boutique that built it didnt want to know.

So muggins here was the last resort. I did all the usual stuff, ram swaps, two stick or 4 sticks, XMP or no XMP, BIOS updates, NVMe and SATA swaps but I could not get Windows 11 to install without it crashing or BSOD. Windows 10 would go on but not work right.

I'd spent a day at this point trying to work it out. Thinking it may be a bad motherboard...it's a £650 Asus! I didnt have a spare 1700 socket CPU laying around but then I had an idea. I switched off the efficiency cores and all the Performance cores bar two.

Windows 11 installed straight away. I managed to get a stableish build on. I then added more cores and the results then got worse and worse. AIDA stresstest kept crapping out.

So I told the guy it was the CPU. He then said "shall i just get AMD, I'm told AMD are better!" No!!!! I replaied...you've spent enough and this would mean new CPU/board and most likely ram. I told him to get a 14700K instead. The rub here is he told me that "his Son just plays Fortnight on it...but his friends told him he needed all this!" WTF???!!!???

Anyway he turned up with a 14700K and...it worked fine and stable. One working machine. I told him to see if he could RMA the 13900KS and then sell the replacement if he got it.

At least we got a working machine. Son is please and so is he. I hate boutique builds! Never had a CPU with bad cores before in 25 years of building PCs.
 
Well that suks....but at least you got it working in the end :D

Most likely the CPU itself was fine, but if there was a pin/pins bent on the cpu when it was installed, that always causes major issues regardless of the other hdwr or OS involved....

And, like you, I have been building pc's for nearly 25 yrs and have yet to get one that was faulty straight out of the box, whether they were Intel or AMD, but then again, I have NEVER bought a so-called "boutique" machine either and NEVER will !
 
daglesj said:
Had a doozy in this week. Guy bought a £6000 gaming rig (4090/7200MHz RAM/4TB NVMe a gogo) and its not worked right for over a year. He took it to two places to try to get it sorted, the boutique that built it didnt want to know.

So muggins here was the last resort. I did all the usual stuff, ram swaps, two stick or 4 sticks, XMP or no XMP, BIOS updates, NVMe and SATA swaps but I could not get Windows 11 to install without it crashing or BSOD. Windows 10 would go on but not work right.

I'd spent a day at this point trying to work it out. Thinking it may be a bad motherboard...it's a £650 Asus! I didnt have a spare 1700 socket CPU laying around but then I had an idea. I switched off the efficiency cores and all the Performance cores bar two.

Windows 11 installed straight away. I managed to get a stableish build on. I then added more cores and the results then got worse and worse. AIDA stresstest kept crapping out.

So I told the guy it was the CPU. He then said "shall i just get AMD, I'm told AMD are better!" No!!!! I replaied...you've spent enough and this would mean new CPU/board and most likely ram. I told him to get a 14700K instead. The rub here is he told me that "his Son just plays Fortnight on it...but his friends told him he needed all this!" WTF???!!!???

Anyway he turned up with a 14700K and...it worked fine and stable. One working machine. I told him to see if he could RMA the 13900KS and then sell the replacement if he got it.

At least we got a working machine. Son is please and so is he. I hate boutique builds! Never had a CPU with bad cores before in 25 years of building PCs.
Click to expand...
I hate these kinds of problems. Kudos to you for your patience. So the cpu can sometimes work partially!!! Bad really bad.
 
daglesj said:
At least we got a working machine. Son is please and so is he. I hate boutique builds! Never had a CPU with bad cores before in 25 years of building PCs.
Click to expand...

I've seen a few, heck I had a bad 7950X3D earlier this year, it lost a whole CCD. But thats got to be frustrating to deal with.
 
dogDAbone said:
Well that suks....but at least you got it working in the end :D

Most likely the CPU itself was fine, but if there was a pin/pins bent on the cpu when it was installed, that always causes major issues regardless of the other hdwr or OS involved....

And, like you, I have been building pc's for nearly 25 yrs and have yet to get one that was faulty straight out of the box, whether they were Intel or AMD, but then again, I have NEVER bought a so-called "boutique" machine either and NEVER will !
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was a bit annoyed it cost them so much to get it running. I did check the pins and they were fine, The new CPU worked just perfect, stable and no BSOD so...

I have got machines up and running again with a pin, steady hand and a magnifying glass to straighten the pins. I remember a customer of mine, their kid thought he knew best and bought a new CPU without asking my advice. However, he didnt know that you have to get the same socket CPU for the same motherboard socket. He tried to cram a new £400 i7 in a previous gen motherboard. He actually cracked the CPU substrate trying to jam it in to fit. Not only that bent a dozen or more pins. Expensive lesson...

Ugh...just 4 more years and I can retire...
 
Man that’s just random luck but I’m glad you figured it out. Many of us overlook the CPU as the culprit becuase it is so rare to fail. I think I’ve lost one to hardware failure in the last 20+ years building at least a few hundred systems.
 
daglesj said:
Yeah, I was a bit annoyed it cost them so much to get it running. I did check the pins and they were fine, The new CPU worked just perfect, stable and no BSOD so...

I have got machines up and running again with a pin, steady hand and a magnifying glass to straighten the pins. I remember a customer of mine, their kid thought he knew best and bought a new CPU without asking my advice. However, he didnt know that you have to get the same socket CPU for the same motherboard socket. He tried to cram a new £400 i7 in a previous gen motherboard. He actually cracked the CPU substrate trying to jam it in to fit. Not only that bent a dozen or more pins. Expensive lesson...

Ugh...just 4 more years and I can retire...
Click to expand...
After years of repairing mobos I've seen this more than I ever thought I would. You would think once it didn't fit the socket they would realize there is a problem. Nope, going to try and jam it in there regardless and break stuff.
 
daglesj said:
I remember a customer of mine, their kid thought he knew best and bought a new CPU without asking my advice. However, he didnt know that you have to get the same socket CPU for the same motherboard socket. He tried to cram a new £400 i7 in a previous gen motherboard. He actually cracked the CPU substrate trying to jam it in to fit. Not only that bent a dozen or more pins. Expensive lesson...
Click to expand...
If this were my kid he'd never be allowed around a PC in my house again. Ever.
 
daglesj said:
their kid thought he knew best and bought a new CPU without asking my advice. However, he didnt know that you have to get the same socket CPU for the same motherboard socket. He tried to cram a new £400 i7 in a previous gen motherboard. He actually cracked the CPU substrate trying to jam it in to fit.
Click to expand...
"Stupid is as stupid does"

I say this applies to both the kid & the parent, since the parent should have had enough sense to teach their kid about how pc parts work BEFORE turning them loose to destroy the second-most expensive part of any pc....and the kid who would have known better (had they had been properly edjumacated) than to attempt something for which they were totally unprepared, without asking for guidance from the parent....

shame on both of them !
 
dogDAbone said:
"Stupid is as stupid does"

I say this applies to both the kid & the parent, since the parent should have had enough sense to teach their kid about how pc parts work BEFORE turning them loose to destroy the second-most expensive part of any pc....and the kid who would have known better (had they had been properly edjumacated) than to attempt something for which they were totally unprepared, without asking for guidance from the parent....

shame on both of them !
Click to expand...

Why would the parent know? They work in a restaurant. I don't know anything about large scale catering...;)

I always say to customers "Don't worry, we all have our own sphere of expertise!"
 
CPUs are a lot more complex than they were 20 years ago, 15 years ago, etc. On top of that, there is more tension to push performance and still have better yields---with less time for QC. The past 4 years I have seen and/or heard about more CPU failures than I am historically used to. But, that's true for most hardware components.
 
Yeah lithogrpahy, complexity, heat and freqs are all getting wayyy too high. We need a new direction...
 
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